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Part 2

My last blog explained the nostalgic and reflective experience of packing up my home to rent to strangers while I'm abroad training and competing in Europe for 4 months. We spoke about how I've changed in the last few years in that house, got into SC2 and grew into who I am today. I meant to post this 2nd part weeks ago, but with so many events going on and currently prioritising my practice it kinda got lost, but better late than never!

(Link to Part 1: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/4607...arting-the-new)

Over 30 hours in transit



So it was that I found myself on a plane to Europe. A trip I've taken 3 times to compete in SC2 events, but for the first time with my girlfriend. (This was going to be interesting... :P) The first leg to Singapore (7.5 hours) went surprisingly well, we had perfectly clear skies all the way over central and northern Australia with a window seat, so I spent pretty much the entire time staring out the window oohing and aahing and wondering why I haven't explored all the beautiful places in my own country yet. 90% of Australians all live along the coastline and our interior is a huge area filled with thousands of beautiful natural places, but we tend to dismiss it because it's in our own country and fly overseas for holidays instead, the joke's on us I guess!

When we got to Singapore Dot was crazy eager to find Chicken-Rice within the airport and we ended up getting some crappy cold FRIED chicken-rice for more than double the price - airport food never fails to disappoint haha! It actually still tasted quite ok, but definitely wasn't the joy of the good stuff we lived off last time we were here.

Why a stranger on a plane probably thinks I have a foot-fetish

The next leg of the flight to Helsinki (12 hours) departed around midnight so it was perfect for my standard build of dinner into red wine into sleep the entire flight. The only memorable part about this flight was my legs not having enough space due to Finnair's technique of fitting one-billion rows of seats into their planes. Even though the seats lean back quite far for comfort, because you're so close to the chair in front, your legs need to try and find space under the chair in front of you. Let me tell you, there's nothing more awkward then stretching out to finally find a comfortable position, only to realise your feet are touching the guy's legs who's sitting in front of you. Of course then this happens like 10 times each time I fall asleep, to the point where I'm quite certain he thought I was trying to molest his ankles.

A few more hours in transit at Helsinki and then a 1 hour hop to Stockholm, a bus into the city and HOLY SHIT our 30+ hour transit was over! Oh the glory! I swear there is no greater feeling than showering after a 30+ hour journey. Hell, just brushing my teeth in Singapore got me all gi

Practicing in Stockholm - and realising how poor my form was


Sickest PC bang ever!

I quickly jumped into practicing at Inferno Online - the largest and most awesome PC bang in the world. The first few days I couldn't find a PC with keyboard repeat/scrolling rate on minimum so I really struggled in lategame ZvT - with it taking 2 whole seconds just to queue up zerglings each time I wanted to produce - completely throwing off my rhythm. Eventually I found one that had good settings (you can't change them yourself) and got into some really nice practice. At first I felt horribly rusty, and quickly realised my practice at home - getting sick a few times, disrupted due to packing up/renting out rooms and so on, had not been so great. My form was really lacking, much weaker than even just a month earlier. I was eager to get back in form and practice started to turn up, I started taking more notes and watching more replays at the end of each day and it definitely helped me adjust to the hellbat change and get back into a decent spot.

I got to meet Canadian Terran Tjej at Inferno. We had a good time chatting about how awesome Sweden is, talking about SC and he was even nice enough to buy me some AMAZING sushi for lunch.


The school kids are all graduating and celebrate by dancing in the back of garbage trucks, its an awesome custom!

Lost in Translation


Standing out front our hostel in Stockholm

My favourite memory from Stockholm was coming out of the hostel toilet (the showers and toilets were separate) to find myself face-to-face with a middle aged man with a fuzzy black beard and curly hair, his shirt half unbuttoned, exposing a hairy bulging stomach.

"Something something douchey" . He asked in another language, I think it was Swedish with a
Spanish accent?

"Sorry, I only speak English..." I replied, shrugging my shoulders.

He realised I couldn't undertand and decided to simplify his sentence to the key word:

"Douchey? Where is douchey?"
"I dunno man, I don't think they have a douchey here..."

I had to contain the laughter as I responded, assuming that he was asking for a place where he could literally "douche" his butt after pooping, so something like a bidet. Trust me to assume any word in another language that sounds like an English word MUST mean the same thing. It was 4 days later in my hostel at DreamHack that I finally saw the sign on the shower that said "duche" and it clicked that Bearded Hairy-man wasn't, in fact, asking where to wash his asshole.

Note: A douche /ˈduːʃ/ is a device used to introduce a stream of water into the body for medical or hygienic reasons.

