Going Out

Recently I've been going out more often.

And I actually prefer this kind of life-style.

I think the main reason I didn't enjoy my life in school last time was the lack of social life.

I was stuck in school or home and didn't go out most of the time.

Furthermore I was so obsessed with my laptop that I couldn't bring myself to study at all.

I think now I am able to enjoy life a little bit better.

Though I don't mind a little more. :)



Anyway, recently a friend whom I knew in France during the World Mind Sports Games came to visit Singapore. (I will write a post on WMSG next time :p)

So naturally, trying to be good guy, I brought her around.

It was hard to think of places actually, because Singapore is really so small.

But it was also fun to go to places I also never visited before myself. (What have I been doing in Singapore all these years? :p)

The Garden by the Bay was really pretty. The huge 'trees' (are those real trees?) outside and all the flowers inside the domes. And the huge fountain and the tall pathways. It's really a very good place to walk around and relax. It's a pity we missed the light performance at night though. But at least we managed to see the Helix Bridge. :)

We also went to Clarke Quay and walked down all the way to Esplanade. (Why are all the nice places at central? lol) Honestly I didn't know that there was a Merlion kid there until I went there. But the view from the Merlion area was really very nice. I could even see the floating platform from there.

Saturday night was also Karen's farewell party at SWA, so I also brought her there. Just nice Karen was going London for PHD and she is studying at UK currently, so I could introduce them to each other as well.

I realised that there were many things I could learn from this friend of mine. She leads a very organised lifestyle, with fixed time for studies and Baduk everyday. Because her studies always end very late, she takes the effort to wake up earlier everyday to study Baduk. Even during holidays she also spends fixed hours each day to study. And from the way she reviews her games I can see that she is really very serious into Baduk. As a result? She gets good grades, and is also very strong in Baduk. Her dream is to be a Professional Baduk Player and a doctor. :)

I was really stunned when she told me all these. But I also realised that if you want to achieve something, you really need to put in time and effort. And it must be CONSISTENT. If only I could be as disciplined as her. If only I could manage my time as well as her. If only I could be as consistent in my efforts as her. I think my Baduk will improve by at least 1 or 2 stones and my grades will get better too.

Anyway enough with envy. I believe with her consistent efforts she will definitely become a pro soon. :) And I also should start doing things for myself from now, instead of spending everyday like it's nobody's business.

Another event. On Friday night, I went to this Korean Learners' Meet-Up Session at Talent Cafe at Tanjong Pagar, organised by Shanna Tan. Shanna is a very famous blogger (you can find her blog address on the right) who speaks Korean and Japanese very well. I knew her long time ago from Xingwei but Friday was the first time I saw her in person. She looked quite different from her photos. :p

It was actually my first time going to such a meet-up where I don't know most of the people. I went with Alvin and Xingwei, and in the end we both sat at different tables with new people. There were many Koreans there as well, and it was very fun as everybody was very friendly. I think my ability to talk to new people improved a little bit as well. :p

After the meet-up we went to Tom and Toms Cafe to get a drink with Shanna and some of the people remaining. Shanna was really a good Korean speaker. She has no difficulties at all communicating with Koreans, and her pronunciation is just like that of a Korean. She finished TOPIK 5! She has interned in Korea before and also went to Korea for exchange once. I wish I could have just half of her Korean fluency.

In fact many of the people who turned up went to Korea for an exchange once. Why didn't I fight for a chance like that? No point regretting now though. I can only do my best now and hope such a chance will come again.



That's all for this week. Tomorrow is Monday. Back to another week of lesson and mugging. But I also hope it will be different. 화이팅!!!

2012 Ing Cup University Go Tournament in Chengdu, China

Before I embark on my next trip, I guess I should update a bit about my previous one.

(Full photo album can be found here:)

15th July

We boarded the plan at 2 am. I really hate this kind of plane because 1 thing I can never do is sleep properly on the plane. I have experienced it so many times. In the end I just feel so shack and worn out when I reach my destination.

We reached Chengdu airport at around 6 in the morning. A girl called Nelly came to pick us up and bring us to the university, 西南财经大学(South Western University of Finance). It was kind of funny because Xingwei only communicated with her through sms so we were discussing whether "Nelly" was a guy or a girl.

