A year in the life of....
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don_fabio
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In 2008. I was 23 years old. It was my graduation year. I studied to become Electrical Engineer and defended my work about LCD screens technology. That work was complete crap. I graduated not knowing what is a live wire and what is neutral and how to connect a simple switch. Hardly ever changed a bulb at home, never touched a screwdriver and I was not interested in electrical stuff, but I tought I could make a decent living of it.
In 2008. my best childhood friend was deeply into dealing weed and I used to be his sidekick. We were never ruff types or anything like that, just simple fellas who went sideways a bit too much. Especially me who played tennis and was very good in a school, really a decent guy. Anyway, he was moving around 2 kilos per month which was serious for where I live. It's funny how at the time when you hang around in that enviroment for too much you just think that is all normal and you will never get caught. On a few occasions was very close with police and I could really fuck up my life, but it was as someone above was watching and protected this dumb guy. My best friend ended up on heroin at that time and some other childhood friends too, later they all got caught by police and some did a small time. They came to senses later when they left all the depts behind. Loansharks were looking for them threatening to break their legs (no one really carry a pistol around in Croatia). I decided that was a right time to escape from all that.
After gradutation in 2008, which is still blurry to me, I spent 3 weeks every day for 8 hours in a food delivery vehicle with my friend just driving around stoned to death and delivering pizzas and stuff. I didn't know what to do with myself. One day my sister's husband who is an engineer on a tanker ship told me I should just go and try to work on a shipping vessels. When he told me how much I could earn my brain cells, or whatever was left there at the time, started working and I actually liked the idea. 11 years later I'm still sailing.
2008 I was a member of a rap group and that was my other hobby apart from all that stuff around the neighbourhood apartment blocks. Those guys I met in a highschool. We were 4 MCs rapping for fun and we were good. We had some gigs, signed the album and were about to grow in popularity. People liked us, but in Croatia rap is kind of underground and very few rappers made successful and long lasting careers. That always bothered me and I was never much of an artist type. I didn't think I have it in me in the amount you need to be successful. I also saw no money there. Seeing my parents struggle with money my whole childhood and growing up in a 40m2 with 5 of us (I have 2 sisters) it was tough and I had enough of it. I didn't want my family and me to go through the same again.
My rap friends went on to do the album. I was on a few songs anyway, we stayed good and recorded more songs later. I continued to rap as a hobby and a solo album came out of it, it's still on yt. They went to do another 2 albums, did many gigs and grew in popularity. Eventually they struggled to make good music later until they broke 2 years ago. One of those guys went solo and ditched the other 2 for not contributing at all and he is now way more successful than they've ever been.
In 2008 I still didn't know my wife, which now sounds like that time was part of someone else's life. We met in 2010. She wasn't an angel either and did drugs and parties too, but at that time we were already looking to settle down. I knew straight away she was the one. Married in 2013, got a boy in 2014. Still trying to figure out if we want more kids. This guy is driving us nuts, but we love him with all our hearts and give him all he needs, perhaps even too much.
In 2008 I was not playing tennis for 5 years already and I didn't even miss it even though I used to play every day for the past 10 years. I guess I was just tired of it. Now I kind of regret it for letting it go. A year or so ago I tried to get back at it, but I was so disappointed by my movement and execution and was runned down by this 11 year old and I felt maybe some other time I'll get back to it and try, I'm not too old. It takes so much practice to be good again, I chose just to exercise instead.
I didn't watch much sport in 2008. being busy with all that I wrote. Watched very little of tennis in Fed's prime. All I knew Fed was winning everything and was boring in mid 00's and then this kid Nadal came and made things interesting again. Watched that famous Wimbledon 2008 final in apartment in Dubai as I was stationed there. That was my first job after graduation. It was awful to watch match with arabic commentary, that I remember.
