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| Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 | | 7:36 am |
Written Friday Morning
I woke up fairly late yesterday, but still before Bota, who had stayed up until 6 playing video games. After I took a bath and checked my email he took me into town to show me some sites and some game stores. The first store was pretty small and just had some kids playing Yu Gi Oh in the back. The second looked a little better, although it had a worse board game selection, and had a bunch of people playing standard. One of them recognized me and told his friend that I was on the team that won Worlds last year. His friend asked me about his deck. The store had a poster that I had on my wall in middle and high school and was playing Green Day, which is the music I associate most with playing Magic in middle school. After that store it was time for Bota to go to work. So I went with him and watched the pizza guys work some more. I stole a few pieces of freshly roasted zucchini and Bota gave me a wedge of fresh buffalo mozzarella. That was awesome. He also told me about a dessert that was sitting put that looked like an apple tart. Well, he didn't know the details of how it was made, so he had to ask the waitress and translate. Apples cooked in butter and sugar are covered in a layered pastry made by folding dough over butter. After that's baked it's flipped over. After hanging around for awhile a couple of his friends came over for dinner. They were brothers who work as djs together and spoke pretty good English. I had a pizza with buffalo mozzarella, tomatoes, zucchini, garlic, and a soft creamy cheese. It was a little too liquidy. That's what o get for making up my own pizza rather than having one from the menu. Having heard about the tart, i had to try it, so I split a piece with Bota. It was served with cream and extremely soft and awesome. A girl who'd been asking Bota to hang out with her for the last few days, but only while he was at work, came over with an American who was with her and we had drinks. After the restaurant closed, the girl dropped of the American and met Bota and me at some bar. It was pretty boring for me. Lots of Italian. Before too long the girl went home and Bota and I went to a goth club, where several of the girls who saw Bota immediately smiled and jumped on him. He's very popular. About half of the girls there had fake blood on their chins, but it was the kind of place where I'm not actually sure if there was a specific vampire theme that night or not. Some of the girls who were Bota's friends went to dance and I gave him my coat and sweater and joined them. They seemed happy about my enthusiasm and danced with me. After I got tired enough that I had to take a break I went to the bar. A girl approached me and asked if I was here by myself. It should be noted that Bota said Italian girls will never approach you, but I guess goth clubs are often the exception to such cultural norms. I tried to answer her, but she couldn't really hear/understand me. I took her outside, where she still couldn't understand me, and eventually I gave up and conducted my half if the conversation via iPhone, which I've become reasonably adept at typing on (this entry is currently being written on my phone). I explained about how and why I was stuck in Italy for a week and how I'd taken the train from Rome to stay with Bota. At this point she got excited and said, "Bota! I know Bota!" I had anticipated this reaction, of course. Then she asked were he was and I pointed and we went to sit with him and another girl he was talking to. Somewhere in our conversation she mentioned that bot many people were there that night because the was a Depeche Mode concert in town. Anyway, we were outside and I still didn't have my coat back, so I went back to dance some more. Soon the girl I was dancing with was leaving and it was about time for us to go. She kissed me on her way out and we went to another club. This one was much more crowded and less friendly. It was pretty boring, but at least there was dancing. Bota had picked up an ex of his and the previous place who came with us. They were kissing, so I gave them some space and danced alone for awhile. Eventually Bota said it was time to go and his ex came home with him, so I wasn't able to use his computer before bed. I woke up sick in the morning--I guess Bota had managed to give me a bit too much to drink, especially combined with the large dinner and fact that I haven't been in perfect health. I felt a bit better the second time I woke up, in the afternoon. It's now just after 7:00pm on Friday and I think we're about to go out, but I'm not sure exactly what the plans are. I hope it's something warm and laid back. I'd like to play some Magic I think. I'm also not really up to eating a lot. This won't get posted until I find Internet, email it to myself, and then use Bota's computer to edit and post it. | | Friday, November 27th, 2009 | | 5:30 pm |
My Life is Pain
(Written on Wednesday) I've had a sore throat the entire time I've been in Europe because I ate too much of my mom's excellent carrot cake the day before I left. I really need to learn to be moderate about sugar, it never ends well for me. This in itself clearly isn't something to complain about now, since it's been this way for over a week. I'm at Bota's house in Turin now. His family owns a restaurant. Before I came he warned me that he would have to work at the restaurant every night. Tonight, that meant that I had to go with him to eat dinner with him and three gamer friends of his. I had two pizzas. The first had roasted peppers, eggplant, artichoke, and mushroom, the second had a thing like spinach cooked in oil and lemon, garlic, tomato, and mushroom. These were on the house. Then we got to the painful part. He asked if I wanted dessert and I had to say I was trying to avoid sugar because of my throat, so he offered me fresh pineapple, which I accepted. MEANWHILE, his friends got crem brûlée, tirimisu, and marron glacé, which I'd never seen before. For anyone else who was unaware, you're missing out. Chestnuts soaked/boiled in syrup for 3 days and served with whipped cream. Oh, and then one of them went in for a chocolate cake, reportedly made of only chocolate and butter. And I had to just eat pineapple (and try bites of other things). Pain! Ok, it was pretty sweet. But seriously, my throat hurts, so there is constant pain involved. Incidentally, given that when I got in, Bota gave me a plate of gnocchi with