The school was quite big and beautiful. Upon reaching the school we had to immediately attend the opening ceremony. And it was a shock that we had to play the first round at 2pm on the same day!!! We were so tired that we thought we would all lose the first game... Well at least we got to see famous faces like Nie Weiping and Wang Yuan during the opening ceremony.

The place where we stayed was kind of a let-down... It was just like a normal school hostel, just that there was no air-con, the bed was a hard one, and most importantly, there was NO mirror!!! Yes, can you imagine how you live in a place without a mirror?? There are just simply so many things you cannot do!!!! Omg, I don't know how we managed to stay at that place for 7 days...

First game I played with this guy called Kang Ji Moon from Seoul University. I was really very tired but somehow he made quite a few mistakes and I managed to win him. Xingwei also won his first opponent. The other two of us lost the first game.

We also met up with the Koreans after the opening ceremony. They came one day before us and they couldn't take the hostel anymore, so they decided to move to a hotel nearby. It was only near the end that we realised many other schools did the same too. We decided to stay in the hostel because it was free for us, but now I regret doing so...



16th - 17th July

2nd and 3rd day was just normal competition day with 2 games per day. Nothing much happened, except for the drinking with the Koreans at night. Very interesting to see many famous faces in the competition including the pros. Because me and Xingwei won the 1st game, so for the 2nd game we miraculously sat at the first two tables, and I played with the super strong pro called Lan Tian (literally means blue sky). In the end he got the individual champion! What an honour to have played him.

Lan Tian in action

 For the drinking, we learnt a lot of new drinking games. Last time I only knew "I love you game"(사랑해, 병신), but this time we learnt so many more~ It was really very fun~ I think I'll make a list of drinking games next time~



18th July

4th day was a rest day. I went to many competitions but it was very rare to have a rest day in between games, haha. So we decided to go to Chengdu city with the Koreans, and went to this very big shopping place that looked like 王府井(wang fu jing) in Beijing. Didn't really have much time so only bought some shirt at Uniqlo. I think at least we were better than some people who only went there to buy coffee and bread, haha.

19th - 21st July

Another 3 days of continuous games. Honestly I can't remember much what happened during the competition games. I think my condition wasn't that good also. In the end my result was only 5 wins out of 11 games. I lost to 4 pros and 2 amateurs. I had chance in both the amateur games, but I didn't catch the chance and lost. Out of the 5 games I won, I won 3 games by 3 points exactly. Coincidence? And one game was winning my own team mate... The only game I can say I won by my own strength was the first game against Kang Ji Moon, but in the end he managed to get 6 wins, one more than me...

Our teammate Alvin with his dream girl, Wang Xiang Ru Pro

All I could say is my Baduk really still sucks... Looking back on the games and reviewing them, I didn't play a lot of good moves. Sometimes I didn't even know what I was doing, and was at a losing mindset from the set. Especially the games against the pros. I think I don't have enough fighting spirit... God of Fighting, please help me!!



22nd July

Once again, we went out with the Koreans to the city. This time we went to this place park where they displayed many things related to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Well I'm not really a history person so it was kind of boring, but it was fun to walk around.

One thing I realised is that Koreans really like Scissors, Paper, Stone. Wherever they go, they will play this to decide who will buy ice cream, food or drinks for everybody. And the sad thing is I lost 3 times in total... Somebody told me if you lose once, you will never lose again. But in the end I lost 3 times... What kind of bad luck is this? Or is it just because my Scissors, Paper, Stone is so lousy??

We went to a Korean restaurant for dinner. It was kind of funny to eat Korean food in China, but I guess it was even weirder to bring them to a Chinese restaurant because they wouldn't be able to eat anything. The taste was really not bad, especially after eating so many days of Chinese food. But of course, the taste in Korea itself was much better.



23rd July

The Koreans were leaving at night, so we went out with them to a nearby area to do some shopping in the day. Had dinner with them at a nearby steamboat restaurant, and sent them off after that. It was really fun knowing them and playing with them. They are really a bunch of nice people, and 1 thing I realised that they always like go in groups. They are a Group Creature. No matter what they do, they will think of every person. And they will always the respect the decisions of the most senior person. I think it is a very good culture.