My best night ashore while sailing (better not mention bad nights) on a ship around the world came in Savannah US in 2009. Two of my shipmates had to go on a watch after a nice afternoon there near the boats and old town. I stayed alone and went to drink some beers. I went to nearby neighbourhood where surprisingly most of the people were white. I visited couple of bars, but it was all straight up boring for me as alone. Somehow I asked around and found there is some club down the road not far. I walked and saw all black people in the line. They told me it's some rapper performance that night. I said perfect. I quickly made friends and went straight to the dancing floor already tipsy and being 1 of max 3 white guys inside. It was awesome. One of the guys on a dancing floor had joints behind the ear and my hawk's eye spotted that and well I could smell it too. We became best friends in a minute, I just had to buy him some drinks. Later became more tipsy and gave one of the girls 100 bucks to bring some drinks for a kush friend, her and me. She came back with 4 dollars. When I said that to my kush friend he laughed and gave me a life lesson. He said never give b**** a hundred. Sometime around 2:30 I think they shut everything down I was like what, clubs work until morning in my place. I had to go back to ship and I went down some dark road in a search of possibility to call for a taxi. Everyone left the club in 2 minutes what seemed like. I got shit scared that this will end up bad, but as it is always with drunk people some gas station appeared in front of me and there was a taxi guy filling up a gas. He got me back to the ship and I left my camera on the back seat, but I didn't forget a bag with burger and fries which we bought in some drive in place.
Croatia played Turkey in Euro Cup in last 16 and lost on penalties. That was a sad day I remember.
Memorable movies from 2008. The Dark Knight. The Joker scenes I could watch over and over again. Taken was a really nice surprise. Slumdog Millionare was a really good movie.
I am not sure who to nominate next, maybe I can also think about it for a day or two.
In 2008. my best childhood friend was deeply into dealing weed and I used to be his sidekick. We were never ruff types or anything like that, just simple fellas who went sideways a bit too much. Especially me who played tennis and was very good in a school, really a decent guy. Anyway, he was moving around 2 kilos per month which was serious for where I live. It's funny how at the time when you hang around in that enviroment for too much you just think that is all normal and you will never get caught. On a few occasions was very close with police and I could really fuck up my life, but it was as someone above was watching and protected this dumb guy. My best friend ended up on heroin at that time and some other childhood friends too, later they all got caught by police and some did a small time. They came to senses later when they left all the depts behind. Loansharks were looking for them threatening to break their legs (no one really carry a pistol around in Croatia). I decided that was a right time to escape from all that.
After gradutation in 2008, which is still blurry to me, I spent 3 weeks every day for 8 hours in a food delivery vehicle with my friend just driving around stoned to death and delivering pizzas and stuff. I didn't know what to do with myself. One day my sister's husband who is an engineer on a tanker ship told me I should just go and try to work on a shipping vessels. When he told me how much I could earn my brain cells, or whatever was left there at the time, started working and I actually liked the idea. 11 years later I'm still sailing.
2008 I was a member of a rap group and that was my other hobby apart from all that stuff around the neighbourhood apartment blocks. Those guys I met in a highschool. We were 4 MCs rapping for fun and we were good. We had some gigs, signed the album and were about to grow in popularity. People liked us, but in Croatia rap is kind of underground and very few rappers made successful and long lasting careers. That always bothered me and I was never much of an artist type. I didn't think I have it in me in the amount you need to be successful. I also saw no money there. Seeing my parents struggle with money my whole childhood and growing up in a 40m2 with 5 of us (I have 2 sisters) it was tough and I had enough of it. I didn't want my family and me to go through the same again.
My rap friends went on to do the album. I was on a few songs anyway, we stayed good and recorded more songs later. I continued to rap as a hobby and a solo album came out of it, it's still on yt. They went to do another 2 albums, did many gigs and grew in popularity. Eventually they struggled to make good music later until they broke 2 years ago. One of those guys went solo and ditched the other 2 for not contributing at all and he is now way more successful than they've ever been.
In 2008 I still didn't know my wife, which now sounds like that time was part of someone else's life. We met in 2010. She wasn't an angel either and did drugs and parties too, but at that time we were already looking to settle down. I knew straight away she was the one. Married in 2013, got a boy in 2014. Still trying to figure out if we want more kids. This guy is driving us nuts, but we love him with all our hearts and give him all he needs, perhaps even too much.
In 2008 I was not playing tennis for 5 years already and I didn't even miss it even though I used to play every day for the past 10 years. I guess I was just tired of it. Now I kind of regret it for letting it go. A year or so ago I tried to get back at it, but I was so disappointed by my movement and execution and was runned down by this 11 year old and I felt maybe some other time I'll get back to it and try, I'm not too old. It takes so much practice to be good again, I chose just to exercise instead.