cheese saw and some pakora-like fried egg and vegetable thing and a couple clementines, I've eaten much more than I usually do today. Fat. At least I spent the last few days walking and not eating much. Tomorrow Bota's taking me to bars and clubs with music and dancing. He said something about a fetish night. He also mentioned how expensive drinks are in Europe, but mitigated that by pointing out that, because he's friends with most of the owners, we'll be drinking for less or nothing. Friday and/or Saturday they want to take me to the game store to play Magic. They're excited to see me beat people while acting like I don't know what I'm doing--I might disappoint, I'm really bad at acting like that. Have I mentioned how much it sucks to be stuck in Europe and how much I want to be home? You may have lost track, but this post is still about pain. Honestly, I really miss Lex and I'm sad that I can't see my family for Thanksgiving, but, as I told Bota, while it's traditional to celebrate Thanksgiving with close friends and family, he's done an excellent job of reminding me how much I have to be thankful for by taking me in this trip. | | Thursday, November 26th, 2009 | | 3:17 pm |
Happy Thanksgiving from Italy, Americans. I've written about yesterday on my phone. It will be posted after I find a wireless connection. I'm using Bota's computer now. He's been extremely hospitable. I'm thankful for all the people I've me in my travels and my family, who has allowed me to live such a life, as well as the people who are closer to me who always give me something to look forward to returning home to. | | Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 | | 12:18 am |
Rome
Worlds is over, I did terribly. Plans got messed up, Airlines were unhelpful, and I'm stuck in Italy until next week, wishing I was home. Today I went to the airport early in the morning to try to fly home, failed, and took the train back into the city, where I began the very long process of wandering around looking for food, internet, and a hostel. At one point I sat on a sidewalk because there was a random wireless signal, and someone approached me with a map and started asking for help in a language I didn't speak. I knew where we were on the map of Rome though, so I tried to help him. At some point when I couldn't figure out what he wanted, I turned my head and saw that my suitcase was gone. I got up immediately and went to the corner to look for it. I saw someone walking away with it halfway down the street and ran to catch him. Luckily for me, the street was busy, so he didn'r hear me coming, and the suitcase was heavy, so he couldn't move fast. When I caught up to him he immediately let it go and just kept walking, quickly enough that I couldn't keep up with him if I kept my suitcase, as though nothing had happened. He and his friend tried a gambit and barely missed, and neither of them were punished for it at all. It would have been really devastating for me to have lost it, and barely helped either of them, which I suspect is usually the case with stolen suitcases, which makes stealing suitcases particularly cruel. Anyway, I felt lucky to have saved my suitcase, as I think my odds of noticing before he got out of sight were actually pretty bad. My suitcase doesnºt fit in the locker in the Hostel I'm at now, but at least I have my laptop and cards locked up. Tomorrow or the next day I think I'm taking a train to Turin to stay with a friend for the rest of the week. | | Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 | | 9:44 am |
Thoughts on the plane home from Paris.
I'm on the plane on the way home from Paris. It was an interesting trip. I knew before I decided to go that GP Paris would have around 2,000 players, and that my odds of winning anything ($250) were very low (top 64). I definitely didn't go because I thought there was a reasonable chance I'd make money. I just wanted to hive myself the best chance I could to do well at Magic this year. ( Thoughts about Magic--Does not require knowing Magic to understand )Qatar, of course, was purely sightseeing/vacationing. We had a chance to do it at no cost given the rest of our travel plans, and decided we wouldn't have much occasion to see the Middle East. (I have a picture on my phone of a group of people with a group of camels in the desert.) Paris was business, which is odd, given how terrible the business proposition was, particularly given that it's Paris and I've never been there before. It turned out that the GP wasn't even in Paris, it was at Euro Disney, and given that I was only there Friday afternoon, Saturday, and Sunday, it looked like I might not even see Paris. One could make a reasonable argument, even to me, that if I was only going to be in Paris for one weekend, given the size of the GP, that I'd be better of going to Paris than playing in the tournament. But then, why was now the time I came? I guess because it's when I had someone to travel with and people to stay with. But, of course, this is not how I saw it. It wouldn't be true to myself to choose sightseeing over a GP, especially this year, and so I played in the GP. Sometimes, while playing in a tournament, I can tell that I'm just not in it. I'm not awake, I don't have the energy or focus, I'm not playing my best, I'm not making good decisions, I'm not going to win--this is too hard, there are too many people. When this happens, it is important to be able to take a break and snap out of it. Unfortunately, the natural reaction is, "Yeah, I'm really out of it today, I'm not going to be able to win, I should just give up," which is not the reaction I want at all. I've understood for years that how well I do is tied very closely to my confidence. It was just too strong to fight this weekend. So I didn't make day two. Remember a couple paragraphs up when I was talking about Worlds? How it's fairly important, I think might do well, and I won't have enough time to prepare? So we found ourselves on Sunday, not in day two, and not sure if we should test or sightsee. Seriously, we have no time to prepare. Gau's girl is going to be visiting him this week, there's a GP this weekend, and then we fly to Rome. That's it. So we woke up at 6am, as we'd been doing, naturally--thanks, jetlag--and decided to discuss our plans over breakfast--Gau, Juza, and I. Juza felt that it was too cold, he wasn't feeling well, and he'd been to Paris. He wasn't going. Gau was torn, and felt that what we did should be up to me, since I was the one who hadn't seen Paris. There was some specific