Mid-Tournament Report II

Another rough day on the Go-ban: 0-2. I like to think of it as a public service--someone has to lose. My opponents were gracious and played well. I used to always play these classically Japanese style games in which critics would complain that nothing happens. Each player takes some territory and then you play the end game. These are often close games with no big groups dying. I seem to have developed a really bad habit lately of wanting to win by a lot. I play overplays and start fights, something I never used to do. The problem is that I'm not good at this style of Go. Maybe I will get better at it, but I don't even like it. I also find that I get jealous of my opponent's territory. I think this comes from my old habit of waiting until it's too late to invade, and they get a ridiculously huge area. Now I am overcompensating and invading too quickly. Or maybe my analysis is totally wrong. (FYI: The decorations you can see on the ceiling in the photo are not for the Go tournament; we had to move all the equipment upstairs for tomorrow because they're going to have a big New Year's Eve party there.)


This morning, before playing, I sat for a few minutes in Regent's Park in this... well, I'm not sure what to call it. It has the purpose and style of a gazebo, but it's rectangular and has a back wall. I had only been sitting there for a few minutes when a spritely older woman entered and deposited a couple of largish bulging plastic bags on the bench. I smiled at her as she came in, but she said nothing, just put down her bags and walked out and then around the side of this structure. Walking around the side might not have been noteworthy, except that to do so, she had to scrape through briars and brambles growing close. I didn't look too closely, but I think that she was meticulously placing bird food in particular predetermined places on the trees and bushes. In addition to the plastic bags, she had with her a stick that didn't seem quite long enough to be a walking stick. She carried it, she didn't lean on it. Perhaps she used it for those hard to reach higher spots. When she came back in to pick up her bags before going on her way, she returned my smile and remarked that, when she had started out at 7 this morning it had been "lashing" rain, and now she felt ridiculous (she gave a generous gesture taking in her big hooded coat and the mocking sunshine). She departed in the direction opposite that from which she came, paused, hit a few bushes that she must have missed, and then carried on purposefully. I guess she had a lot of park left to cover.

Mid-Tournament Report

Yesterday was the second day of the London Open Go Congress. My record thus far is a meagre 1-3. I've made some really atrocious reading errors and in my first game (which I resigned) I self-destructed. In an expolosive chain reaction, I took a situation that was probably good for me (I forgot I had komi...) and proceeded to totally destroy it. My second game was better; I took a lot of points, giving my opponent a big center, but then I lived in the middle, so he resigned. Yesterday I lost twice, though in my first game, I managed to live in sente in my opponent's area, which put me back in the game. Then I played a ridiculously slow endgame move, ensuring my loss. That opponent played the vast majority of his moves in a total of 5 minutes, so, when I was out of time, he still had an hour and a half to count out end game.

The tournament is really nice though. We only play two games per day. Each player has 90 minutes for each game, plus byo yomi. Even more importantly, there's plenty of time between games to review them and record them. You can relax, eat and recover what composure you can summon before the next game starts. These photos are from Regents Park, which is right across the street. It's an excellent place to stroll around and clear your head between games. It amazes me that there are flowers at the end of December.

London stretches, yawns and drags itself from its Christmas slumber

The sleepy enchantment of Christmas continued to hold sway today over England's capital city. The tube reopened and buses were running, but the roads remained so empty that one could saunter across without worry where one usually has to dart between onslaughts of heavy traffic. Some shops and restaurants were open, but many remained shuttered and dark. Though more pedestrians populated the sidewalks than yesterday, the usual impenetrable crowds have yet to emerge.

Christmas in Amsterdam and London

Last night I returned to London after visiting Guo Juan in Amsterdam for the weekend. This is the view from her beautiful apartment. She had a couple of students from France visiting as well, and Siu came up for Saturday night. Siu was in China with me this summer and, since Guo Juan made tons of excellent Chinese food, it felt like we were back in Wuhan. Another student of Guo Juan's, who lives just around the corner, came to spend time with us too. And I got to finally meet Guo Juan's son, Wang Zi. He is now about 3 dan and will also be playing in the London Open this week.