DreamHack! Arriving and first Group stage

The train to Jonkoping was uneventful and we quickly got to our hostel in Huskvarna. Besides an issue where we missed check-in and had to find a phone to call for late entry we got settled pretty quickly, this time in a private 2-bed room with a private toilet, yay! Privacy!



The next day, Saturday, DreamHack began!

That morning we grabbed our brand new team-shirts that'd been posted to the town to catch up with us, and I was really happy with it, it definitely had a simpler and crisper design than my old one.
Pic

It was cool to be back at the biggest eSports event I've ever been to, and especially to share it with Dot for the first time. She was so excited and in awe of the size of it. Even after being there before I still felt excitement welling up in me as I walked through the venue past the thousands upon thousands of nerds, eSports fans, pros., the celebrity players and casters from other games that I normally never get to see and meet. We went into the Twitch Lounge and briefly said hello to those who were around. The whole first day is a bit of a blur now, I just remember it was awesome seeing so acquaintances and friends that I only get to see in person a few times a year. I quickly went to play my matches though and quickly won my first bo3 vs Hantypen (diamond Terran) and proceeded to vs Avokado, GM Terran player from team Darkstar. I remember the first game playing quite confidently and closing it out, but the 2nd game on Alterim got surprised by a 5-reaper opening, losing all my creep-queens and not restarting it for a long time. I was rattled by the early aggression and went into double-spire accidentally, then moved out to pressure just as 2 drops came in. I felt really flustered and frantically went to defend. Just as I surrounded the drop in the main and shut it down, the last hitpoints of the spire fell and it popped. I thought it might mean defeat, when I saw a 2nd spire just finishing on the other side of my main.

"Wow... luckiest mistake, ever!" I thought to myself.

The game got incredibly messy from here with me causing huge damage with muta harass and counters, but taking a horrible defensive engage into tanks. I ended up recovering my economy and closing it out, but it was a very shaky game. Still, I was 4-0 and through to the next group-stage, at least I hadn't embarrassed myself yet!


A wild Nathanias appears! His airline lost all his luggage so was buying changes of clothes at the venue, still commentated like a boss though!

I practiced ladder for an hour or two while the other groups closed down, winning a close basetrade vs Elfi and losing a muta-SH game vs Happy's mech in a 50 minute game. I felt generally a bit better about my play and headed off to the Twitch Lounge. On the way out I asked the admin if groups were drawn. He showed me I had drawn Femo, a GM Terran, MC and Oz. Dot and others who heard were all saying "tough luck" and "oh shit that's one of the hardest". But I deflected their concerns saying that this is a hard tournament and if I play well both MC and Oz should match up ok vs my style.

Group 2 - MC, Oz and Femo

After grabbing some food and chilling in the lounge for a short while it was already time to play. I was a bit anxious as I really wanted to at least make it to the next group stage, and to do that I only needed to beat one of the Koreans, once. Having two bo3's and only needing to win one is actually quite awesome for a progamer used to single elim tournament formats. The first set vs Oz I found out was "on the main stage" all over twitter and had to put noise-cancelling headphones on whilst I played. As I closed the noise-vacuum around my ears I bounced up and down in my chair trying to pump myself up to play my best. In the past I've had issues with nerves, and I've found that hard preparation has always given me a confidence that overcomes any nerves. In the back of my mind I must have known I wasn't ready for this match, because the nerves started to get to me. Once I got into game, everything started to go wrong.

I drone-scouted, planning to go pool-first vs forge, and hatch-first vs a gate or nexus opening. I scouted the probe coming across the map, and the forge, and proceeded to go hatch-first. My hands were shaking as I realised what I'd done and I instantly felt anger at myself and from there my confidence was shot to shit. Despite being able to play from abandoning my natural and taking 2 other bases just fine (and usually winning these sort of games) I was rallying drones to Oz's base, letting drones sit idle, getting supply blocked... all the stupid, basic and nervous errors. In hindsight I'm amazed I managed to even start a half-hearted basetrade. My level of play was leagues below what I knew I could do. The second game was a little better at first, but I failed to look at my scouting and react to the 3-star VR play, instead playing as if I was vsing a ground-based protoss composition. I lost my 4th base to a VR snipe, and Oz's follow-up harass and pushes were overwhelming against my silly composition. I had played like absolute crap, Oz had played well, and I had looked silly. As I pulled off my headphones and opened up the replays to make sure I understood my losses, I could hear Apollo's apt analysis, something like "Sure PiG's a great player, but Oz was just in another league". That was probably the nicest thing a caster could say about those games, I would have been much harsher.