testing j was curious about, but I often can't stand to do too much in a row, so I said I wanted to start by testing and then think about going later--I didn't want to feel too rushed--after all, it was only 7:00am. Gau seemed to think this was a trap, a way to say no without saying no, as we'd just run out of time. Given that getting to Paris would take an hour, he asked when the latest we could go was. I answered 2:00pm conservatively. We debated whether that was enough time in Paris--he said that if we wanted to go to the Louvre, for instance, we would want to leave right away, and I explained that that's not really my thing anyway. I'd just want to wander around, see the city, take a lot of pictures, and eat some crepes--like Qatar but with crepes instead of falafel. So we went back to our room and the three of us played Magic online. Yep. That’s how I spend my roughly 70 hours in France. What? A little before 2:00, Gau asked if we were going, and added that he'd like to at this point. I said that would be fine, as I was getting kind of bored, but said I didn't want to be rushed; we had plenty of time. Gau looked up some places he wanted to go to to get something for his girl, and we finally got on the train to Paris at 3:00. If you're ever in or near Paris and want to wander around, there exists a day pass for the metro. I believe it's 15 Euros, but only about 6 if you're under 26. We had to get it just to get to Paris, but once we were there it was useful enough that it probably would have been best to buy anyway, so that was awesome. Incidentally, while I'm writing this, there's a man next to me on the plane doing a ton of paperwork with pen and paper. It seems so backwards that he's doing that by hand, and I'm using a computer (phone) to write a journal/letter. Generational divide. So, Paris. I took a ton of pictures, so I'll refer to them as I write this to make sure I don't forget anything. When I got above ground in Paris for the first time, the first thing I saw was a couple standing on a ledge above everyone kissing. How appropriate. Our first destination was the Arch De Triumph. It's actually just a giant, impressive roundabout, so we had to take a tunnel under the road around it to get there. It's pretty sweet; we took a bunch of pictures, and even bothered to set up pictures of both of us with it, which is rare for me. Usually I just take pictures of stuff. It feels less vain. It has been made clear to me that others might like me to be in pictures though, and honestly, pictures without people in them can be kind of boring. After that we walked down the street toward the Washington Monument-looking thing. We passed a break dancer and some people doing Capoeira. We went to the chocolate shop Gau's ex, the princess, to him to go to, but it was closed on Sundays. They had another location that Gau wanted to try, and I was fine with that, since I just wanted to wander, even though I figured they'd probably be closed. We walked through a park with some cool statues and a clever pond--it has a bunch of cymbals that looked kind of like lily pads that you're supposed to throw coins at to try to make them chime. So that got some of Gau's money. He even made me give him a coin to throw at it. A little grove, some palace looking things, another arch, and then we were at The Louvre. Wow. I had no idea that thing was so big. Very impressive. From there we took the metro a short distance to the chocolate shop--passing a street tap dancer--which turned out to be open. They had amazing looking tiny cakes. The largest of which could easily have been eaten by one or two people in one sitting, and it cost about $130. Gau bought 15 cookies for $33. We each bought one for ourselves. They were suitably impressive, honestly, but there's a reason that I mention that this place was recommended by a princess. In hindsight, I wish I'd picked up a box for Lex, but I didn't want to travel with it, and as Gau mentioned of his, it would be there worst ever to have it taken at customs. From there, crepes. Pretty good, but nowhere near as good as the place Netta took me to in London, (thanks, Netta!) so I was a little disappointed. I think it was made with a whole wheat flour, which others may have appreciated, but isn't really my thing. Next up was Notre Dame, which was also suitably impressive, and several more pictures were posed for. It was dark at this point, and we were still very tired, so we decided to quick from there. We went to the Eiffel Tower. I wasn't all that concerned about seeing that, since I felt like I got w reasonable idea of it from the 1/3rd size version in Prague. Ok, that was naive. If you ever have a chance to see something 3 times larger than a really big thing, you should probably do it--it's pretty impressive. By the Eiffel Tower we saw a couple playing with a tiny dog. I don't like dogs, so I don't know anything about them, but this thing was really impressive. It was about hand sized and extremely fast. It seemed to be able to move side to side as easily as forward, and generally seemed like it might have been the inspiration for the displacer beast/blink dog, as there definitely appeared to be some short range teleportation involved. It also never barked, making it officially the best fog ever--sorry dog owners. From there, an extremely short stop on Moulin Rouge, where I got a dessert crepe (chocolate/banana/coconut) to match Gau's earlier second crepe. At this point we were both very tired. We quickly dropped by what Gau described ax their Grand Central Station, but the building itself was being renovated, so nothing there looked all that impressive. And then we went home after a satisfying trip to Paris. It was nothing as exceptional as some trips (thanks, Nadja), but in some ways, that's exactly why it explains my grandmother's suggestion to travel whenever I can. Someday I hope to learn to talk to strangers though. As I really think it should be the random people who make a trip. | | Thursday, November 5th, 2009 | | 1:02 pm |
Qatar