We were tourists this weekend. We took a boat tour through the canals (Guo Juan says she brings everyone on the boat tour, so she's done it many times). Camille (from Paris) said that what they tell you in French is not the same as what they tell you in English. I liked the houseboats along the river. Some even have front porches--rafts with deck chairs. We walked around for a while afterwards, stopping for tea and then meandering through a market where we ate raw herring with onions and pickles, a traditional Dutch delicacy. It was really good, but I'd recommend some sort of breath freshener afterwards. Since we were cold and we still had to go to Chinatown to go shopping for dinner, we stopped in another coffee shop. We ordered hot chocolate which, unbeknownst to us, was served with a small shot of a coffee liqueur. It was the perfect afternoon stop to warm and rejuvenate us.

Inspired by our afternoon stop, we picked up some hazelnut liqueur to bring home. After eating tons of delicious Chinese food for dinner, we had oily balls, another Dutch treat. These were balls of oily dough, served with powdered sugar.

For breakfast yesterday, Guo Juan made a Chinese salad, which was easy to make and delicious.


Chinese Salad

• Chinese cabbage, chopped/sliced


• garlic, minced (optional)


• hot pepper stuff


• vinegar


• sesame oil


• soy sauce


• sesame seeds

Toss everything except the sesame seeds together and then sprinkle the sesame seeds on top. The hot pepper stuff: in Asian food stores you should be able to find something of this sort. It'll be a jar of hot peppers, chopped and stored in oil. The vinegar is Chinese vinegar, which is black (again, you should have no trouble finding this in an Asian food store). There was no measuring going on, so you'll have to just add everything to taste.


I walked up to Chinatown today to pick up some stuff to make dumplings. In the U.S., the Chinese restuarants are usually the only places open on Christmas, but in London, even these close. One of my grocery stores was open, so I was able to get most of what I needed. It was a ghost town out there today though. The tube was closed, and I guess the buses weren't even running, because I certainly didn't see any. There were practically no people on the streets (well, there were still a few with cameras). It was very disorienting. Even though I walk this route all the time, I kept pausing and wondering whether I had made a wrong turn somewhere. This is a picture of Emma with the "I heart London" t-shirt I sent her for Christmas.

I made some pineapple upside-down cake today too. This is one of my favourite recipes, though our oven is not very cooperative, so my cake is still a bit undercooked in the middle.


Pineapple Upside-down Cake

• 1 20 oz can pineapple slices (drained)


• 1/2 Cup (1 stick) butter


• 1 Cup brown sugar


• 1 20 oz can crushed pineapple (drained)


• 1/2 Cup (1 stick) butter


• 1 1/3 Cups milk


• 2 1/2 Cups flour


• 1 1/2 Cups sugar


• 2 1/4 tsp. baking powder


• 1/2 tsp. salt


• 2 eggs


• 1 tsp. vanilla

Pre-heat oven to 350. Grease a 9 x 13 pan. Arrange pineapple slices in pan. Melt 1/2 Cup butter, stir in brown sugar and crushed pineapple, pour over pineapple slices. Melt 1/2 Cup butter, add to milk and beat until "fluffy". (I always have trouble with this. My butter clots and I get worried. Maybe it's better to just barely mix, rather than beating them. Or maybe I don't beat them long enough.) Combine dry ingredients, add to butter/milk mixture, stir. Add eggs and vanilla, stir. Pour cake batter over pineapple mixture. Bake for 30 minutes or until knife comes out clean. Invert and serve.

2People.org

My friend's brother just launched a website called 2People.org to get people to do something about climate change. Something needs to be done. In particular, the U.S. needs to change its habits. Since the current American leadership refuses to recognize the problem, much less do anything about it, the website is designed grassroots style. It's a place for people to find out more about what they can do personally, to organize action with other folks and to raise voter awareness so that future leaders will have to do something about this issue.

Sign up and check it out. He's done an excellent job with the website.

