Time to catch up on local chess. There are several local tournaments that have been postponed.
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My howler stories aside, the World Youth 2008 was definitely a memorable experience. Players and arbiters were treated like VIPs. The event was so big it was highlighted on Vietnam’s national TV (live!) and even appeared in front page headlines in local newspapers. Tell me if you know any other country that gave such media coverage to chess.
Despite some hiccups I must say the event was very successful. I’m proud to be part of the event even if it was only a small part.
All the games, results, and highlights can be found at ChessASIA.net
Photo gallery: http://chessASIA.net/gallery/ White Squall buy
Official tournament site: http://wycc2008.vietnamchess.com
Tournament blog: http://2008wycc.blogspot.com
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Cybermutt t’s departure time and I’m not brain dead enough to miss my flight back to Malaysia.
However there was one last mistake to make and it was a big one. Yasser Seirawan calls bad blunders a howler and this qualifies as one. What I did was plain silly, stupid and absent minded.
There were two x-ray machines to go thru before reaching the departure gate. I had two bags to carry I left one at the x-ray machine and walked on. One bag had my notebook and the other a projector that was used for the FIDE seminar. I left the notebook bag behind!
I reached the departure hall and since there was one hour to kill I just sat down to relax. 15 minutes before boarding time I realised my bag was missing. I rushed back to the X-ray machine and was told that I should go down to the ‘Lost and Found; section. 
The problem was I had to go 2 floors down and had to leave my passport while leaving the departure area. It was not a short distance. There were no direct elevators or lifts from the departure hall. I had to go out of the departure hall and get to the lifts at the end of the airport to go down. Halfway there I knew it was a bad idea.
With only 5 minutes left I knew I will miss my flight if I go all the way to the Lost and Found office. I turned back and went back to the X-ray machines. To compound matters, the officer holding my passport was not there. He was off somewhere else settling a problem with some other passenger. He was nowhere in sight so I panicked. The guard who thought I was cutting queue told me to step back into the line. Luckily at that very moment the custom officer returned to his seat and let me go thru and gave me back my passport.
By then it was already 7.00pm – the time for my flight!! The plane was leaving and here I was searching for my bag. Luckily I spotted the bag beside the X-ray machine. I told the customs officer it’s mine but they would not let me take it. The guard told me to let go of that bag and leave it there. I complied.
Since I was carrying the other bag I had to go thru the X-ray machine once again while one of the officer called his superior. This was an agonising few minutes looking at the two discuss in Vietnamese. Meanwhile, the PA was announcing “Ooi, Andrew. Can you please report to the boarding gate 16. Final call for AK147, Air Asia fligth to Kuala Lumpur” over the speakers. Finally they asked me what was the content and I described my Dell notebook and they gave me my bag. I ran like crazy to gate 16 only to find everyone had boarded the plane and the doors were closed.
Sweating profusely and out of breath, I told them I’m “Ooi, Andrew” and showed them my boarding pass. The girl shook her head and told me “not to be late next time”. Gratefully, I got on the plane only to find it full. Of course the plane should have one seat and I kept looking until found it. There was a big group of Indonesian passengers going to KL for some seminar on tourism/travel and with their huge carry-on bags they brought took up the entire overhead baggage compartment. I had to put my bags on my lap and under the seat. It was definitely cramped and uncomfortable but I told myself in just 1 hour 50 minutes – this ordeal will be over. Other passengers were asked to transfer their bags to the cargo compartment. That delayed the flight for another 30 minutes while the bags were tagged and brought down to the cargo of the plane.
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All in all, I was lucky I did not lose my bag and reached KL safely. The cab was expensive from the airport to home but I didn’t mind. I didn’t want to take the hassle (and more opportunities for ‘howlers’) by taking the cheaper bus back to KL Sentral.
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I slept on the seats of the airport. No shame here as the other benches were also occupied by other sleeping passengers. Russia arrived at the airport in the wee hours of the morning at 3am. The kids slept on the chairs. They left at 6am.
I got about 2 hours of sleep and I don’t feel tired or sleepy – not a good thing as I will be doing more stupid things without realising it. So I tried to force myself to sleep again after waking up at 3am. Got another 2 hours of sleep.
Walked around the airport at 6.30 am when daylight is out.
That’s the Parkson building I went to last night for dinner.
It’s starting to rain outside outside.
Inside the airport there is a small cafeteria.
There are sandwiches, buns, pastries and other instant noodles in a cup.
But it’s a little too pricey for me. USD 7 for a Cheese and Ham sandwich!
Thanks to Camilia’s mom I had bread, serunding and sambal ikan bilis for breakfast. Pretty filling! I wanted to walk over to Parkson again for lunch but I wasn’t hungry so I skipped that.
This is the first time I’ve ever had serunding! It’s tastes just the chinese chicken floss but with a hint of spice flavour.
