So I got there in Guam, and with skipping a bit (don’t worry, we’ll get to everything), it turns out that two players from Taiwan are participating! Well they just had gotten married. I kind of half knew Elsa, although we had hardly ever talked in seven years of course, and her kind of newly wed husband who was apparently being a practicing doctor living in Australia. I didn’t even know she had gotten married and all that, but at the same time that’s not important. Anyway, they were going to participate in Guam as well, and I’ll share some little stories.
But first things first. Yes so in Guam I heard at some point that I was supposed to be ‘hard to approach’ (and not ‘hard to communicate with’ as I said in real life a week ago to someone). And the guy was like ‘doesn’t seem so at all!’. I was amazed. So let’s delve into this insanely complicated question <rolls eyes>.
First of all, and as was mentioned before. This was getting more and more alarming. People really were behind my back doing all kind of shit, and the only thing they were aiming for and were achieving was destruction of my life. And this was being planned and executed on large scales. As much as things weren’t alarming enough yet (which they were), this was becoming even more alarming.
But let’s get back to the approachability question. So this was Elsa, sister of the ‘big boss’, of whom she would utter some word, but that for later. This people categorically refused to talk to me. The closest we got, apart from big brother uttering in agony that he had analyzed my games, whined about the girlfriends that I didn’t have
You bring a different girl to every tournament don’t you?
In reality he has only seen two over there years, who were my real girlfriends at the time, but check out your own program and you understand what these freaks obsess about 24/7, and of course freezing my Taiwanese rating forever so no one could see how much stronger I actually was than them. The only time I talked to them was when I passed them by sometimes while they were analyzing, and sometimes I would suggest a move, after which they would collectively just look at the move (fair enough), and never utter a word to me.
But to give another example: After the final real tournament that I played (April 2009) where I got handed a reglementary 0, got people literally trying to disturb me during games, and had to play a 100% cheater and in the end didn’t win because of these ‘disturbances’. They must have partied the whole night celebrating the epic success of collective cheating I tell ya. Me myself was having a very frustrated drink with a Canadian dude called Bob that night, who during my second year in Taiwan had looked up the number of my then girlfriend in my phone and called her. He also told me that Joe must be very smart because he came from abroad and had to learn Chinese just like I had to (LOL). Hey these egos are big man. To be fair, he did mention the insanity of not winning a tournament because of a reglementary zero. (The arbiter in question was making a whole drama of it saying ‘that she was only doing her job’ and yelling and screaming, while I just sat there being used to these freaks.) But 無論如何 welcome to the chess world! These are your friends 🙂 And yeah, you got your information from them.
I presume you are rich people, because just wait.
Anyway so during that evening Bob told me that Elsa and Joe (the guys name) were actually from Brazil! Yeah in the five years that we’ve known each other they weren’t too bothered to ever tell me that they were actually foreign oversees Chinese. I had no clue. I guess that’s because I’m hard to approach. During these five years I had actually visited their chess club every now and then to give a simul to the kids, it was mostly on sundays anyway, and I was bored. Normally they’ll be grateful if you show up and give a simul (especially when you that for free, because literally everything is commotized here, so also chess simuls). To me it was no big deal; killing a bunch of beginners is a good waste of an hour or two. Some of those kids are strange already when they are very young, they can get really angry (not even sad, but angry) at you for not winning a game. Probably rich kids in good schools with good grades who can’t stand losing to someone much stronger, but it’s weird. Okay, just beat me then, right instead of being angry. They didn’t get stronger though (we’re talking around and about 15-20 years ago).
So I’d been there many times, also at the lousy tournaments, both from the South and when I lived in the North. And they said I was hard to approach? They even told my (former) friends in the Netherlands that I was coaching the Taiwanese national team while in reality I wasn’t and never had or have.
When I just arrived to Taiwan I had already quit chess, and out of curiosity just visited them. I had no plans of playing nor coaching. However after a while I offered them that ‘if they had one or two talented players’ I’d be willing to coach them. I was asked for my hourly rate, to which I had no idea to reply and in the end just said ‘dunno, 800NT or so’, and never heard back.
I later learned that the truth was that these freaks asked much higher rates for tutoring, and yeah, it so happened that I was a fair amount stronger of course. It must have been somewhat awkard.
It makes you wonder: Am I that hard to approach or did they simply not want a non-titled student with no official credentials showing that they were actually a bunch of weaklings and were telling each other very big stories behing my back and acting on them as well?
Maybe, just maybe, that was the case, no?
Because out of everything you can say a lot, but really, not that I’m hard to approach. They just absolutely did not want to.
And to the 婷s of this world, March 2009 right? I don’t gamble, so no poker with money. However, your chess freaks didn’t make me want to join your poker freaks even more so to say. So the work you put into it was impressive, but actually a complete waste if you had done it for that purpose.
Which, to be honest, you should have known. It wasn’t your first day in Taiwan, and as far as I understand neither was it your last.
I heard rumors you wanted a little reminder of what you actually did instead of what you’ve been telling everyone. No problem, there’s a lot more to come.
If I were you folk I’d start preparing very important medical-scientific reasons to just get a decade plus of torture in, and have everything covered up for as long as possible!