Blitz

I've started doing something I never thought I'd do: play blitz games online. The newest version of KGS has auto-match: you set some preferences, and then it finds an opponent for you, rather than you trying to accept an open game. I think it's great. They have some other new features too, like mouseovers of open games telling you the person's comments and time settings. They have a blitz setting on the auto-match that is 1 minute opening and then three 10-second byo yomi periods. This is ridiculously fast, in my opinion, but it does let you get more games in. I've even been able to actually finish a few of these games now (as opposed to someone losing on time). Though I much prefer a slow, thoughtful game (as anyone who has played me well knows), I think this will really help me because I just don't play enough.

Ice Skating

Here are some photos from our ice skating outing this morning. This is Somerset House, which is on the Strand, right next to the (ugly) building that houses the maths department of King's College.

They make some tickets available every morning for that day, instead of booking in advance. We had to arrive early this morning to buy those tickets, since they were sold out all day. It was a bit rough on Alicia, who doesn't usually arrive at the office until late afternoon.

Here's Alicia, Brenda and Ed. Alicia, who is from Mexico, was rather out of her element on ice. She was a good sport though, and managed, after not very long, to leave the edge and clomp along on her skates without the aid of the handrail.

Ed and I change places. I think the idea here is that you pay £10 to take photos of yourself and your friends or family on ice skates. This we accomplished. Maybe we should have taken pictures in front of the tree though. I guess there's always next year (Alicia did say she would go back and I'll hold her to it).

Brenda in action. Ed left a few minutes early; the rest of us decided to finish out the hour on the ice. We met him for hot beverages in the snack bar afterwards and berated him for not warning us that the reason he had left early was to avoid the long queue to return your skates, while your socks absorb the puddles of melted ice.

It's not Christmas without mulled wine and Cliff Richard

So I'm told, anyway. Of course, I've never before had a Christmas with mulled wine OR Cliff Richard, who has apparently been dubbed the "British Elvis". I'm not sure if that's supposed to be a recommendation or a warning.

A German student made mulled wine at the office party on Friday evening. This involved really cheap alcohol and fire.

Meanwhile, the Santas have taken over London. Last night, as I walked home from the Go club, every few yards there was another group of friends all dressed as Santa. I also saw one court jester and one chicken; I'm not sure what those were about. At Borough Market yesterday morning there was a larger group of Santas shouting, in call-and-response protest style,

"What do we want?"
"Christ-mas!"
"When do we want it?"
"Now!"

No pub night

Brenda and I tried to go out for a beer this evening for our usual Thursday night pub night, but alas, every pub was packed. At least, all those in central London near our office were full and overflowing. Everyone's out for Christmas. It's unbelievable. Tomorrow night, the office next to ours is hosting a party (maths grad students, mince pies and mulled wine... not necessarily one's first idea of a good time, but we'll see). The plan is to go to our local pub afterwards, but I don't know if we'll be able to get in the door.

Shèng dàn kuaì lè

Our Chinese teacher gave us Christmas cards tonight! On the inside, they say "Shèng dàn kuaì lè" (Merry Christmas) and "Xīn nián xìng fú" (Happy New Year). They're written in Chinese of course. She said she started out writing each stroke very carefully so that we would be able to read them more easily, but she soon gave up. So, though the characters look nice, I don't think I'd recognize even the ones I supposedly know. (The only ones I know are "kuaì" and "lè", which we learned from "Happy Birthday".)

London Open

The London Open is coming up! I'm so unprepared. I haven't been playing enough (as usual) and I haven't been doing enough problems. I have still been looking at pro games on Go4Go.net on a daily basis. Plus I'll get to visit Guo Juan just beforehand; there's always hope for osmosis.

The London Open is a big event (92 people have signed up already) that ends the year: it starts on the 28th of December and ends on New Year's Eve. The games are long (1.5 hours each, plus byo yomi), which is great news for me. They'll probably be upset that the tournament will take much longer this year, since I will actually use all of my time.

There's also a pair go event, so I'll be on the lookout for a good partner.