24th July

So the last day we were left on our own. We decided to go walk around the city and look for books that Mervyn was looking for at the same time. Went to 2 book stores but couldn't find the books that he was looking for. Instead, we bought some books to learn Korean. I never thought I would buy those in China, but I think since they are cheap no harm buying. And I could practise my Chinese that way also, haha.

And yup, that's the end of our 10 day trip in Chengdu. Actually there's more stuff to write but I don't have much time right now, so I'll just end here. On the whole it was really a nice and fun trip! It could have been much better if there was more interaction between the players though.

Venture

Currently I'm working on a job.

2 jobs actually.

One temporary one.

One more permanent.

Of course the jobs come with money.

And I do want to earn more money.

But, I also want to be greedy, and get more out of them.

I want to use this opportunity, to change myself.

To change who I used to be.

To say goodbye to the myself, which I disliked.

To get to know more people.

To be able to talk to people.

To be able to be CONFIDENT.

Is it possible?

I don't know.

But I am willing to try.

And I believe that I can do it.

Yes.

Dreams

(;GM[1]FF[4]AP[Drago:4.21]SZ[19]CA[UTF-8]AB[pd][pe][qe][re][ob][nb][ne][qg]AW[pb][pa][qd][rd]C[White to live.])

Sorry this picture doesn't really have anything to do with the content of this post.

Do you have a dream?

Recently I have been asking myself this question.

What is my dream?

I remember when I was still in Japan, I was told to announce my dream to the whole class every once a year.

The first time I said I wanted to be a soccer player. Because it looked really cool.

The second year onwards I don't really remember.

Dream may not be what you want to be in the future.

It may simply be what you want to do.

What you want to achieve in life.

So, I tried to list down 100 things that I want to do if I had the time and money.

And I could only write 22.

Is that too little?

Maybe.

I'm not really an ambitious person, so I couldn't think of anymore.

I was even surprised that I could think of 22. It was too many to me.

But the problem is, why is that when I have so many things I want to do, I haven't been doing them?

Is it because I'm lazy?

Is it because I don't have time?

I'm not a person who plays a lot of games.

In fact I stopped playing computer games after NS.

So why is it that I haven't achieved anything that I want to achieve?

Of course laziness and procrastination plays a part too.

But I think, the most important thing is, I simply don't BELIEVE that I can achieve these stuffs.

Yes, the POWER to BELIEVE is important.

I must BELIEVE in myself.

I must BELIEVE that I can achieve those things.

If I don't BELIEVE in myself, nobody will.

BELIEVING yourself, is the first step to achieving all your dreams.

That is what I BELIEVE.

Doesn't mean all those problems like laziness, procrastination, and time management will go away if you BELIEVE.

But if you don't BELIEVE, you'll never be able to solve all those problems.

If you don't BELIEVE, all the negative thoughts will come in and you'll never get your stuff done.

Therefore, I think I want to start by BELIEVING myself.

New Stuffs

(;GM[1]FF[4]AP[Drago:4.20]SZ[19]CA[UTF-8]AB[nk][ok][pk][qk][rk][ql][qi][ml][mm][mn][mo][no][qn][rn][rp][rq] [qq][pq][oq][nq]AW[nl][ol][pl][pm][qm][rm][nn][on][oo][op][pp][qp][ro][qj]C[White to kill])

I went to a place called Marina Bay Financial Tower on Wednesday for a one-day part-time job.

It was a magnificent place with many high-rise buildings.

Everyone walking into the building looked like professionals.

I didn't expect that I would also walk in there one day.

Because it is simply too high-class for me.

As for the job itself, it was ok.

It was a very nice experience to walk-into such a high-class building to work in one of the offices.

I also had a chance to see how the other stuffs work, though not much.

The only problem is the food.

Maybe because all the people working there are so highly paid, I couldn't find a single food court or kopi tiam in that area.

It was just restaurants after restaurants.

And all looked very expensive.

After much hesitation, I decided to have my lunch in this restaurant called Cedele.

It looked like a healthy place, and I ordered Beef Aglio Olio Pasta (pic above).

Tasted pretty good, though the amount wasn't a lot.

Will probably be going back there in the next week or so.

Hope to find some nice and cheap food there next time.

Results

The first round of National Team Tournament ended on last Sunday. My result: 4 wins out of 7.

One loss was because I couldn't play the game. (As I had to go and watch Madagascar 3!)

