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I think I’ll start from my flight to Melbourne, it’s probably a safe part to kick off. It was the first time flying by myself in a few years and admittedly, I was feeling a little nervous – not exactly for the flying part of the journey, mainly because of the thought of going through Australian customs… after watching border patrol, a few of the customs people look pretty scary o.o! But it turned out relatively alright, no real fusses – but apparently my mate was panicking because I was an hour late >< (whoops!)
My initial impressions of flying into Melbourne were different to say the least… The first thing I noticed was that the land was so incredibly flat! I mean coming from a country where you pretty much can’t get away with seeing a hill or a rise staring you right in the face, it was an interesting quality to note. I have to say, driving into the city at night was really impressive the city was on a scale that doesn’t compare to Auckland (where I have lived most of my life). The number of highways and turnoffs was insane! I mean we have motorways and stuff in NZ right? But nothing on the scale of Melbourne! I took a few photos of the city at night coming in and I loved what I saw! But aside from that, I really was looking forward to having a sleep with exploring Melbourne central planned in the forefront of my mind.

Day 2 + 3: This was when I really started my journey. My friend, his dad and myself headed into Melbourne central to go ask a few questions about applications for RMIT and Melbourne University (not for me! But for my mate..) And daaaam… I was blown away by a number of areas of the CBD.. For anyone that knows me personally, I am a massive architecture and design freak, so when I see a building or structure of any kind most often I am inclined to really taking in everything about that which I am looking at.. so there were a few moments on my trip that I had to take time to simply look at buildings :P Some of the older more traditional heritage buildings of Melbourne were really skilfully preserved and quite often it complemented some of the newer more modern designs – to which I could appreciate. It’s quite hard to meet a balance between two different eras and styles of design, but in saying that there were some moments where there wasn’t a good integration of old and new and really stood out as something rather odd… but anyways :P It was definitely a good day, I led my mate around central Melbourne as I was becoming a lot more familiar with the placement of the streets and landmarks (I mean it’s a grid system right? It’s not too hard to navigate once you get your bearings) Man looking back through my photos.. I took so many of the different designs and dodgy alleyways

Day 4: Hmmmm it was another good day on the whole, during the day we didn’t really do much, because I was staying at my mate’s house during my stay in Melbourne, it was wet it was miserable and there really wasn’t that much to do around Berwick. Although this was in addition to how tired we were after walking around the CBD for 8 hours the day before . We did have something to look forward to in the evening which was the gather at Fur’s house for the ToR crew who were hitting up ACL the days afterwards. On the drive to Fur’s, idk I suppose I was a little nervous I guess – idk why, but knowing the guys and Lara as long as I have, it wasn’t so much as nerves as such maybe just really excited to meet the ToR guys after all this time. Man, it was a long drive at that though – from Berwick to passing Melbourne Central during the traffic period – it can get a little hectic, I’m so glad though I managed to find a couple of Hungry Jack’s on the way to Fur’s (Honestly $1 frozen cokes are a blessing in disguise!). After like 10 mins of driving around the streets immediately beside his place as well as a walk to find a toilet in the park, we made it. Initially I think I seemed pretty out of it after the drive, I went all awkward nerd when Fur met me at the door – but that went pretty quickly as I saw some pretty familiar faces staring back at me. Djvillian, Lardols, Erasmus, Pox with Chobosniper, Nicknack and Souljah soon joining us afterwards. It was a really fun night playing a little bit of Mario kart on the wii and getting stomped by Nicknack 0-2 for the title of the real nick it was good ^^. Oh god, that reminds me… the cuffs… For some fairly odd reason, Doc found it fun to keep my cuffed for awhile, I swear I knew about the safety clip thing – but Lardols still had to point it out TT. Probably the highlight of the night would be cutting the ToR cake (>< despite ruining it’s beauty it was such a delicious cake!)



We had a bit of fun with the photobooth, whilst they all teased me about my cheese-less pizza (which was pretty dam good, but falling apart a bit..) then we headed off so that we got an early night for the open bracket in the morning… Well my mate and I tried, we ended up couldn’t be bothered driving back to Berwick which is around 50kms out from Central, so we ended up sleeping in the car in some random street somewhere – which was so bad for my back ><

Day 5 + 6: It was the first day of ACL and man… It was awesome. We drove up to La trobe around 8.30ish after a healthy breakfast of Maccas. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember which hall it was in… so it took us a little bit to locate the entrance to where we had to be, fortunately we bumped into Jazz who was heading to the event as well. And daaaaam, my first thoughts of seeing the set up were just “Awesoooooooome ” we walked up and I got to meet Soundwave, Satu, Lokth and Archon in person which was quite an experience the guys were looking pretty pumped for their games. I remember standing at the entrance to union hall and KK was behind me, I was thinking to myself the whole time “Shiiiiit he’s in the zone right now!”. On our way to see Baldie we ran into the Avant crew, Malice, RuineD and Sheepshagger and it was pretty nice to meet the first two of them :P as well as seeing Savior again. Well bugger me, I definitely met a lot of new people at the event O.o it is an interesting experience in putting names to faces at long last. So we rocked up to the admin table and met Baldie with a bit of a brief “hello how are ya?” – I wish we could of talked more later on man, but I understood the amount of pressure you guys were under D:. There seemed to be a fair bit of time left until the actual tournament was underway so we wandered around a little bit as more and more of the ToR crew began to arrive – I honestly could go on recounting the whole event O.o but maybe I will skip to the announcement of the brackets and my actual games.. We all gathered around the admin table as Baldie announced the brackets and there was a number of ToR kills in each bracket (17 members for the open bracket is pretty sweet in my eyes :P) we were looking pretty ready to start out games, with Doc and Pox constantly reminding me that I was a free win for any ToR member T_T, I was ready to get underway. OH that’s something I definitely want to add… How I met Redemption and McLovin . Firstly meeting Mclovin in person was great omg he is exactly how I imagined him irl :P, but meeting Red for the first time…I felt like such an ass. I mean I knew the face, but when he stepped into the ToR circle I had to ask to be sure (because I always pictured him with shades on TT) then he said Redemption and I was like “OMG It’s RED!” – anyways moving on to my actual games XD.