I landed in Qatar this morning at 4:35am en route from Japan to Paris. We had a 26 hour layover in Qatar, and it was way too early to check into our hotel, so we rented a car and drove around. I took a ton of pictures while Gau drove. Qatar is a really weird city. It's a city becoming, as opposed to a city being. EVERYTHING is under construction. The city just isn't here yet. The big museum near where I'm staying opened in December 2008. There's a fort that's supposed to be one of the few historic sites here, but it's closed for renovations. There are cranes everywhere, and scaffolding on all the buildings. While we were driving around downtown, we couldn't find any shops or anything, just huge half finished towers. I commented that it looked like a city built by a small child playing with blocks--there were a lot of towers, but none of the other stuff that makes up a city. We went into a mall eventually to find food, and I was disappointed by the lack of local food, the lack of vegetarian food, and the fact that Qatar is pretty expensive (about like the US, so better than most of Europe, but not as good as I hoped it might be). After lunch we checked into our hotel, showered, and then got back into the car to go to the edge of civilization. Seriously. Gau wanted to drive to a beach that was just after all the roads stopped. So we drove to the end of the road, passed a bunch of oil refineries, passed the end of the road, passed some camels, and got to some sand dunes that cars were driving up and down (presumably just for fun) and a beach. The weather at the beach was surprisingly nice, and Gau went and waded in the water. Then we came back to our hotel, Gau showered, and we headed out for dinner. We arrived at 4:35 this morning. Before that we had a 12ish hour flight from Osaka. Before that I spent all day in an Airport after learning at 10am that my host had to leave his house a day earlier than he thought, and it was suddenly time for us to leave even though our flight was at 11:25pm. Before that, I went to sleep at 7:30am, thinking I wanted to get on European time. This is to say I was very tired and pretty cranky. Gau was in more or less the same situation. There was a fancy restaurant that he wanted to go to, which isn't really what I was looking for, but I was willing to check it out. On our way back to our hotel from our most recent trip we passed a vegetarian Indian place that looked awesome, but Gau's least favorite food is Indian, and he wants meat at every meal. There's no way he was going there, particularly since our last meal in Japan was Indian. So we went to the fancy place Gau wanted and looked at the menu. He thought it looked fine, I thought it looked overpriced and unexciting as far as its offerings for me, and I really didn't want to pay for its seaside candle-lit atmosphere when I just wanted to eat street food and experience Qatar at night. Gau said we could go somewhere else, but I had to lead the way. So I told him to go away from down town, back where our hotel was, where there were actual shops visible from the street. Eventually we found some things, but every restaurant was Indian--apparently we were staying in the Indian district without even knowing it. How lucky. Or it would have been, if I was with anyone but Gau. Without getting into details, because they don't really make any sense, we were both just cranky, we had a small disagrement, I got extremely frustrated, Gau wouldn't move without me telling him which direction to go, I didn't want to deal with it, and I just got out of the car in the middle of the road and walked away. No, I didn't know where I was. I walked to a hotel, asked directions to my hotel, walked there, checked the parking lot to see that Gau was already back, and went up to the room. He had just come back without eating. I stayed in the room for a bit to cool off before heading out by myself to find some food while Gau went to sleep. I was looking for vegetarian Indian if it was still open, but I also wanted something fast so I could get to sleep soon, and I didn't know where the place was. I got out of our hotel and started wandering. It wasn't promising. I think I guessed the wrong direction. There were little food stands all over on the way to the hotel, but I just wanted to get back to make sure I could find it. Now I was seeing nothing--a little fish stand, a place where the sign was in Arabic only and everyone inside was smoking long pipes or hookas or something (I should mention that we were happy to learn when we arrived that everyone we encountered spoke English and almost everything was written in both languages. It seemed to be a truly bilingual city). I walked a ways down in a couple directions without really seeing anything, and eventually I went into a little place called the Palastine Cafeteria (On Jabar Bin Hamad Road at Shanem Al-Kadeem if you're ever in Qatar). Like other little places I'd stopped in, there was no menu, just a window with some people making food. Above the window there was a piece of paper with some 3s and some 8s next to some Arabic writing ($1=3.5-3.65rm, local money). I asked if they had an Enlish menu and the guy pointed to a man at a desk behind me with a calculator and some pads of paper. I turned and asked him if he had an English menu. He said, "No menu, what do you want?" and I just kind of paused. He said, "Do you know falafel?" DING! In the mall I had been able to find hummus, tabouleh, baba ganoush (however all that stuff is spelled), but no Falafel. I was starting to think maybe they didn't have that particular "middle eastern" item here. "Yes, I'd like one falafel sandwich and water--do you take USD?" "no" "I'm sorry, I don't have local money, card?" After some hesitation and saying some things I didn't really understand, he eventually asked for $1 and wrote a note in Arabic that I can only assume told the cook to make me a falafel sandwich and handed it to me. $1? How did that happen. Seriously, in the mall a scoop of ice cream was over $3. An appetizer at the place Gau wanted to eat was $10--This country wasn't that cheap. Then again, while I was walking, I did notice pants at a clothing store that were 20rm--I can only conclude that everything costs dramatically more downtown. (When Gau and I stopped in an Indian restaurant while we were looking for a place before we realized that it was Indian and asked to see a menu, I noticed that the prices looked like what I'd expect things to cost in USD in America, so I was pretty sad not to be able to eat there at the time). Anyway, I ate the sandwich, then realized that I had asked for water and it wasn't on my note and I had only paid $1, so I didn't really feel like trying to take it from them. Instead I took out $2 and a bottle of water from their frig of drinks, held up the water and the money and asked if I could have the water and another sandwich for the $2, adding that the sandwich was very good. I should described the sandwich at this point--pita with a single falafal ball, which was crushed and spread across the bread, then