I faced Femo in the losers match and managed to 2-0 him. Still a bit tilted from the earlier games there were 1 or 2 moments where I was extremely far ahead and my lings headbutt into banelings - causing me to get angry at myself and gesture and swear whilst I played. Demuslim later commented to me "man.. you get really tilted and upset while you're playing. You're gesturing and shaking your head and stuff...". Yep. I was all over the place mentally. But I still had a chance to make it out.

https://twitter.com/x5_PiG/status/477868046263275521
"I get to play mc in 20 minutes. Winner gets through, loser gets to cry into their pillow tonight. Time to step up "

The last time I played MC in a tournament was IEM Singapore 2012 where we were 1-1 when in the 3rd game I crushed his 4-gate VR pressure (remember when zealots could warp onto highground? :P) and was happily going towards broodlord infestor when he surprised me with a single collosus timing and blasted through my spine wall just 20s before they completed, eliminating me from the series. I always wished I'd had another chance to make up for letting that series slip me by, and I finally had it. I regained some calm and confidence in the break and went into the final series feeling like myself. That's when MC went full MC Protoss and walled the top of my ramp on Sejong vs my pool-first. I had vision of his 2nd probe moving out but missed it sloppily, then scouted it late, tried to pull drones, had to give up, and was instantly out of the game. Once again I was gesturing and saying "What the ****!" when I saw the pylons. I was getting thrown off kilter by aggression. I had to tell myself to just calm down and destroy him this game. I couldn't play too careful, nor too risky. I just had to play.

Finally in this game I played more like myself. He cannon'd the pocket next to the ramp on frost. I immediately took a proxy base at his 3rd and teched towards roaches while taking fake extra base at my own 3rd. I scouted that he wasn't dropping a nexus and knew from his probe movements he had spotted my proxy hatch and was cannoning it. I decided to cancel it, break out of my main with roaches, retake a slow natural and still be in a relatively even spot. I looked back at the proxy hatch to cancel it and it had already finished building.

"****"

"Woosh-Woosh-Woosh" or whatever sound cannons make :P

Damn, I would have to take that loss. I broke out of my main, retook my natural and 3rd and started droning whilst he took his natural. He tried to pressure me but I surrounded it and forced a recall, however his next pressure managed to slip around to the highground above my 3rd where I couldn't push it back due to forcefields on the choke. I noticed the blur of DTs moving in and I immediately morphed overseers, took only a little damage, but with my 35 drone economy the few drones and the mining time was something I couldn't afford, especially as he took the chance to charge down and eliminate my 3rd whilst my army was out of position. From there it was over.

Feeling that pain

I felt absolutely crushed to get bopped. Actually bopped, like when Tasteless is laughing in that lighthearted way about how badly one player got stomped, I was that guy, the stompee. Youch. At least this final game I had reacted half decently and almost matched MCs moves, but just a few silly mistakes. Of course those mistakes were in part due to a bad mindset and nerves. Which was due to poor preparation. By the time that sunk in that night, and the tears had dried up, I was so eager to get to the mYi house. I wouldn't let this happen at Valencia.

I spent the rest of the night in the twitch lounge chatting to the other players. I learnt a lot of ZvP tips from watching Snute practicing, damn his mouse accuracy and calm multitasking is something to look up to. I got to chat to Scarlett for the first time along with Pengwin and Elroye as we chatted about zerg builds. It was awesome to learn a whole bunch of stuff from her, especially as I got to watch her use the same builds all over Redbull and MLG, including the PvZ build lol! I'm a pretty big fanboy when it comes to Scarlett so I hope I wasn't too awkward haha! It felt good to chat to everyone and forget my sadness over losing, especially just thinking about the game analytically and discussing builds always seems to help soothe hurt feelings after a hard loss, whether on ladder or a big tournament.

The rest of Dreamhack and last days in Sweden

I had written a whole big description of heading to the afterparty and the next few days, but I seem to have lost it, and with the blog being so long already, I will summarise!

Twitch Barn Party: Twitch threw a pretty epic party this year in a Barn in the middle of nowhere, it had a really mysterious and exciting atmosphere getting there and it was a lot of fun to get well drunk and party with everyone. I don't remember much so I probably got wayyy too drunk, hopefully I didn't act like a dick or leave a bad impression with anyone :P.

Watching NiP play CS vs Hellraisers: Had a great experience watching the homecrowd champions make a nailbiting comeback after getting demolished as Terrorists on Inferno. It's rare to see such a huge crowd chanting, screaming and sighing with every ingame move. So cool!

Interviews: I did some fun interviews! I kinda suck at them still, and didn't improve so much at Valencia, but I swear I will for the next one!







Sweden is awesome, people here have ROBOT LAWNMOWERS!!