My SMM 2011 Experience

i've had a few people asking me about my SMM experience, and i guess i should just do a blog post so that i can refer them here rather than telling them individually.
on the whole, it was a pretty good trip, for the team. our group for the competition had Nirvana.cn, Neolution (runner up at ESTC 2011 Winter), and a local malaysian team who qualified (sorry but i can't remember the team name right now).
we secured sponsors for our air tickets up to KL and back, and for our hotel room for 3 nights.
we also picked up jinny from MiTH-TRY to be our last for the event, which was really fortunate because our last, Von, was hospitalised two and a half hours before we left for the airport.
we lost all the games as expected, but i do believe we made a decent showing of ourselves, despite having just lost our commander and drafter, huayan.
lots to improve on, especially for me, and i think that smm is a good new start for everything for us. if we manage to keep up the momentum.
glad to meet up with quite a few people -
the banleong malaysia guys who i haven't seen since i changed department;
tobi and moritz whom i havent seen since... forever;
MiTH-Trust and idealz whom i spent 1 week with at WDC;
and... everyone who came up to me/us for photos, autographs... =)

the games weren't comparable to those which i watched at WDC. i can't help but compare SMM with WDC, because WDC was the last LAN tourney i attended prior to SMM. both events have kok up marshalls, computer problems... which i guess is standard in the gaming world... but WDC had better games, and nicer play.

we hardly had time to relax because we spent most of our time waiting, waiting for opponents to appear, waiting for instructions, waiting for coms to be fixed, waiting for the connection to be restored...
just... waiting.
the only bit of amusement we had was on thursday after we reported, and before the opening ceremony, when we watched you are the apple of my eye.

i think that people in the position of power shouldn't abuse their position.
and that even if they wanted to, they should choose who they abuse. carefully.
the worst experience i had was with Underminer, whom i previously held a decent amount of regard for - not that i agreed with the things he did, or the way he went about doing things, but at least i understood that he had a passion for the gaming scene - perhaps part of it was for personal achievement, but regardless, i believe he played a part in growing the malaysian gaming scene.
my team was against neolution i think, and eliza just saved up enough for a dagger on her es and was walking back to the fountain to buy it for our final engage. the opponent pushed in 2 sides and we more or less just wanted to finish in style.
so she trots back to the fountain and her entire screen goes black the instant she clicks on the dagger in the shop.
we know we've lost the game, but we pause anyway and wait for instructions as to what to do next. whilst waiting, we ff-ed and gged, and no one can find a marshall to tell us what to do.
it seems that there are either 10 marshalls behind us or none at all, and one can never be found when you need one. i learnt later that underminer asked one of the media standing behind us where our marshall was. wudd... why would someone from the media know.
so after waiting for a while and trying to find out what to do, (do we sign off? where's the paper to sign off on? do we resume and let them down throne? do we wait at our seats for the next match? if yes, who is coming to fix eliza's com?) i get a little irate and start asking a random marshall what's going on. he doesn't know anything, and underminer, presumably overhearing us, trots over, tells us that "SHIT HAPPENS, SO PACK UP AND GET OUT NOW!"
granted the staff are under a lot of stress because of the pc and network problems, but hi, it's not our fault that things aren't going well for you all, and we at least expect some instructions on what to do. delivered politely, preferably.
i'm not a rebellious teen, i'm close to 30 and i've seen many events and competitions. i can deal with reason, and i expect to be treated properly. you don't have to give me preferential treatment, just be decent.
perhaps i shouldn't have bankai-ed him infront of all the players and marshalls, i have a reputation for doing that when i'm riled, but it was one of the final straws after
1. not being told any details about when to report
2. not having access to any of the rules for the competition
3. waiting 7 hours for our first match to start

we never got an apology, btw.

anyhow, SMM is over, and i guess that's the last of the DotA competitions that we'll get to attend.
it was, in general, as i said, a good experience for my team, but a bad event.

moment worth remembering : 7 pcs blue screening on the main stage in the middle of a casted game
phrase worth remembering : "SHIT HAPPENS, SO PACK UP AND GET OUT NOW!"

i've spent the past 2 days recovering from the lack of sleep over the weekend (and indeed over the last 3 months), and i'm not sure if i've fully recovered, but i'm feeling good from my 4 hour nap right now.
it seems that no matter how much i sleep though, i'm still quite incoherent.

SO, to make up for my bad writing, here are some good photos.

my ipad provides endless hours of fun at every event we go to!

photo bombing is fun!

fun with polaroids! jinny and I.

at the Changi Terminal 2 airport toilet! lol... full length mirrors ftw!

breakfast at Macs!

eliza and i watching stage match!

aloy and i watching stage match!

drafting ! photo credits : ah weii!

someon who asked to take a photo with us!

tobi and i infront of the Razer booth. credits to joinDOTA.com

stage match vs nirvana.cn. no idea what i'm yelling at! but sitting in the middle means i have to put my legs up, cos the table legs are in the way. photo credits to joinDOTA.com

concentration 110% ! stage match vs Nirvana.cn. photo credits joinDOTA.com

from gosugamers.net best of SMM day 2 photo album. =D