Journal►Events

North American Go Convention - Day 3

Introduction — Day 1 — Day 2 — Day 3 — Day 4 — Day 5 — Conclusion

Shortly before leaving the convention on Day 2, I had mentioned to Myung and James that if they were free and didn’t have plans, I would be happy to take them out to dinner since they didn’t know the area very well. They told me that they would let me know how their schedule was the next day, so you can imagine how excited I was when I received a phone call letting me know that they would like to get dinner with me! Since they were in the Annandale area, I suggested that we meet at the Bonchon to get dinner.

As per usual, the traffic to Virginia was not cooperating with me as I attempted to make my way to them. When I finally reached my destination, I arrived to find Myung and James outside with a local Korean go player. I was a bit bewildered at first as to why they were outside, but then I realized that the Bonchon was closed!!! Bleh. Definitely not what I anticipated. So we adapted and headed off to the Fairfax location.

Credit to HauteLiving.com

If you’ve never had it before, it’s just heavenly…. Just thinking about it is making me hungry….

Before I knew it, we were munching and chatting the night away. Time passed us by rather quickly because before we knew it it was 7:00pm and we needed to rush back to the convention. Fortunately we weren’t too far away, but I did feel bad that I didn’t do a better job keeping track of the time. Since we were running a behind though, we went ahead and dropped Myung off before heading off to do a coffee run.

Once we got back and arrived at the building, we ran into a local go player who had stopped by for the convention but was leaving since there were only dans upstairs. When James hit the button to go to the 9th floor and nothing happened, you can imagine my face as I could only laugh as I realized that we would have to take the stairs once again. On the upside, having James helped to make the climb pass by much quicker.

When we finally arrived on the 9th floor, I was relieved to see familiar faces and the tournament room in clear sight. As we made our way into the tournament room, I saw that Myung was already in the middle of two simul games. At first I wasn’t sure if we would be too late to join, but before I knew it James took a seat and setup his handicap stones. I quickly followed suit and before I knew it, I was playing my third official professional simul game (the second one with Joanne Missingham doesn’t count since it never finished and was played in a more blitz manner than anything else). Below is the game record from that night:

After I resigned, I spent a good 10 minutes going over the game and looking at Myung’s responses. I could only marvel in their simplicity as I tried to make my way through the game I had just played. I didn’t get too far because James and I decided to play a game together while Myung was focusing on his simul games. James is around 2 kyu, so I think the game took him by surprise when he learned my fighting abilities were not quite the same as a typical meek 6 kyu. I don’t have the game record for that night, but it was a fun game that was full of experiment and new ideas. =) Once all was said and done though, it seemed that Myung and James’ ride still had things he needed to do, so I was more than happy to give them a ride back to their hotel.

Once I dropped them off, I realized that I probably needed to get gas before heading home. I was a bit frustrated with past me for procrastinating this task because finding a gas station at 11:30pm is not very easy to do. My GPS was great at finding nearby gas stations, only they were all closed. (>.<) So after driving around for 15 minutes and burning more gas, I decided that it would be better to take my chances of getting home than getting stranded in the middle of Virginia. Fortunately for me, I ran into an open gas station before getting on a highway. So glad to know that I would not end the night stranded on the highway. Whew.

Introduction — Day 1 — Day 2 — Day 3 — Day 4 — Day 5 — Conclusion