I didn't watch much sport in 2008. being busy with all that I wrote. Watched very little of tennis in Fed's prime. All I knew Fed was winning everything and was boring in mid 00's and then this kid Nadal came and made things interesting again. Watched that famous Wimbledon 2008 final in apartment in Dubai as I was stationed there. That was my first job after graduation. It was awful to watch match with arabic commentary, that I remember.
My best night ashore while sailing (better not mention bad nights) on a ship around the world came in Savannah US in 2009. Two of my shipmates had to go on a watch after a nice afternoon there near the boats and old town. I stayed alone and went to drink some beers. I went to nearby neighbourhood where surprisingly most of the people were white. I visited couple of bars, but it was all straight up boring for me as alone. Somehow I asked around and found there is some club down the road not far. I walked and saw all black people in the line. They told me it's some rapper performance that night. I said perfect. I quickly made friends and went straight to the dancing floor already tipsy and being 1 of max 3 white guys inside. It was awesome. One of the guys on a dancing floor had joints behind the ear and my hawk's eye spotted that and well I could smell it too. We became best friends in a minute, I just had to buy him some drinks. Later became more tipsy and gave one of the girls 100 bucks to bring some drinks for a kush friend, her and me. She came back with 4 dollars. When I said that to my kush friend he laughed and gave me a life lesson. He said never give b**** a hundred. Sometime around 2:30 I think they shut everything down I was like what, clubs work until morning in my place. I had to go back to ship and I went down some dark road in a search of possibility to call for a taxi. Everyone left the club in 2 minutes what seemed like. I got shit scared that this will end up bad, but as it is always with drunk people some gas station appeared in front of me and there was a taxi guy filling up a gas. He got me back to the ship and I left my camera on the back seat, but I didn't forget a bag with burger and fries which we bought in some drive in place.
Croatia played Turkey in Euro Cup in last 16 and lost on penalties. That was a sad day I remember.
Memorable movies from 2008. The Dark Knight. The Joker scenes I could watch over and over again. Taken was a really nice surprise. Slumdog Millionare was a really good movie.
I am not sure who to nominate next, maybe I can also think about it for a day or two.
mrzz
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That was a helluva of an year, @don_fabio... got to say that the story surprised me a bit at first, but then it made sense.
No bullshit. Always good to see that.
No bullshit. Always good to see that.
DarthFed
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For how boring my life has been, especially lately, I'd say you picked a damn good year. 2009 was one of my favorite years for many reasons but it also ended quite poorly mostly from my own doing.
I guess I'd start off by mentioning late 2008, I had graduated with a Masters in Accounting after 5 years of college and moved back home. I never found the adjustment of being back home for summer or winter to be difficult before but after graduating I needed out of there right away. So I used Craigslist and found a duplex to move into, super cheap and in not the greatest part of town but not too dangerous. I had two roommates, both girls and I would find out later in the year that one was a looottt of trouble.
2009 started off quiet enough, in January I was accustomed to at least seeing a Packers debacle in the playoffs but they missed it that year. Interestingly enough the Super Bowl was a fairly decent game but I still fell asleep for a couple minutes in the 4th quarter because I was tired from waking up for the 2009 AO final. Of course that final was huge too. I still had some glimmer of hope Fed would be able to pull it off but that was all gone by the time he lost the back and forth first set. The most telling part of the match was his serve. That was the first big match I remember where his serve was terrible. I think he ended at 52% first serves and even that was misleading.
Professionally it was my first busy season which for accountants is just code for tax season. I work for a small firm but it's still 6 days a week late January - early April and a little over 55 hours on average. Definitely enough to keep you busy. I also passed the CPA exam, finishing up in August 2009. There are 4 sections and I failed one so 5 total tests.
The life at the apartment was boring until mid way through the year as the aforementioned troubled girl had moved into a condo with her boyfriend. Given that and the stresses of work I joined a tennis league at a local club. I asked for singles and they gave me doubles. I played a whopping 10 matches and total cost of everything approached $800 so that is probably something I will never do again. I still had the crazy temper which really made tennis tough for me and made everyone who played with me pissed off too. I do feel like now I'm not as crazy competitive and crazy overall as back then unless we are talking chess.
And speaking of chess it was a great year for that. I had been playing Chicago tournament for the 5-6 years before 2009 and it was close to home and decent money. Then I caught wind of the World Open in Philadelphia. Played over 4th of July weekend and top prize in my section was $14,000. So I played a decent amount of chess after work too especially since there wasn't a ton else going on. For those tournaments I'd break down and practice online by playing longer games of 15 minutes each player or more. Usually I play 3 minutes or less.