Kobayashi Opening Answer, part 2

Guo Juan sent me some more information on what to do against White 1 (below) in the Kobayashi opening.


Black can respond with 2-10 as above, which Guo Juan says is a "hard fight", but it should be good for Black because Black has more stones around to help.



Answering with Black 2 at P2, as in this diagram, is an "easy way" for Black. The result after 8 is bad for White.



White might respond to Black 2 at P4 instead of O3. Black should play as in this diagram. Note that Black 6 is at R2 (not Q2--this is important for keeping White weak). After Black 8, White might play at A, B or C. If White plays A, Black should cut at O3. If White plays B, Black should play at M3--White is not alive; this is good for Black. If White plays C, Black should respond at S2; White does not have two eyes.

Amsterdam!

In just a couple of weeks, I'm going to visit my Go teacher, Guo Juan, in Amsterdam!

I got duped by Easyjet though. They have lots of tricks, like advertising the cheapest flights, which are at 6 am, and it's impossible to get to their remote airports at those times without paying a fortune or staying in the airport all night. Then they have you pick the outbound and return flights separately, so it looks like the flight is cheaper than it is. It's not until later that they add in the extra £20 of taxes. They even charge an extra £5 to pay by credit card. So, in the end, I could have taken a British Airways flight from Heathrow for the same cost. And then I wouldn't have to pay the extra charge to take Easybus out to Luton.

So, they got me once, but I won't do it again.

Waterloo Bridge

Today I joined the throngs of people taking pictures from Waterloo Bridge, eliciting under-the-breath curses from ducking commuters. I cross this bridge over the Thames every day on my way to and from work. (The bridge I cross, of course, is not actually pictured. The one you can see in the above photo is Blackfriar's Bridge.)

It's not really possible to take a photograph without someone crossing your path. I'm sure my profile is featured in many tourists' slide shows. (The two people walking are actually on Waterloo Bridge; the bridge you can see beyond that is the Golden Jubilee Bridge, which is only for pedestrians. Though I am most certainly a pedestrian, I have yet to actually walk across that one.)

Before I figured out that I could increase the exposure to get more light in the photo...









After I figured out that I could increase the exposure to get more light in the photo.










I apologize for the blurriness. Instead of citing my beginner status as a photographer, I'll blame it on the wind. It was so windy that I could barely hold myself still, much less the camera. (This is true, though the pictures would probably have been blurry anyway.)




At several points along the bridge there are signs with outlines of the skyline, labelled so that you can figure out what all of these landmarks are. Since I live here I never stop to study these, so other than Big Ben, I can't name the buildings.

Not so big after all?

How long does one have to live in London before unexpectedly running into someone you know on the street?

Approximately three months: On Saturday, I saw Shu, an Imperial College number theory postgrad student, in Chinatown.

Putting my Chinese classes to use...

Last night, Hao (one of my Chinese flatmates) had a Chinese friend over for dinner. Determined to try out my Chinese skills, I asked him in Chinese what his name was. He said, "Wow!!" and then told me (in English) that his name was Qinnian. So I asked him in Chinese, "You're from China, right?" He said, "Cool!!" and then told me (in English) that he was from Beijing.

<sigh>

At least he understood me.

Where's Waldo?

Here are some pictures of my room. Can you find the refrigerator?

Jabes' Pond: A New Thanksgiving Tradition

Last week, my aunts Barbara and Kathleen flew me home for Thanksgiving, surprising the rest of the family. It was wonderful to be there. As if that wasn't enough, Barbara also gave me a new digital camera. So now I get to put my own pictures of London on the blog, instead of pictures stolen from other websites. This photo of Emma and me was taken by Kevin. Don't expect such high quality from my pictures. Fortunately, Kevin was able to give me a few pointers, so hopefully I'll be able to figure out some of the many features and options on the camera.