This was my first event that I’ve actually played in an event, mainly because I’ve never really seen myself as that much of a competitor mainly as a supporter/spectator. So it was definitely an interesting experience for me personally, as I have discovered over the last few years that I am one to often get performance anxiety whenever I am put a situation where there is pressure on me.

Series 1: PhoneHeha:

Aah man, looking back on those games I seriously regretted not being able to play for a few weeks before the event. I knew when I headed into the series I was seriously outclassed, I mean he was one of the best random players in the scene for a very long time, recently switching to Terran as his main I think. Game 1, I think it was safe to say that I played really poorly. I failed to comfortably defend his drops and he managed to do some serious damage against my economy as he continued to chip away at my army, I realised I was in pretty bad shape so I had to tap out. Game 2 was something similar, but I wasn’t making some of the really stupid mistakes that I had made in game 1, e.g. poor rallies and seriously messing up my micro. His drops did somewhat similar damage and it was definitely his series to win from the beginning :P but it was still fun to talk to him after the series, apparently he had a similar experience during his first event, going up against Deth first round is a pretty tough ask >< .

Series 2: Infisty (Infeza):

Going into this series, I knew I was at a disadvantage. I knew that Infeza was a previous Gm (although I didn’t know how much he had been playing recently, but I still had that mindset nonetheless) and I figured, well… you have come to have fun, so give him a fun series to play out! And honestly.. I think that mentality managed to help me gain a little bit more confidence in my play. Game 1, I knew that he was a bit of an unconventional player, I was overly cautious in regards to my scouting. Fortunately my probe was in his base when he threw down a really fast double gas and instinctively my reaction was “he is going for fast DT’s”, but I wasn’t fully certain about that. But surely enough I played it safe and got a robo up and there were a couple of DT’s coming up my ramp, which I was relatively comfortable in defending. I still remember seeing that proxy shrine and smiling :P So naturally I went for a counter attack as he was getting up his expansion, because I thought I had a significant lead to counter – but I managed to bumble my attack and it turned out that archons are a pretty good unit :P Game 2 wasn’t too bad, I felt that something sneaky was going on and it turns out my hunch was right, as he proxied a robo fairly close to my base whilst harassing me with immortal drops. This game, I think my mindset was a little more calm – I played it out a lot more slowly than I did game 1, I got a couple of immortals as I saw him throwing down his expansion and I realised it was my timing to hit, so I pushed and didn’t commit as heavily as I did the first game and managed to take out the majority of his army without losing too much of my own so I was able to win from there. Game 3 was kinda similar to game 2, I just hit a timing where I was able to punish his early expand – but it was a little more standard than the other two games in contrast. So I was feeling pretty happy at the end of that series, because my friend said to me “if you don’t win a series, you will be sleeping on the street” – so I felt pretty chuffed with myself that I could sleep in a bed for once

Series 3: RuineD

By this stage, I was pretty knackered so I didn’t have high expectations of doing that well (aside from Ruined being tons better than me XD). It was a hellion opener followed by a marine/tank push that pretty much caught me out in a poor position. I knew it was my end there since it was a short Bo1, but I still had fun none the less there :P I was happy with what I had achieved for my first competitive event.
After I was out I hung around the lads and watched their games, Red vs Hut was insane >< that game 1 man really made me cringe for Redemption considering he was in such a good position. I stood behind McLovin and Archon floating between them watching some ZvZ goodness. It was awesome.

(Second day of ACL) My mate and I arrived relatively late to the event in the afternoon after pool play had finished up (public transport coming from where I was staying was a bit hard to actually get to the venue, but anywho). Thankfully I was able to come and watch Pezz vs Petraeus Game 1 and 2, I felt a little gutted for Jack after I heard of his sick series on main stage vs Ninja, but it was a good series to watch none the less. After Pezz had been knocked out, I knew where to place my support in. The last remaining NZ player left in the tournament, Petraeus or better known as mackdaddy! When he was going up against the Guz, I knew it would be a really hard fought battle for him, considering the form he was in and the momentum he has pulled from his recent performances, but I was pretty confident in making a bet with my friend that Petraeus would win, I still probably would make that bet :P. It was sad though saying goodbye to those still left at the event, but it was kinda fun capping off the tournament with a nick pic :P Hut/Chadmann and myself (I’m sure we could of easily brought the nick numbers up with the help of Neko and Nicknack next time :P)

Day 7: Aaah my final full day in Melbourne was pretty chill, but really busy at the same time. I spent the day with friends heading around some of the malls and shopping centres in Melbourne, the likes of DFO (where I bought a really cheap pair of converse sneakers) and Chadstone (an entire architectural series of books for only $18!!). It was a good day only to cap it off by watching a movie with a few of the ToR guys, Pox, Pezz and another dashing protoss we know.