So in total I lost 2 games.

One to JC, and one to YX.

I would say it's still a satisfiable result, given the fact that I wasn't in a good condition.

Somehow I felt better on the second Sunday than on the first.

I played both YX and JC on the first Sunday.

Against YX, my game was still ok until middle game but as the game progressed my big group was in danger, but I still had some chance even if I sacrifice the group. However I made a fatal mistake and got my keystones eaten and I couldn't even talk about sacrifice anymore. The game ended in less than 100 moves.

Against JC, I was actually leading until late in the middle game, but after that I don't know why I started playing strange moves that didn't make a single sense to me. Opponent's territory kept increasing while mine kept decreasing. It won't be overboard to say that I lost almost 30 points in end-game. It was really a badly played game.

I'm happy with the other games that I played. Maybe I'm slowing getting back my form!

I also played with a former Japanese Insei on Saturday. He was from the Insei C Group.

The game wasn't good for me at first as I encountered a joseki which I didn't know.

But as the game progressed, he suddenly had a weak group and I managed to bring the game to my advantage.

When end-game started I think I was leading my at least 10 points, but that's where the difference in strength started to appear.

I started making mistakes here and there, and lost about 5 points in end-game, even when I had enough time to think.

In the end I was only leading by 5 points on the board and I lost by  1.5 points.

It was really a pity.

End-game has always been a problem.

The fact that I didn't play my end-game well even when I had time to think shows that my basics are really not there.

If I have the time I would definitely want to properly train myself in end-game.

Maybe in the middle of learning, I would also make some posts on end-game here and there.


I think the key is really to play more games, and to have a clear mind.

A CLEAR MIND is really important.

I myself often let my thoughts run wild, and waste a lot of my time. (Both on the board and in life)

Therefore it is important to be CLEAR about what you want and what you need to do to achieve it (Both in life and on the board)

I guess I'll start working on that now.

To play or not to play?

(;GM[1]FF[4]AP[Drago:4.20]SZ[19]CA[UTF-8]AB[pa][pb][pc][pd][pe][pf][qf][rf][sf]AW[qa][qb][qc][qd][re]C[Black to kill.])

I remember last year sometime in October, when we were training for Thai U-Go under Xie Tang, after my game with him he told me something I will never forget.

(In Chinese) "Hey Zhang Xiang, you haven't really been playing recently, right? You seem easier to deal with than before!"

At that time, it was kind of a shock, and I didn't really know how to react, so I just said...

"Well yeah, maybe now I think much more than last time..."

Now that I think about it...

He was actually true.

It's true that I didn't play a lot of games.

And it's still that way until now.

I like to review professionals' kifus, so I tend to do that a lot.

I will also play casually with low dan players using my casual accounts.

But the number of serious training games I play, really seemed to decline over the years.

My ID, Sadaharu, on KGS, played less than one game per month last year.

Then I thought to myself, why is that so?

And then I realised, it's because I'm scared.

I'm scared of playing serious games.

I'm scared of not playing well.

I'm scared of losing.

After playing Go for so many years, I still get nervous every time I sit in front of a Go Board.

That's especially the case in front of strong players.

Maybe that's why, subconsciously, I avoided playing serious games even when I was free.

And that's how my level started going down.

I realised that playing a game yourself is really important.

Of course reviewing kifus is also important, as it allows you to understand how pros think and what they play.

However, what is more important is the way YOU think, and not the way others think.

Only by playing yourself, would you be able to find out the way YOU think.

And only through that way, you can improve.

That's my recent thought.


Tomorrow is the first National Team Tournament.

Against so many strong players, how will I, who "haven't really been playing", fare?

I shall see.

CHM Nightmare

Last weekend was Lanke Cup.

Qiuping cup was held together at the same place.

The venue was Toa Payoh East CC.

I remember back in my HwaChong days, when Lanke and Qiuping cup was held at NYP Sports Hall, the huge hall was just enough to fill all the participants.

And now, with both the competitions held in a small CC, there are still many empty spaces. This is really saddening. What has happened over the years?

I hear that the popularity of weiqi in Singapore is going up, and I also see many new faces in SWA everytime. But why is it that the number of people joining competitions has decreased?

I'm not an exco but I think this is something they should review...