We often do some hiking at Thanksgiving and this year was no different. As usual, we hiked Inspiration point (see Kara's photos in previous blog entry). But this year, on a second hike, we decided to bypass the turn-off to Inspiration, and instead hike out to Jabes' Pond. Though less steep, it was a bit longer (2 miles instead of 1; we're not talking about anything serious here). I wasn't convinced that this "pond" would be worth the walk though. I was picturing some brown mudhole in the middle of the woods. What we got was a stunning lake shimmering in the sunlight. We immediately decreed this hike to be a new tradition. Of course there was an abundance of delicious food and excellent music back at the Inn. Robin even brought the brass: a french horn, two trumpets and a trombone. After a few shaky Christmas carols, Chrissy (on the trumpet) regaled us with the theme song from the Flintstones. While working on a puzzle, I was subjected to a practice music session: three hours of Mr. Bojangles on repeat. Mostly it was the usual rousing folk repertoire though, with an array of banjos, guitars, mandolins, bongos, washtub bass, autoharp, fiddle (thanks to Kirsten) and, of course, chicken shakes.



To my delight, I discovered that half the family is learning Chinese! Okay, so it's only Robin, Petie, Marty and Caryn & Nate, but Robin brought enough books to make it seem like half the family. He even brought brushes, so we got to practice writing characters.

Hopefully this dose of family time will be enough to tide me over until the next time I get to go home, or at least until I get some visitors (hint, hint).

Kobayashi Opening Answer

Well, I found one answer to my question on the Kobayashi opening (see post from September 30, 2006). Black wins by resignation, but it's most certainly not straightforward. I think the answer can basically be interpreted as "fight."

Here's how it starts:



Here's a bit more:



It's still not clear at this point (to me anyway) that Black has won the game. Indeed, the game continues until White resigns after move 259. The game was just played yesterday between Kono Rin (black) and Yamashita Keigo (white) as part of the 32nd Japanese Tengen title match.

Photos of Thanksgivings Past

I just remembered that I actually have access to some old Thankgiving photos from our events, rather than pictures filched from Silver Bay's website, though I must say that Silver Bay's website is much better than it used to be.

These first three are from Aunt Chris' photos.





There are more like this last scenic hiking photo from Kara here.

Thanksgiving

This weekend is, of course, Thanksgiving. My family will again be at Silver Bay, where we've been celebrating Thanksgiving for close to 15 years. We now get over 80 people for the weekend. Here I am in London, where people have been asking me, "what do you do for Thanksgiving anyway?" Mostly, we eat. Great food, all day long. There's usually a table set up with a jigsaw puzzle, which people work on throughout the day. Some people try to get in a few hikes to balance at least some of those calories and to appreciate the beautiful setting. And, of course, it wouldn't be a family event without loads of music.

Our event has been so successful and has grown so much that Silver Bay is now trying to convince its regular members to follow our lead. Hopefully our family will get to continue to use the space, but if they're successful in getting others to come, it could certainly change the dynamic.

Directions

I must look like I know where I'm going now; people have started asking me for directions. I'm always really happy when I know. "The London Eye? Just go down next to that tunnel to the path along the river and turn left." "Yes, the Old Vic is just up this street on the left... don't worry, this street will turn into The Cut at some point."

I got stumped tonight though. Now, looking it up, I feel really stupid. I guess the "royal" threw me. Someone asked me where the Royal National Theatre was. I pass this hideous monstrosity every single day, but all I could think of was the ornate Her Majesty's Theatre. I had to just shrug and apologize.

Go Stuff For Sale

In my meanderings about London, I've been happy to see that Go-related materials are available for sale. I found a games shop ("Playin' Games") around the corner from my office that has both equipment and books. There's the Chinese book store in Chinatown that also had equipment and a few books. Up on Euston Road, I passed a Chess & Bridge store. I saw chess boards in the window and immediately went over to investigate. I saw the name of the store was Chess & Bridge and was prepared to be disappointed, but then saw what I was looking for: a Go board (with "Go" written in Go stones on it) in the window! The store was closed when I was there, so I'll have to check it out some other time.

I've also recently found a few more potential local players. There's a mathematician here at King's on sabbatical from Spain who emailed me to say that he plays and is looking for clubs. So hopefully I'll get to play with him soon. I also found out last night that a couple of guys in one of the other postgrad offices here have recently started playing.

