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Back to 2009 King's Cup Live Coverage

2009 King's Cup Commentary: Before the Tournament

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Go to: Before the Tournament, Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Round 4, Round 5, Round 6, Round 7, Round 8, Round 9, Round 10, Round 11, Round 12, Round 13, Round 14, Round 15, Round 17, Round 18, Round 19, Round 20, Round 21, Round 22, Round 23, Round 24, Round 25, Round 26, Round 27, Final Round 1, Final Round 2, Final Round 3, After the Tournament.

I arrived three days ago for my first visit to Bangkok, and everything good that I had heard about the city is true. The people are friendly, the food is amazing, the city itself is an experience in sensory overload, and the prices are cheap. And people play our favourite game here, though they call it Crossword Game, for good money and with royal sponsorship, thanks to 24 years of hard work by Thai impresario Amnuay Ploysangngam. Why would anyone want to live anywhere else?

I won't recap what I've been doing for the last few days, but interested readers can visit my LiveJournal blog at

http://poslfit.livejournal.com/

This morning, I arrived a few minutes late for 10:00 A.M. set up here at the Siam Discovery mall. Staff had dressed the set the night before, and were busily doing sound checks, arranging equipment on the playing tables and making other final adjustments. I got my own gear set up and asked my local counterpart, Ravee Joradol to set up the network, not mentioning that I usually do that myself. We're sharing the mall's somewhat usable WiFi service four ways over Ethernet, except when someone forgets and powers off the Ethernet hub. I'm doing data entry on my MacBook, two brand-new annotators are working on netbooks, and we have a fourth laptop driving the electronic scoreboard and printer. That's not including what look like another 10 or 20 laptops that belong to staff, players or are running Zyzzyva. I slowly realize that the song that's blaring in the background is a Crossword Game anthem, I think, as I can catch the words "crossword game" amid the rest of the Thai lyrics.

The opening ceremonies run about half an hour, and include speeches from sponsors Brand's (makers of fine chicken extract) and the Ministry of Education, a traditional dance by a talented troupe of girls, and presentations of huge baskets of chicken extract to to thank sponsors and Canadian webmasters. Among the experiences I never expected to have in this lifetime is receiving a tastefully decorated basket of 18 jars of chicken extract on a display stand from a representative of the Thai Ministry of Education, and I imagine it will be topped only by my conversations with Japanese and Canadian customs officers on my way home.