Over the last weekend, three Korean Baduk players (Baduk is the Korean term for Go/Weiqi) came to Kuala Lumpur for a short vacation and in conjunction with the vacation, they made contact with a member of our club and arranged for a Baduk weekend. They are very strong players, two of them being 7 dan in Korea (and has a strength of a professional player) and the other a 6 dan. One of them, Mr. Kong Han-Sung, is a committee member of the Korea Amateur Baduk Association.
I had a 5 stone handicap game with one of the 7 dan and it was a great game, by my own standards, of course. As with any handicap games, I had the advantage in the beginning. But at about move 100, he is already catching up. During the beginning part of the endgame, he made a great yose move at one of my corners and took away almost 15 points of my territory and in the end, I lost by only 3 points. Unfortunate, yes, but it was a great game.
I witness again first hand the power of Korean fighting. Their reading is first rate, their positional judgement superb. As our friend from Beijing said, Go is merely about reading ability and judgement. “Merely” he said, but what a “merely”…. I have no doubts, though, about the truth of his words since he is a strong 5 dan from China.
Reading ability and correct judgement.
Simple but in fact not easy at all, as all Go players can testify.
By the way, I am updating the Kogo Joseki Dictionary with materials that are not found in its current version, for example the latest developments in the “Avalanche” joseki and the “Magic Sword of Muramasa” joseki. I am at least updating the Komoku josekis based on the “Jungsuk in Our Time” book. Will publish the updates here when it is ready. I am also updating some Hoshi josekis based on my Chinese materials.
Did not watch much movies of note lately except for some very commercial films, “Chicken Little”, “Harry Potter and the bla bla bla”, etc. However, I finally have managed to watch “Slacker” after having it sit on my shelf for almost two months now.
As with the other “talkative” Richard Linklater movies, most notably “Waking Life” and to a certain extent also “Before Sunset”, it is a very stimulating film to watch, although almost 3 quarters through, my head began to want to start spinning. It featured a bunch of slackers in Austin, doing nothing really with their life but simply mumbling and talking anything from the existential theories, to politics and war, to conspiracy theories, to outer space colonisation, to automobile repair, to Dostoevsky, etc. Basically anything under the sun. It is really quite interesting listening to them talk, probably because I talk like them sometimes :)
Weddings and weddings
I know this sounds rather stupid but it is amazing that the Cantonese pronunciation for wedding means “tie-separate”. Tie and then separate! What kind of word is that? Of course, the real meaning is not like that (or maybe it is intended to be like that, I don’t know). Over the past weekend, we were busy attending weddings. First we went to Taiping to attend my wife’s old friend’s wedding, stopping by Ipoh of course to visit my parents and to eat that delicious hor-fun in old town and then rushing back on Sunday to attend one of my ex-colleague’s wedding in Subang.
Wedding is a wonderful thing, of course. It is a lifelong (intended to be lifelong, at least) commitment between two individuals, to stand by each other in times of need and to enjoy all the happiness together. However, to be honest, how many marriages really worked? It is not easy to keep a marriage in a healthy state, especially if each party has ceased to want to please each other and unwilling to talk things through. Worse still, if either or both parties found something or especially someone else to have a more pleasant time.
Like my mom always say, no matter what, in a marriage, husband and wife must talk things through and work hard to resolve whatever obstacle that is in the way. In colloquail Cantonese slang, “not right talk until right”. If both my friends were to ask for my advice in keeping a working and healthy marriage, it will be just these four: Communicate without barriers. Respect each other. Have fun together. Be willing to take life head on, together.
It has been several months now that I have updated my video collection and since the last post, I have added about 40 more titles to my collection. The latest list is now available for download here. Please forgive me if there are any errors in the list because I am outdoing myself now by simply having this list. Your pointing out of errors will be very much appreciated.
Feel free to ask for any titles that may interest you. A DVD exchange programme is most welcome although I have been really slow with watching movies recently due to huge amount of time spent on studying Go, a bug that has not left me since my training for the Asian Go Tournament in Bangkok.
Talking about Go, I have recently commented on another blog regarding the fundamentals of Go. What exactly are these fundamentals? Of course there are fundamentals in Go, like in everything worth learning. Fundamentals are acquired through training and studies and in my very humble opinion, you will learn a lot of fundamentals by playing lots of thoughtful games and getting those games reviewed by a stronger player and just pay attention to how he or she talks. By paying attention to the words that the reviewer uses, you will learn the fundamentals bit by bit.
It is also very useful to participate or read reviews of games played by other players, and similarly, notice how the reviewer uses his or her words and notice how they emphasize a certain technique or concept. These are fundamentals. How many of these fundamentals are there in Go? I really don’t know. You will have to discover it yourself.
I am currently reading “Understanding How To Play Go” by Yuan Zhou 7 dan for, perhaps, the 7th time now. I have learned so much by just reading and trying to understand the words he used in the review of the games and pay particular attention to how and what he thinks at each important point in the game. It is truly a great book. The title may sound like it’s a beginners’ book but in fact, it contains so much that even a 5 dan will profit from reading and trying to understand it.
Yasujiro Ozu: The Master of Family in Cinema
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