a pair of tongs shove in a bunch of french fries and some roasted eggplant, then some cucumber slices are thrown in on top. There's oil, hot sauce, and tahini on the tables. He said it would be $1, and I said no, really, it was very good, I insist, take both, and he fought me a bit, but eventually I managed to pay him $3 for 2 falafel sandwiches and a bottle of water. While I was eating it they brought me some homemade pickles, pickled carrot, and pickled pepper. I guess the felt bad about taking my extra dollar. Before I left I thanked the man and told him if I wasn't leaving tomorrow morning I'd be back every day and asked for his address so I could recommend the place to other people. He didn't understood me, but he directed me to someone else there who did, and who gave me the information above. Thanks for saving my night from food related frustration Palastine Cafeteria. Tomorrow I wake up a little before 4am to eat breakfast, return our rented car at 5:30, and get on out 7:55 flight to Paris. | | Friday, October 30th, 2009 | | 6:27 am |
Kitakyushu
Wandered around a lot today. Went to a castle, went inside, inside was much more like a little museum than a castle, which was kind of disappointing. Took tons of pictures, then played on the greatest piece of playground equipment I've ever seen. It was full of little kids, so playing on it seemed kind of awkward, but it was worth it. Pictures exist on Facebook. | | Thursday, October 29th, 2009 | | 7:29 am |
Thursday, October 29, 2009 4:30pm, Tokyo:
Sitting on the floor of the Tokyo/Narita Airport while my phone charges. I could be waiting for Gau, whose flight lands in half an hour, but given that he has to clear customs and find me after that, and that my next flight leaves in less than an hour and a half and I still have to go through security, I probably don’t actually have time to wait for him safely. I’m not really sure what I’m writing right now. I assume I’ll show someone eventually, but I don’t know who or where, so it’s hard to know exactly what to say. I think I just want to try writing what’s on my mind for awhile, and we’ll see what I do with it later. I haven’t updated my lj in a long time, so I think this will most likely be for that. Last night—well, Tuesday night, it’s Thursday in Japan now, but I haven’t really had a Wednesday night—I was at my mom’s and I saw my sister and her best friend while we were growing up, our next door neighbor, Jessica. Dinner was excellent. I should try to have squash in tortillas more often. Seeing people was good, catching up with people, hearing how different all of our lives are when we all grew up in the same time and place. Jessica has become an extremely conservative Jew, and is dating someone she was arranged to date by a religious organization of some kind. They never touch each other, not even something like a hug or handshake. He even tries not to sit next to her. Back to food, she made an excellent pumpkin pie from a pumpkin she got at the farmer’s market. He manages a kosher restaurant. These things are not particularly related. Last weekend I was in Tampa for a GP. Gau won, which is awesome, but I failed to make day two, which was pretty disappointing. I really hope I can do well at one of these last three GPs this year. On the way back from Tampa, I met someone who’s been trying to make a living writing 8 hours a day, doing whatever he can find online that pays, writing for like 5 different websites. I asked him for the details of what he writes, who he writes for, and how it all works. He gave me a bunch of websites and descriptions. A lot of it sounded pretty interesting, and I have ideas for a lot of projects I’d like to try in December, when I’m less busy with Magic. It’s interesting that I might accidentally find myself becoming a professional writer. I certainly never imagined that’s what I’d be, even in college. I remember being glad to finish college because I wouldn’t have to write a paper again. Some of the writing he does is ghostwriting, which essentially sounds like writing papers for money—and it actually sounds pretty fun. I’ve been travelling a lot. Seriously. I left Madison October 8th to fly to Austin. I stayed there until the 19th, when I drove with bk to Atlanta, where we hung out until the 23rd, when we went to Tampa. I fly back to Madison on the 26th, drove to Chicago the 27th, flew to Japan the 28th. That’s where I am now. On November 4th I’ll fly to Doha, Qatar. After a day there I’ll fly to Paris, and on the 9th I’ll fly back to Chicago, arriving Monday at 2:45pm (note that time, mom, and Lex, I suppose..) From there I’ll drive to Madison where I’ll get to hang out at home and see Lex until the 13th, when I’ll drive to Minneapolis. After that weekend I’ll fly to Rome, where I’ll play in Worlds on the weekend of the 21st. On the 3rd I’ll leave Rome, most likely for Turkey, and I think I’ll be back to Madison and “done traveling” for the year. I put it in quotes because I don’t think it’s particularly true. It’s extremely likely that I’ll go to Las Vegas the first weekend of December for a WoW Minis tournament (I’ve never been to Vegas, btw), and Wizards will publish the GP Schedule for next year on November 1st, and that’s really when I’ll start to know the future of my travel plans. I don’t know where I’m sleeping tonight. That’s what I was hoping to wait for Gau to find out. I don’t actually know where I’m staying in Japan at all, but I’m hoping that it’s with Shuhei Nakamura, a friend from Japan who I met playing Magic from Sunday or Monday until I leave on Wednesday. So I’ve been pretty busy, and I’m getting worried about having time to prepare for Worlds during all that travel. That’s another tournament I’d really like to do well at. I think I’m better at playing known formats than unknown formats, which makes Worlds my best PT, in theory, since it’s a bunch of somewhat explored formats, rather than formats we’ve never played before. It’s important not to stake too much happiness on doing well in tournaments though, that’s probably the most important lesson to master if I’m going to keep this up. Travel has been pretty awesome this year. I’ve gotten to know a lot of great people and seen some really cool places, and it’s always the things I could never predict that are most impressive. I’ve still been writing Nadja, the Russian girl I met in Prague, and that’s been very enjoyable. Barcelona was really impressive, both in terms of the atmosphere on the streets and the historic sites themselves. I never would have guessed that that would have been the city to impress me most. I feel like I’ve done much better than my grandmother possibly could have expected at traveling as much as possible when she suggested it to me a few years ago. It means a lot to me to be fulfilling her wishes for me, and it’s honestly significant in keeping me going on all this, knowing that however the tournaments go, I’m doing what my family wants, honoring their wishes, and impressing, rather them rather than disappointing them in my failure to grow up, get a job, and live a normal life. At this point, it’s 5:00, and my flight leaves in 55 minutes, so I need to decide if I want to try to wait a few minutes and hope to find Gau (since I know I can trust him to get through immigration and customs as quickly as possible) or if I need to start finding my next flight. | | Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 | | 3:22 am |
| | Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 | | 12:26 am |
Very short update because I desperately need to shower and then sleep. Got into Prague, spent 2 hours walking around with my suitcase trying to find the hotel that I knew to be 5 minutes from my point of origin, partially due to having an incorrect address from google. Met up with the Japanese players, who let me shower, which was awesome, and then Martin Juza took us on a tour of Prague, during which we slowly met up with more friends and I took around 70 pictures. All of Prague is old pretty buildings. I started by just stopping in random streets and taking pictures in every direction. This made the tour or Prague somewhat less impressive as the best buildings aren't that much better than the random buildings. We went to a famous Square with a statue of some Saint/King who's on the 20 Crown coin, a famous bridge, the castle and adjacent cathedral, and a 1/3rd sized Eiffel tower on top of a hill. I also saw their national theater or something and some random other stuff. After the tour we drafted. There was a plan to go out to bars or clubs, but that didn't work out. Maybe tomorrow. | | Sunday, August 30th, 2009 | | 9:08 am |
Gau top 8'd the GP. Magic continued to go terribly for me. We went out for dinner and I used restaurant pointing guide to say "no beef, pork, chicken, fish, or shellfish, yes, vegetables, milk, egg, mushroom" and then told the waiter to bring me whatever he wanted for 1000 yen ($11) He brought me a bowl of udon noodles with weird shriveled thin things on them, like onion skin or rice paper or something. I moved my chopsticks in to pick up a bite and saw something move and pulled my chopsticks back in shock. I looked at my bowl and noticed that the things were all wiggling slowly. I sat and stared and waited for them to slow down, figuring that maybe it was an effect like sizzling from a heat transfer. That wasn't happening, they just kept shifting slowly. I complained that as a vegetarian, I've never had to deal with the possibility that my food would be moving under its own power, and I had no idea what was going on. I tried to get a waiter's attention and kept watching. At some point a hunk wiggled enough to knock itself down. Eventually I just gave up and decided to put a piece in my mouth. It didn't really chew. It felt kind of like trying to eat melted plastic, and I took it out of my mouth and set it aside, determined to ask a waiter about it. We got the waiter in and took out a book with pictures of common Japanese foods and asked him to point to what it was made of. It took him a long time to find something like it (the restaurant was basically empty and the waiter was very patient and helpful, considering he spoke almost no english). It turns out I had been served noodles with flakes of fish (specifically bonito) skin. So much for no fish. I took out my piece of paper again, pointed to fish, and said no. He took it back and brought me something else. The explanation of what the thing was made it sound possible that the word for skin, or fish skin or something might sound like "no", which may have contributed to the confusion, I'm not entirely clear on that part. Tomorrow I train back to Tokyo and fly to Chicago. I'll be in Chicago from 6:25 until Tuesday around noon. I'll be in Huston before that. Lex, what's your schedule like tomorrow? When should I try to call you? I think I get to Huston around 2. | | Saturday, August 29th, 2009 | | 11:28 am |
If anyone happens to know how to request a special meal at continental.com that would be great. I can find a list of the meals they offer, but can't find anywhere to actually tell them to give me vegetarian food. It's very frustrating. | | 10:29 am |
GP Niigata
Sometimes in Magic everything goes wrong. I opened a really bad pool. After talking to several extremely good players, I'm pretty sure I registered my deck within 1-2 cards of the best deck available to me. I did not play any close or interesting games. My draws were generally terrible and often involved mulligans, when I won I curved out and my opponent wasn't really in it, but it never felt like that should consistently happen, I just got lucky at the same time they got unlucky a few times, but basically, I just opened one of those pools that can't realistically expect to make day 2, and didn't. Then I did a money draft with 5 Japanese players and drafted one of the worst decks I've drafted (I only really had 19 playables) and somehow managed to 2-1 and out team won the draft, so that was fun. I guess the bright side of today is that it's the first time I've spent with Olivier Ruel (3rd, soon to be 2nd in lifetime pro points in Magic), and getting to know more pros is always nice. | | Thursday, August 27th, 2009 | | 9:39 am |
Japan