Oui oui

Paris is so beautiful. If you have the means, I highly recommend going.

When I arrived at my hotel around 2 pm on Sunday, the receptionist called a colleague of his to confirm the arrangements for the room that was reserved for me. As he waited for said colleague to answer the phone, he pulled a glass of wine from under his desk and took a swig.

My room on the fifth floor had a balcony (actually two--one from the main room and one from the bathroom), which looked out on all the other beautiful buildings on the street.

Mostly I spent my time (the time not spent at math talks) walking around. I stopped in at Notre Dame and walked through the courtyards of the Louvre. I didn't go into the Louvre because it was only going to be open for another hour, rendering its €9 entry fee out of my budget. I walked up the Avenue des Champs Élysées, which, dominated as it was by megastores, was made worthwhile only by the Arc de Triomphe at the end, which was indeed impressive. Wandering back across the Seine, I followed the glittering lights to the Eiffel Tower.

Yesterday was the first meeting of the London-Paris Number Theory Seminar. My advisor gave a talk about the paper of his that I'm reading and there were two other talks also about generalizations of Serre's Conjecture. Jean-Pierre Serre himself attended the seminar.

Afterwards, I wandered around a bit more, getting mildly lost in lovely cobblestone back streets, discovering beautiful little bookstores that made me wish I knew French and a tiny Japanese import shop that I was allowed to peruse even though they were closed and had delicate pottery scattered everywhere.

I walked up past Moulin Rouge, which was surely the least interesting bit of Paris I saw while I was there, and then headed back to the Gare du Nord to catch the Eurostar back to London.

Tagore Exhibit

"The Gift"

If you would have it so,
I will end my singing.

If it sets your heart aflutter,
I will take away my eyes from your face.

If it suddenly startles you in your walk,
I will step aside and take another path.

If it confuses you in your flower-weaving,
I will shun your lonely garden.

If it makes the water wanton and wild,
I will not row my boat by your bank.






"In the Dusky Path of a Dream"

In the dusky path of a dream I went to seek the love who was mine
in a former life.

Her house stood at the end of a desolate street.
In the evening breeze her pet peacock sat drowsing on its perch,
and the pigeons were silent in their corner.

She set her lamp down by the portal and stood before me.
She raised her large eyes to my face and mutely asked, "Are you
well, my friend?"
I tried to answer, but our language had been lost and forgotten.

I thought and thought; our names would not come to my mind.
Tears shone in her eyes. She held up her right hand to me. I
took it and stood silent.

Our lamp had flickered in the evening breeze and died.



I stopped by the British Museum this evening to see the small but stunning exhibit of Rabindranath Tagore paintings. In some ways, these small paintings are just doodles, but the deep layers of color are masterful and bring the abstract animals to life against a background of sorrow mingled with hope. These are a few of his many poems. I hadn't known that he had done any painting.



"Mind Without Fear"

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up
into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason
has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action---

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Fish & Chips

Earlier this week, I joined a few other maths postgrads for fish & chips for lunch. It was the first time since I've been living here that I've eaten fish & chips. One of the guys who came with us is from somewhere on the coast of England and said that you can't get really good fish & chips in London, but he said the place we went to (the Rock and Sole Plaice) was the best he'd had so far.

I'm suffering from too much beer consumption last night (some might go so far as to call it a "hangover"). Brenda invited "The Emperor" to join us for drinks at the pub. His nickname comes from being the rather demanding social organizer of another maths postgrad office down the hall from us. He's from Belfast and has quite a reputation for drinking often, long and heavily. The bar staff greeted him personally when we arrived. Not only did he join us, but another 5 guys showed up and I drank twice as much as I usually do on our Thursday evening pub nights. The whole situation seems more likely to arise in fraternity initiation than in the social life of some maths postgrads. I think the conversation might have given us away though.

Actually, Peter (The Emperor) is no longer The Emperor since he finished and now has a job for which he has to get up in the morning. Supposedly another guy named Peter in the same office has taken over his role ("Peter the Second"), but I don't think he has quite the same knack for the job.

