A Portrait of the Chess Player as a Young Man

I had abandoned my chess board for more than 6 years. Of course, I used to play chess on Yahoo sometimes. It was fun for me to play chess in my teenage time. But I am not so much crazy about chess anymore.

At first, I didn't know that the world of chess is so large. I thought it was just a game to guess a few move ahead. Later, I realized that a good chess player need to understand theories of chess very well and also need to construct a beautiful strategies on board. There were evidences. Deep Blue and Deep Thought, super computers which can calculate millions of moves per second cannot beat world chess champion, Garry Kasparov in every game.

However, it is not an easy job for a chess player to sit at chess table for more than 3 hours and concentrate only on chess game. It is really a turf job. Chess players need to be very strong. Garry Kasparov take care of his health very well. He swam around two miles a day, avoided taking Red Meat( like Beef and Pork) and avoided alcohol and tobacco.

I also avoid taking alcohol and tobacco in my teenage time solely because of Chess. I played 2 to 4 hours a day. I spent most of my weekend at Chess Club. I participate in all the tournaments held at my city. I bought so many chess books to study at my free time. I dreamed to become a Grand Master and dreamed to participate in FIDE World Championship tournament. However, I had never become a good chess player. I lost in most of the games I played at tournaments. I made blunders in my moves in every games.

There are three types of faults in chess. First type of fault is call "error" and it is just a theoretical fault and only Grand Masters or very good chess players can notice those type of faults. Second type of fault is called "mistake". Most of the professional chess players can notice mistake. Last type of fault is called "blunder". It is a great mistake that every chess players (even amateur) can notice it. This is just a digression.

I made blunders when I had opportunities over my opponents. So condition of games become reverse and I lost eventually. Finally I took a break from Chess when I lost games in Under-20 new generation chess tournament.

Nutrition

Yesterday, I read some tips in The Optimum Nutrition Bible and it enlightened me some of the things that I didn't know. I found the following tips useful.

- It will be better to eat a few amount of food many times than a large amount of food a few times.
- Don't eat according to your schedule. Eat when you are hungry.
- Eat one apple a day
- Before you eat vegetables, wash out thoroughly with vinegar to clear away the insecticides.
- Don't eat heavy breakfast.
- It is better to eat fresh food then cooked food.

I was visited to my friend's house a few months earlier. His wife is a nutritionist. I found one book in their living room which describe about fish and nutrition. I found that the following things in the book look interesting.

It is better to eat fresh fish from pond or river just after catching and it will lower risks of heart diseases. Eskimos used to eat that type of food and less percent of people were suffered from heart diseases. However, this property cannot be found in the fish in artificial fish pond or commercial fish ponds. Nature is sometimes hard to understand.

Who Invent the Internet?

I have recently seen so many arguments on Rockson's Blog about who invented Internet. Some people believe American invented Internet and some people believe European invented Internet. I write this entry to add my two cents on this issue.

I read about this issue in "Angles and Demons" of "Dan Brown" a few months ago. I was surprised by Dan Brown's claim that CERN (Centre Europeen de Recherche Nucleaire) have invented the Internet. As far as I know, I believed that United State Department of Defense invent TCP/IP and idea of Internet. I was curious why CERN claim themselves as an inventor of Internet. I have found out later that CERN have make a major contribution to world wide web (WWW) and Internet we used nowadays.

The main intention of inventing Internet by United States is to have a reliable communication system that can survive in Nuclear War. Internet use packet switching technology which people once scoffed as an idea that can never be happened. Finally, Department of Defense can successfully invented TCP/IP and packet switching technology.

However, CERN contribute so many thing to Internet that we are using currently. URL (Uniform Resource Locator), HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) and WWW (World Wide Web) are invented by CERN. So the Internet we used today cannot be that easier without the contribution from CERN.

So I have my own stance on the argument who invent the Internet. TCP/IP was created by United States and World Wide Web was invented by CERN. So the Internet we used today was combination of TCP/IP invented by United States and WWW invented by CERN.

CERN is now called the European Organization for Nuclear Research. It is an international body contributed by 20 European Countries.

Be with Me

I went to Shaw Cinema to watch movie yesterday. My girlfriend said she bought tickets for romantic movie. She was not sure whether it was Korean or Japan movie. Surprisingly, it was a rare movie that made in Singapore.

The movie used a lot of expression to describe what they want to say. The actors and actresses rarely speak in the movie. I didn't realise why it was rated "M18" in the first place. But I think it rated M18 because of its excessive description on romance especially lesbian like love.

"Be With Me" was based on the life and autobiography of "Theresa Chan", Singaporean lady who lost her hearing and sight since she was young. However, I was surprised to know that she can adopt English as second language after she lost both eyesight and hearing. I admired greatly to her perseverance.

There are two others stories together with the stories of "Theresa Chan" in the movie. One was a security guard who crushed in a pretty lady and another was two JC girls met on the chat line and fell in love later. Its ending of two stories was somewhat ridiculous. One of the JC girls jumped to make suicide but she fall on security guard and he died. They should make better ending than that plot.

I think they want to illustrate the beauty of love in that movie. But I felt that illustration is not clear enough. The background music was not strong enough to support the movie plot. It make the audience boring. But there is something left in my mind after watching that movie.