I've been somewhat nervous about the upcoming tournament in Oulu, so I've not written much this past week. I've played a couple of pretty interesting games, and also a couple of very embarrassing ones. I think I will leave it to those who are interested to try and check them out theirselves. This time.
Now, I will use this space just for talking.
The trip to Oulu
I recall I already wrote that the trip from where I live to Oulu is going to be over 500 km. But I decided to add a map here for those of you who love maps. ;) So basically it's almost a 7 hour trip one way by car:
And I will be taking the bus. I must first wake up tomorrow morning at 1:30, take a shower, eat something and then take a walk some three kilometers to the bus station and take the 3:15 bus to Oulu. I'll be arriving Oulu at 10:55. So it's about 8 hours sitting in a bus. I guess that'll be somewhat boring. I hope I can pass the time somehow. :)
Anxiety
My stomach has been acting up, butterflies. I didn't really know I could get so anxious about something, but looks as if it is possible, after all this is the very first real-world face-to-face tournament I'm going to, not just some pixels on the screen and a faint notion that there's someone on the other side of the earth playing against me. (That's titillating too I guess.)
There was a party yesterday evening, where all the people in this building I live in were invited to have a barbeque on the yard. So being there with my neighbors, having a cool can of beer and eating sausages, easing a little tension I told them I could show them Go and how it's played, if there were people interested. And surely I found some of them were. So I laid down the foundations for a future get-together with teaching gobans included. But as we continued on towards the night, to easing up my anxiety I might have taken one two many of them appetizers (beer mostly) and got a bit drunk. So after I got home, I played a game of Drunken Go... I would say it was interesting, if it weren't so damn embarrassing. So I'm not going into any details, except that I messed up at the end count. It was pretty awful, I don't think I'm ever going to play "under influence" again.
So hopefully the anxiety will ease up before the tournament starts. :)
Something positive
It is a cool thing, that whenever I tell people about my ambitions and ideas about setting up and founding a go salon or café, they are mostly positive about it, and if they work in the field (cafés and restaurants) they genuinely offer to help me with it. An offer which I still have to politely decline to, but I will keep in mind who have been kind enough to do so, if and when I do need help with the project. But now it seems a bit too distant, since the latest course applications (for building up any qualifications for having a café of my own) I sent came back negative. But I will try sending them out again, and again, until I succeed.
Thanks for the attention. I will now start practicing some tsumego in preparation for the games this weekend. See ya! ^^ /gg
European Go Congress, Toulouse, arrival.
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I wrote the last entry five days before it was published, and in hindsight
I would have done it differently. It sounded pessimistically upbeat, but
when th...
14 hours ago
hey good luck in your tournament!, be sure to take some pictures and try to show me your kifu is possible!
ReplyDeletecheers
Xinwen