I'm still on an extended trip away from Lex, so that means lots of updates. I'm currently in Japan. I'd like to tell you what city, but I don't remember the name. I think it's pretty small. It's between Tokyo and Niigata and known for things like mountains and hot springs. Hot springs, for those who, like me, were unacquainted, are natural places where hot water comes out of the ground because Japan is volcanic in nature. People build structures around these hot springs with pools/baths so they can charge people to use them. The way it works is that you go to a changing room, take off your clothes, wash yourself, then go to the hot springs naked to relax. Clothes are not allowed in the hot spring bath. Then it's just a natural hot tub with new water constantly flowing in, and you sit in it outside, in this case, on a mountain/hillside. When I say, "in this case" that is to indicate that Gau and I hung out at one for the last few hours. Getting out of the hot bath, wrapping a towel around yourself, and sitting in the mountain breeze chatting feels really good, and has a pretty nice view. We're currently staying at a bizarre traditional Japanese style in. We seem to be the only people staying here tonight, but maybe there's another room of people that I haven't seen. I'll check the door.. Based on the 5 pairs of shoes at the door that aren't ours, I would say at most 4 other guests plus the owner's sandals. (This being traditional Japanese style, you have to leave your shoes at the door). This means we get a lot of attention. Let me back up and get to this part of the story in chronological order. Monday after the GP I met up with a group of Czech players and wandered around the mall for the afternoon, hung out in the apartment they were renting for the weekend in the evening, and then headed to the night market/strip club/red light distract at night, where we met up with some English guys. Some hooking may have occurred, but personally, I spent my money on a falafel. The next day I found out that the mall I'd been at all along had a food court area that had a stall that only served vegetarian food and had a variety of interesting curries available for ONE USD each. Man I wish I'd found that place before my last meal in Bangkok. Then I went to the airport very early relative to my flight because it was when the guys I was with were going (for a much earlier flight) and hung out with them for awhile then killed time at the airport. Eventually I flew to Japan. I'd arranged to meet Saito at a station in Tokyo near his house at noon, so I took slow trains and got there two hours early and hung out and waited. He and Gau arrived on time and we went back to his house and I took a shower. While I was showering he arranged a draft. Turns out Tokyo is one of those few cities in the world with more good players than Madison (not surprising), and a Saito draft is something like a Finkel draft. This is to say that during this random afternoon, he was able to find us an 8 man, and everyone in the draft other than us (Gau and me) and one other guy (who I think had the best record on the day) had won a PT (Saito and two of the others had all won only the same PT though, PT Charleston, a team PT). The point is, the draft was entirely very good players. When you're drafting with the same people in every draft, you can get a lot of drafts in very quickly, because you don't need to wait for someone between every draft, and we got three drafts in that afternoon before dinner. Saito took us to a fairly traditional Japanese dinner. We ate in a room upstairs where there were no waiters or other customers and we sat on pillows on the floor at a low table. Everyone but me shared everything and when they wanted stuff they just yelled down the stairs at the waiter. After dinner, everyone went home and we went to sleep pretty early. Today, Gau and I still didn't have any accommodations or travel arrangements for the rest of our time in Japan, so we took a train to the central tourist information center for Japan in Tokyo to get that worked out, and find something interesting to do today. We each bought a $200 pass that lets us travel as much as we want on any 4 total days over the next month and used the first day to get half way to Niigata to the town I'm in now. The lady at the tourist information center booked us a hotel here and a hotel in Niigata. She also told us that we should call this hotel when we were getting on the train and they would pick us up a the station and take us here. She also said that we could order breakfast there for about $5-8, but they had to known in advance to get the ingredients. So we took the super fast train and got here and there was an old lady who spoke reasonable English waiting to take us to our hotel. When we got there she showed us around (we didn't see any signs of anyone else--staff or patrons) anywhere, and she took us up to our room (which was ocmpletely empty except for a small table in the middle and a floor of straw mats--this being a traditional Japanese style hotel, our beds were futons that were folded up on a shelf) and she brought us some cold water and some glasses while we discussed what we wanted to do. We told her we were going to get some dinner and got to a hot spring and asked if she could recommend anything nearby. So she asked us what we wanted to eat, drove us to a restaurant/hot sping place, came in with us, helped us order our food, left, and told us to call her when we wanted to come back. When we got back, she made sure we were all settled and had everything we needed and she went to sleep. Incidentally, we ordered breakfast, since it was clear she'd be cooking and she understood my dietary restrictions, so I guess we get to wake up to a home cooked Japanese meal tomorrow. Then we get to wander around a pretty area with some mountains and stuff, and take then train the rest of the way to Niigata. All told, I'm surprisingly happy with this side trip. Also, the power on my computer is running out (I'm in the lobby because they don't have wireless internet, but I'm on my laptop because their computer is in Japanese, and it's not plugged in because, while outlets in Japanese are the same style as in America (luckily) the outlets here are all only 2 prong--The lady here dug around to find us an adapter, but Gau is using it up in his room to watch stuff on his computer while I use the internet down here) so I should probably get this posted. Lex, when you read this, I miss you, and I love you, and I'm sad that I haven't gotten to talk to you in awhile, but for some reason I only seem to be able to get on when it's early in the morning there or when you're at class or something like that. | | Sunday, August 23rd, 2009 | | 10:44 am |
Day 2 of the GP went very badly. I liked both of my decks, but in the first draft I lost every die roll and mulled twice every round. Basically I just hit an extremely long run of bad luck. My plays weren't perfect throughout, and I probably tilted a bit, but I just couldn't draw a reasonable hand for some reason. I 2-0-1'd my next draft to finish 42nd, so at least I got a point for my troubles and I continue to keep up with my plan. After the GP I played some Dominion with some Japanese players and then went out to dinner, where the winning of the GP picked up the bill for myself and every Japanese player at the GP, then we 9 player rock-papper-scissors'd for sundaes and I was not the loser. Then I took a cab home. I bought a shirt (because I have no clean shirts) without doing anything at all to make sure it fits (because I'm retarded and/or was still tilted from the GP) I hope it does so I have something to wear tomorrow, though even if it does fit I'm worried about it being too hot because it's long sleeved, but I couldn't find any short sleeved shirts I liked. I hope I can avoid burning out on travel for at least another year and a half. I really miss Lex right now, so I kind of wish I was on my way home. | | Saturday, August 22nd, 2009 | | 9:58 am |