Wolved down in 10 minutes ! 
It’s still raining outside. Got an SMS saying that the website needed urgent updates and I had no choice but to leave my luggage with the airport luggage service and take a cab to the nearest cyber cafe. That costed an arm an a leg. Probably equivalent to a full lunch, breakfast and dinner in the airport cafe. 
What to do? I have to pay for my ‘blunders’.
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Bought some cookies and menthos to much on while waiting …
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AVP: Alien vs. Predator dvd Dane Cook: Isolated Incident divx Bought them at Parkson’s home supermarket store. It’s 6,500 VND each for the biscuits and and 8,500 VND for the Methos. I bought it using the money I withdrew from my ATM card. I remembered that my PayPal Debit card also acts as an international ATM card wherever there is the ‘Cirrus’ or ‘Mastercard’ logo. How convenient..
Interesting to note that the Jack n Jill Cream ‘O’ biscuit is made in Malaysia
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One good thing about the Ho Chin Minh airport is that it’s situated right in the middle of the city. A short walk outside and I’m in Parkson shopping centre which houses a food court and some fast food. The shopping is just a stone throw away from the airport but my problem is I have luggage to carry and there is no place to keep them at the airport. I left my luggage with the Chinese team as their flight is in more than an hour’s time.
Ordered a chicken hamburger and a piece of chicken from the food court. It’s Vietnam’s clone of Mc Donald’s I guess. It’s called the Loteria. The set value meal is about 51,000 Vietnamese Dong (VND) .
In Philippines, Mc Donald’s ‘clone’ is called Jolly Bee which is more popular than Mc Donald’s itself.
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Sitting down alone now I am looking thru some pictures I took just before the Malaysian team left for KL.
I bet you don’t see this often at any airport.
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Blitz chess while waiting. A foreign participant (8 years old) our junior player, Nur Nabila.
Time flies when you are playing blitz. Looks like fun but I didn’t feel like playing chess after my ‘blunder’ over the flight times. Anyway, it was entertaining just watching. Before I knew it, it was time for the Malaysians to leave.
Now I’m all alone.
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Since I have more than 20 hours to kill, I might as well blog from the airport. There is no Internet here so this blog posts will be at least a day late. One of the resons I like Windows Live Writer as you can write blog posts and save to be posted later.
I see many participants from the World Youth Chess Championship come and go. This girl who just plugged in her notebook is a chess player too as I’ve seen her many times in the playing hall. I also saw the German team leave. The China team is just in front of me and waiting for their flight for more than an hour. Most of the team leave about 6 hours before flight time and the trip is about 3 hours. When they arrive here they most probably have to wait about 2-3 hours.
Some of the participants recognize me and ask when is my flight and embarassingly, I tell them it’s tomorrow.
I wish time would pass faster..
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Today was the most embarrassing incident I had in Vietnam and it happened on the last day of my visit. I thought my flight was tonight at 9:40pm and I followed the rest of the Malaysian junior team to the airport who were catching the 7:00pm plane. It turned out my flight was for tomorrow. What a stupid thing to overlook. I knew my return date was 1st Nov before coming to Vietnam. However since everyone was leaving on the 31st, I had just forgotten the date and thought today was already the 1st.
The past few nights I had little sleep and I was a little proud of the fact I can go without sleep and not feel sleepy. However clearly it looks like my brain functions have dropped to almost nought at times. For example – today’s mixup of the flight date.
Second accident
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The other incident was when I deleted ChessASIA.net first page by accident when I was uploading some files. I am sure under normal circumstances I would never have done such stupid thing. To make matters worse I didn’t have a backup of the main page. I panicked. Luckily, Google came to the rescue as I remembered that the search engine often keeps a copy or cache of the front page of website it indexes. I managed to restore the first page and the site was only down for a few minutes.
Bye-bye Malaysia
The Malaysian team have caught their 7pm flight but I’m still here at the airport trying to figure what to do. I could go out and get a cheap hotel in Ho Chin Minh city for the night. The second choice is to brave it out and stay overnight to catch my flight tomorrow.
Staying the night at airport
After hearing some horror stories from Encik Azman about getting fleeced by cab drivers here I think I’ll stick around at the airport and save the hassle of finding a hotel for the night. All I need is 10-20 minutes naps every 4-5 hours. I’m grateful for the fact that the airport has many powerpoints so I can plug in and use my notebook. Too bad there’s no Internet though
Bread, water, kacang and sambal.
Also thanks to Camilia’s mom for leaving me with the above food to munch on while I wait at the airport. Since mineral water bottels cannot be taken on flights, the team have given me thiers and I have 10 new mineral bottle of water. No problem with dehidration here. Ha ha.. it’s like the game of ‘Survivor’ but in the airport.
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