Useless Joseki

My friend and I dubbed this star point joseki (1 through 7) the "useless joseki". Playing White or Black, we never felt satisfied with this joseki. Our misgivings (in one direction anyway) apparently were justified: this joseki is now considered "old". White should not choose to play this joseki. Why?

First of all, Black will press with 1 through 5. Here, White is pushing from behind--never (especially if you are Guo Juan's student) push from behind! Also, White is running along the second line while Black is building outside influence. This is good for Black.







Furthermore, if White plays elsewhere, Black has a severe follow up. With 1 through 7 in this diagram, White lives tiny along the side, but Black seals White in and makes massive influence on the outside. This is unacceptable for White.







White can avoid being sealed in as in this diagram, but now Black gets a really big corner and White is not even alive yet.










My question now is, what other choices does White have against this 2 space high pincer if White does not want to jump into the corner? The only other options given in my joseki dictionary are jumping into the corner or doing a double approach move, which, compared to jumping out, is generally similar to jumping into the corner.

THE math

From an interview of Karl Rove a couple of weeks ago by NPR's Robert Siegel:

SIEGEL: I don't want to have you to call races...

ROVE: I'm looking at all of these Robert and adding them up. I add up to a Republican Senate and Republican House. You may end up with a different math but you are entitled to your math and I'm entitled to THE math.

SIEGEL: I don't know if we're entitled to a different math but your...

ROVE: I said THE math.

Vote!

Happy Election Day!! Don't forget to vote!!

Even better, help MoveOn.org and call others to remind them to vote as well.

So much news

Fortunately, there's some good news amongst everything going on these days, like the Episcopal church making history with their first female presiding bishop and the Army Times calling for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation right before the mid-term elections.

There's bad news, also, of course. The situation in Oaxaca is awful (an interesting side note: it's amusing that Bush meets with other foreign leaders whose elections were fraught with charges of fraud). Speaking of Bush, his home state has started running webcams trained on the border between Texas and Mexico so that internet users can watch and report any illegal immigrants trying to cross the border. It's reminiscent of Mao's technique of getting people to turn each other in. Perhaps this will backfire though. Anyone who wants to cross has someone send in reports of suspicious activity in other regions to draw the border patrols away.

Yesterday, on my way to the Go club, I walked through a large rally/protest in Trafalgar Square about climate change. There was a reassuringly large number of anti-Bush signs. If you haven't already done so, you should take the time to read the excellent three part article by Elizabeth Kolpert that appeared in the New Yorker last year:
The Climate of Man-I
The Climate of Man-II
The Climate of Man-III

Last night was supposedly Guy Fawkes night here in England, celebrating or condemning (I'm still not sure which--perhaps both) the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. I had been told that there would be bonfires, but I didn't see any. There were some fireworks, but it seems that there are fireworks pretty much every night here in London.

Some song lyrics:

god told the angel "go see about john"
so he flew from the pit with the moon round his waist
gathered wind in his fists and the stars round his wrists
cryin' holy, holy to the lord
--Neko Case, "John Saw that Number"

Basic Corner Shapes

Basic L with a nostril and two hanes. Is it dead or alive or ko? (Evaluate for both Black playing first and White playing first.) What's the difference between a nostril off the long leg and a nostril off the short leg?





OK, so the anatomy is a little strange. But the "legs" just come from the legs of the L and the "nostrils" come from the fact that a basic L with two nostrils is alive (it has two nostrils, so it can breathe). This shape comes up in games quite often, so it's good to know. (By "alive", I mean even if White plays first.)

American Food

Brenda told me today that she was in a shop the other day that had a lot of international food, including a lot of American food. I was immediately suspicious. American food? She said there was a big display of something that she just could not believe: jars of marshmallow stuff that you spread on bread?!? Oh, god. Fluff. Exported. How embarrassing. I confessed that it was real, it was very strange, and yes, people actually eat it on bread. My little sister loves it.

