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I wrote this a while ago but haven't had anyone to proof-read it and as I'm embarking to Korea tomorrow I figured I'd better post it before I forget. This blog is about my experience immediately after WCS Australia/Oceania heading to IEM Cologne on August 15-20th. This part is mostly just a rundown of my feelings after WCS as well as my emotions and experiences flying to Cologne.


The trip to the airport

Ok so it's monday the 13th of August, 2012. I'm riding the train to the airport alone. Dot just spent her entire weekend cheering for me at WCS and has deadlines to meet. So she's chained herself to the library at Uni and I'm riding the train to the airport alone. My Tt backpack sitting by my side and my wheely-bag across from me. As I wait to arrive at the airport I experience mixed feelings of excitement, joy and satisfaction with a harsh undertone of disappointment.

I had just lived through the most exciting weekend of my life. My greatest success and my greatest failure one day after another. I was experiencing mixed feelings after such a tumultuous weekend. On Saturday I had my biggest victory winning the WCS Australia championship and my largest prize of four-thousand dollars. The next day I had my biggest failure in losing WCS Oceania, quickly and decisively in two 0-2 losses. I had achieved more then I had really hoped for in winning WCS Australia, but less than I expected in placing 6th at Oceania. I was elated about my performance on Saturday and incredibly disappointed about Sunday.

That Sunday evening I could hardly spectate the final games due to my disappointment. Instead I got steadily tipsy and then enjoyed a Korean BBQ feast. Since then I've been told by my brothers Korean girlfriend that "Seoul-Ria", our favourite Korean BBQ in Sydney, is imitation Western-BBQ and only Chinese and white people go there! But goddamn it tastes good, Chicken coated in super hot chilli sauce and covered in melting cheese on a sizzling hotplate or "cheese buldak" makes me excited just thinking about it!

From there I didn't make it to the after party. I had been isolated practicing nonstop for the previous 5 weeks, and especially the week or two before the event I was "mentally AFK". I was in the zone and focused and as such felt like I'd spent almost no time with my beautiful girlfriend. Dot had to head to uni first thing on Monday morning so instead of partying we went off and caught up with each other and spent some quality time hanging out before I disappeared to Cologne for a week. I really don't know what I'd do without her being so understanding and putting up with me putting so much of myself into Starcraft, often at the plight of time spent together.

That morning

I woke up Monday afternoon with a hazy memory of Dot kissing me goodbye that morning and a body that felt sore, not from exertion but just from tension and pressure. The kind you need to stretch and relax to rid yourself of. I rolled out of bed, ate breakfast and began packing my bags.

I remember checking everything about 20 times and still feeling that horrible feeling that I was forgetting something. Eventually I just decided as long as I had my PC gear checked, 3 times consecutively, I could live with forgetting anything else. International flights are one of the few things that make me feel really obsessive-compulsive, but it turns out this time it was for a good reason as I forgot nothing!

I got the train to central, changed platforms to get on an airport train. And there I sat. Feeling lonely about having no-one seeing me off, excited about going to Germany, Satisfied and elated at my victory, and disappointed and depressed over my loss. It was a weird mix of feelings but I had nothing to do but file all of that away and just calm myself down. I've learnt how much mental exhaustion can affect performance and as such am now very self-aware of anxiety. I calmed myself down, focused on fostering the excitement and keeping it under control and blocking out the disappointment of Oceania with the thought that on Saturday I had become the Australian Champion and just blocked out the negatives.

Travelling with my hero

Soon I was meeting Andy (moonglade) and Livi (livibee) at the airport, getting checked in, passing through security and hopping on a plane to Abu Dhabi with Andy!

This was a really cool experience because what some of you might not realise is that I once, long, long ago, was placed in Silver league. Even once I was promoted to diamond as an average player just starting to follow eSports there were two players' streams I used to watch religiously: Sen and Moonglade. These two guys were like heroes to me, especially Moonglade as he was the one Australian out on the international scene. It's always the first few pros streams you watch that you always feel all fanboy towards and you actually learn a huge amount of the game from watching them. So here I was two years later going on a trip to Germany to compete alongside the guy who, unbeknownst to him, was an idol of mine.



This was really interesting because obviously I've hung out with, played against and competed with Andy a lot over the past 2 years, but this time it was just the two of us travelling to the other side of the world and the fanboy part of me was pretty darn excited. On another level the player in me was thinking hey, I can beat this guy once-in-a-while now so maybe I'm actually good enough to learn a lot from talking about this game we love so much.

Hence I steadily asked Andy a lot of questions, hopefully not bugging him too much as I have a tendency to never stfu (ask Iaguz about our China trip if you don't believe me... :P) whereas Andy comes across as the more laid-back type who isn't overly eager to talk bullshit twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. He is however a nice guy. He's not ridiculously nice or overly accommodating, he seems to just be himself and be a considerate, down-to-earth person. One that happens to kick ass at Starcraft.

That being said we kept each other pretty good company and as I've been considering getting over to Korea for a while now he answered many of my questions and filled me in on all the little details I wanted information on. We also talked about our opponents and planned strategies quite a bit, starting out with our basic plans and if something occurred to me he would be happy for me to bounce my ideas off him. Over the trip I feel having such an experienced and aggressive player to talk to actually expanded my views on SC2 considerably and my knowledge of timings, map control and play-styles grew exponentially.

The Flights - Oh Emirates you are a great airline!

On the actual flight the seats were really quite nice and the food was delicious. We also all had our own TV in the back of the seat in-front and everyone, literally everyone, watched Hunger Games during our first flight it was on almost every screen it was really annoying to see the same scenes repeated over and over again! But at least it was a pretty decent movie. After watching it and a few trashy movies (Eddy Murphy's still making movies lol!) we were landing in Abu Dhabi.



Before we got off the plane I had heard that the place smelt of sand. I thought this sounded ridiculous as sand doesn't have a smell! Then before we even stepped off the plane strange gases started seeping into the cabin from the air ducts . Confused at why we were being gassed I stepped off the plane and smelt it. It smelt like sand. I think I can only describe it as a thick almost musty smell in the air as if miniscule particles of dust and sand are floating everywhere.



Also before we got off the plane we were warned that it was Ramadan, the holy month of Islam where everyone fasts during daylight hours and doesn't eat or drink publicly. This sucked because I was a bit hungry and wanted to try Abu Dhabi Burgerking! So we investigated the food places and I was happy to see many, many travellers (mostly Asian) whom didn't give two shits about respecting the local culture and were eating McDonalds and Burgerking everywhere anyway! Haha this was a relief to find out that the Airport was something of a special area where people didn't mind too much and so I got my burgerking. I got stared at by a few people when I paid with "monopoly money" but the service girl seemed to understand and so I got my disappointingly standard tasting Burgerking.



The sun was coming up by the stage we boarded. It was only 7.30am and it was already 40 degrees Celsius. I began sweating pretty badly, still wearing my jeans and jacket from Australian Winter. Now we were experiencing 40 degree heat at 7:30am when the sun was barely up! Thank god I don't live in UAE, I don't think I'd last one summer in that heavy and oppressive heat.

A few more movies and a bit of a nap on the next flight and bam we were in Frankfurt! We just had to pick up our bags and hop on the train to Cologne!

I took a lot of footage on this trip and just a few photos, unfortunately Dot transferred the files and somehow deleted all the videos and only kept the small number of photos I took . Hopefully my words will tell a good story!


More to come soon...