Anyway, for this year's Lanke, our main opponents were NYP and HCI.

For some reason NUS didn't join this year.

HCI didn't have Jian Zhongfan already, so it was less of a threat.

Hence our main opponent was NYP.

And this year it was very dangerous because we didn't have Xiaojuhua and Wei Ran with us.

But we still wanted to do our best to keep the Lanke trophy.

However, on the first game of the 2nd day...

Shit happened...

I lost a game... to CHM...

...

......

.........

Ok, it was my fault.

I have totally no excuse for the loss.

Because loss means loss.

I only knew about the pairing on the morning itself.

I believed that I could win him.

But the game... turned out very terribly...

Looking back, I don't really know what I was thinking at that game.

I didn't play any strong moves, and I didn't try to increase my territory or attack.

In the end, when I realised that I was losing on territory, the opponent was already too thick and it was already too late.

Seriously, what the hell was I doing?

I don't demand that I play a wonderful game, but at least I want to play a game that I can be content with!

Is that so hard to achieve!?

Haiz, really must go and reflect...

In the end, CHM and Zhaozhen from NYP both got 6 wins.

But their 3rd person, Wen Kang, only got 4 wins.

As for NTU, I got 6 wins, Alvin and Teck Wei got 5 wins.

So, fortunately, we still managed to beat them in terms of score. 

If NYP had sent in another strong player, most likely we would have lost.

And it would be my fault...

...

I call this incident the CHM Nightmare.

And I declare that I will not let this happen again!!

P.S. Some photos:

NTU, Champion

SMU, 4th

NYP, 2nd

HCI, 3rd

NYP Open

Haven't blogged for a long time.


I actually like to blog, just that I don't know why I can't bring myself to do it sometimes.


Well...


Anyway, before I start...


Can anybody tell my why there are so much spam here!!?? ----------------------->


Seriously.

Went to NYP Mindsports Open to be their Chief Arbiter last weekend.

Yes, "Chief Arbiter".

It's not just an ordinary judge, it's "CHIEF Arbiter"! LOL

Well anyway, the job wasn't that much different from a normal judge.

House seemed to do it every year but this year he wasn't free so he asked me to do it.

And I accepted the job because it comes with money. :p

I've never been to this competition before, even though they seem to do it for many times already.

There weren't many teams joining the Weiqi section either. 3 teams from SP, 2 teams from NYP, 1 team from an ITE, and 2 teams from Junyuan Secondary school.

Quite surprising that Junyuan secondary school was the only secondary school that came. And none of the JCs came, including Hwachong and RI. Back in my Hwachong days I remember joining SP Chess Challenge but not this one. They say that they contacted every school and even called them personally. Well I don't really know the details and I'm not the organiser, so I can only guess that there must have been some kind of miscommunication somewhere... One most serious difficulty in organising an event...

It was nice to see Hwachong getting champion for both the Chinese Chess and International Chess team. Seriously, were our C-Chess and I-Chess teams so strong? A pity our Weiqi team wasn't here to clinch the champion as well. Not that they can definitely get champion though.

One thing I like about this competition is their venue. Like this picture above they have a very big space outside their competition area with the respective boards where the players can rest or review their games in between rounds. This is really a good idea to prevent the players who finished their games from crowding around the competition area and disturbing other players who are still in the middle of their games.

They didn't specifically say "please get out of the competition area once your games are done", but having such an area set-up will reduce the likelihood of players remaining in the competition hall. Usually most of the international competitions will have this area, but many local competitions I went didn't have this. I think this is one area to improve.

One thing I didn't like was the fact that they didn't announce the rules at the start of the event. I know there are 3 different games going on so it may be troublesome to announce the rules, but I still think it is necessary. Just because the rules are written very clearly in the invitations doesn't mean there's no need to announce them on the day of the competition itself. I think it is better to do so because it serves as a reminder to the participants. It is even more important in this kind of team events. In fact, many games had problems because they didn't follow the rules regarding the seating of the players. Well, just stating my opinions.

On the overall, it was really a nice event that was well organised. I can see that the people from the 3 different board games really cooperating with each other nicely and getting things done quickly. Jinkai(overall IC?) also did a great job in managing the teams.

If possible I would like to join them again. (Also for the money :p)

P.S. As for my personal updates, will post them on a later date.