I think she's just trying to get back at me (successfully) for making fun of her Halloween tradition. She said that when they were kids they used to dunk their heads in a pile of flour to try to get a coin buried in the bottom. It's like bobbing for apples, but, well, not quite. I had, of course, never heard of such a thing and doubted the safety of such a practice, and whether anyone other than she and her siblings had ever done this. Another guy (from England) in our office agreed with me. She checked with her boyfriend (also from Ireland, though a different part)--he had never heard of it either.

The Two Bù's

In Chinese class tonight, we learned how to say the Chinese equivalents of "Bush" and "Blair". Both names start with the same character, which is pronounced "bù", so the Chinese call them "liang ge Bù"--"the two Bù's".

We were practicing introduction dialogues and someone was having trouble properly pronouncing the character which, in this context, is translated as "honorable". It's used to formally ask someone their family name and is pronounced "guì", but this person kept saying "guǐ", so our teacher pointed out that "guǐ" means ghost, which we thought was perfect, since it's Halloween. So she told us that one way to say "Halloween" is "Guǐ Jiě" which literally means "Ghost Festival".

Homepage

By adding a search tool in the upper right corner of browsers, Google made it totally ridiculous to continue using their site as a homepage. This opened worlds of possibility. At home, I've been using Go Base for a while, merely to do their problem of the day when I first get up in the morning. These problems are generally easy and don't take much time. Also, I have many of them memorized by now. Still, it's good to wake up to a Go problem.

Now I have my computer in the office--a whole new homepage to contemplate. I tried Igo-Kisen for a bit, but their games are organised by country, so I don't get the most recent games at the top of the screen. I'm exceedingly lazy, so this just wasn't going to work. Today I switched to Go4Go, which lists new pro games by date. So now, before I start working in the morning, I can check out the latest pro games.

4 a.m. in the courtyard during a week off from classes

Yesterday when Brenda mentioned that we don't have to do tutorials this week as the students have a mid-term study break, I groaned. Sure enough, I was woken in the dead of night last night from a dream in which there was a TV in the background playing a Saturday Night Live skit mocking a Jerry Springer show.

Weiqi Update

I should be playing at the Central London Go Club today, but due to utter exhaustion, I'm staying home. In an attempt to get some work (i.e., math) done, I've put less time this week into Go and Chinese than usual. I am doing some Go studying today though, as I have a lesson on Tuesday and a lot of homework to do for it.

While playing Guo Juan in my last lesson, I played A in the following diagram.



I didn't really understand the move though, so my follow up was not very severe and she was able to settle easily. My homework is to read out the situation, i.e., why White can't respond at N3 and why, after White plays O4, Black can play N3, which is severe. This is only part of the homework I have for Tuesday.

I don't think the Chinese kids we played this summer cared at all that we posted our games with them online, but I'm afraid that my opponents here might stop playing with me (and rightly so) if I posted their games without permission. So I'm not posting my actual games, but I will continue to post interesting positions, problems and new joseki.

Today I'm looking at the first round game of the 61st Honinbo title match between Takao Shinji and Yamada Kimio. Takao Shinji (playing White) wins by resignation. After memorizing the game, I watched Guo Juan's audio lesson review of it. I like to memorize the games first, because it helps me to realize what it is that I don't understand about the game before I watch the review. It's generally the moves that I have a hard time remembering that I really don't understand. If I don't memorize it, I often just overlook those moves without trying to figure them out.


In this review, Guo Juan shows a few joseki. From the position shown on the left, Black has the attachment at C3 as a follow up. I know this joseki; I've seen it many times. Yet whenever I'm faced with it in a game, I always panic a bit because I have a hard time remembering what the final result looks like (and, therefore, whether I want to play it). The basic joseki is shown below.





Another joseki that Guo Juan shows in this review starts from White's pincer at 2 (shown on the left). I've seen this joseki before as well, but, as she notes in the lesson, it's a modern joseki, so it's not in the books and is worth noting. This is a simple joseki and worth having in your pocket. The joseki is shown below.