Bangkok
I'm in Bangkok. The first and most important thing one discovers about Bangkok is that it's really, really hot. I hate being outside here. Next, things are very cheap. A meal is 20-250 Baht, a Baht is 3 cents. At one point Gau and Mat were getting massages for 150 Baht an hour, but I wasn't interested, given how much sweat is involved in leaving our hotel, so I just wandered around. A tailor talked me into coming into his store and explained that he wanted to make me 5 silk shirts for $89, a good deal, but I didn't know if I'd be able to find him again to pick up the shirts. The shirt he was wearing was cooler than the patterns he had available, which were very basic, but he said his shirt took him 3 weeks to make, so I guess it's understandable. Naked girls seem to be the thing Bangkok is known for, so we decided to try a.. whatever they're called here, like a strip club I guess, but less stripping and more nudity I think. I don't know, I've never been to a strip club. There was no cover, but we had to buy a drink for 100 Baht. After some amount of time they brought us a bill the had the drinks and charged another 1000 Baht each for the show. Given that there was no cover, we weren't having it, and we paid for our drinks and left. None of us were particularly into the show anyway. The girls looked really bored; the show did't do anything for me. I'm not particularly convinced the focus of the show was on being sexy exactly, so I guess this isn't too surprising. That and I'm just not that into naked girls I guess.. at least not like that. Taking a cab from our hotel to the tournament site costs 50 Baht total and there are three of us. The site is a mile away, and walking outside here is terrible. Despite this, I've walked between the hotel and the site 2 and a half times and taken a cab once (and a bus the other half). This is stupid. This place is terrible for vegetarians. After failing to find any food in a mall I gave up and ordered a cheese pizza. Today I prepared better. In the last round of the GP I played against a Thai guy. I asked if he could write something for me. He didn't really understand, so I asked if he had friends that spoke more English. He introduced me to some people (who mentioned that they were fans of my articles) and I had them write a note for me to show to people at restaurants saying that I'm vegetarian, no meat, no fish, no seafood, and I'd like curry. Or something like that. I'm not sure exactly what made it onto the note. I showed it to several restaurants at the mall and they just turned me away instantly because they only had meat. Eventually I found a place. The place was pretty crazy. I immediately had like 5 waitresses talking to me about what to bring me, which wasn't particularly useful. Even if we did have a language in common (which we didn't) there was very loud music playing, so we couldn't hear each other. There was also a huge table of drunken Thai men who waved me over. I have no idea what they wanted and I left shortly after, having gotten my food to go so that I could go back to the room with Gau. The waitresses would dance and clap and sing along with the songs whenever they weren't doing anything. Getting back to the room and eating the food I'd ordered, I discovered why Thai restaurants often call the spiciest option on the menu "native." Seriously. I mean, damn. I wish Lex was here. They did not mess around on the chilis. I destroyed two water bottles real quick and then gave up on the rest of the food, as I was out of water bottles. I ate most of it and I'm pretty full. So the tournament takes place in a convention center at the top of a mall, next to a movie theater and a water park which are also at the top of this mall. During our three byes, Gau and I watched Inglorious Basterds for 120 Baht each. Before the movie between previews at one point it asked people to pay respected to his majesty, and then I think people stood for the Thai national anthem before the movie started. My pool was ridiculous and I ended today 7-1. A little disappointing, but also a little awesome. I wish I felt a little more comfortable with the draft format. I miss Lex. Martin, from Prague, talked to me this morning and told me about how he's getting everyone together to do awesome things in Prague during the GP, and I'll be in for that. I've very excited. I get to see Prague with a native guide and a bunch of friends. I think Prague is the most talked up city in the world to me, so this should be sweet. | | Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 | | 4:39 pm |
Out of my old house downtown. In my new room at Misha's now. Not remotely unpacked, stuff is randomly in boxes in the house and in my car. Tonight I'll get it all into my room before leaving Madison for 4 weeks for Gen Con, Bangkok, Niigata and Prague. | | Thursday, July 16th, 2009 | | 7:38 pm |
Posting from my phone while driving to Boston. Twitter's very weird. Last night we went out for falafel and my friends noticed someone staring at us, but didn't mention it to me. After eating I twittered, "falafel" and later a magic player I follow alerted me to a tweet by someone else saying that he just saw Sam Black and a friend at the restaurant we were at and did a double take. I showed this to my friends who told me about how rude/creepy he was being and were glad to have that explained. | | Monday, May 25th, 2009 | | 9:44 am |
| | 12:28 am |
In case this trip wasn't going well enough already, I finished 4th out of 1495 players in the GP. $1500 and 6 pro points. A very good showing, but also pretty disappointing. I made a mistake in the last game of my last round that cost me the game. I'm pretty sure I would have won the tournament otherwise. I need to start following strict rules about getting food and sleep for tournaments I care about. It was not a kind of mistake I should ever be making. |
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