The tournament was 9 rounds and I did the 3 day schedule (I think you can do 4 and 5 days as well). First game was total slop which is something I'm always afraid of since I literally almost never play long games or over-the-board chess during the year. It's different online especially due to quicker time controls. I survived the first game, a total blunderfest, and then found my form pretty quick and somehow managed to win the first 7 games played over two days. The only other one that was tight was game 7, the guy was down to seconds before move 40 and on that 40th move if he recaptured with his queen it was an easy draw and if he recaptured with his knight it was forced checkmate in 2. Lady Luck shined on my ass again
So going into round 8 I was up a full point which is surprising at a tournament that size but 7-0 was also a surprise. I expect a lot of myself but I'd be happy with 6 wins and a draw or 5 wins and 2 draws at that point. Match started at 10 AM on a Sunday...1 hour after Fed-Roddick Wimbledon final started. I saw the first set which Roddick won. I still wasn't worried and believe it or not the match wasn't on my mind in the slightest as I played round 8. In chess I have the ability of tuning everyone and everything out of the world when I am playing a game, especially a big one. I was white in round 8 and the guy went for the Marshall's Attack (some here will know that). And I fucking hate playing against that, especially then. My thought process is I can outplay this guy and I am also OK for a draw. So I declined to take the pawn which is definitely weak, and despite being worse out of the opening as white (always a shit feeling) I did manage to outplay him a bit leading to an even endgame. I had a knight to his bishop and we each had a rook and 5 pawns. Now bishops are often stronger than knights in endgames but there was no edge in the position. He pushed the pawns like a madman which I knew wasn't really sound yet I failed to punish it. And one slip up in the last 10 minutes or so missing a fairly routine move which cost a pawn and gave him a passed pawn gave him the win. It's still the longest game I've ever played, approximately 5 hours and 55 minutes as we both had less than 3 minutes on the clock when I resigned. Of course I was pissed off and it took me 10 minutes to even think about the Wimbledon final. Back then I texted a number for sports scores and got the Wimbledon score. Only allowed for slight relief as I figured I'd pissed $14,000 away.
Of note is that my mom came to this tournament instead of my dad. She was huge in calming down even as she heard my usual tirade after losing a game saying that I should kill myself, i'm a fucking retard, etc. I was shocked how well she handled it and the turnaround for the next game was barely over 90 minutes so we got a quick bite to eat. She just reminded me that one win would still be good cash (at least $10,500) something that was easy to lose sight of. And so I played round 9, I had black which screwed with my mind a bit even though I knew I'd have it. You'd have to play, and lose a long game and then have to play immediately after to really understand. I was thinking do I just play safe? I'm rattled and if I play aggressive and mess up right away I'm done. Losing and coming back to play right away just makes you question yourself and in previous and subsequent tournaments I've often lost the plot for a round or two after losing, and then recover the mentality the following day.
So I sit down and I'm playing a kid that had to be 11 at most, his mom is there all nice, kid is happy as can be and I probably looked like a serial killer to them. The kid had 5 wins and 3 draws, tied for 2nd place. He was also of the age where he had no value of money and therefore couldn't realize just how big this game was to his older opponents. In a way I thought that made it more dangerous. He played e4 and I though for a few minutes before going with my Sicilian, staying true to myself. And I ended up slaughtering him pretty quick. Just a clean game done in less than 2 hours which is very fast for classical chess. And so I had won $10,500...at least. The guy I lost to was playing the other guy who was tied with me going into the last round. His opponent had an easy win, up 2 pawns in a rook endgame and totally screwed it up leading to a draw. So I pocketed the full $14,000 after all! I remember going upstairs, relaxing first time in 3 days and turning on Sportscenter to see the news that former QB Steve McNair had been murdered by his mistress who then committed suicide. It was shocking as that was a QB I liked a lot and he was a great player when I was growing up.
So I went back home and low and behold the trouble had moved back in after breaking up with her boyfriend. She had kicked the other girl out mostly because she just wanted a friend of hers to move in. I knew there'd be more excitement but not to the degree there was. The girl quickly found a rebound in the form of a Las Vegas area drug dealer who was visiting home here in Milwaukee. I remember one night the roommate busted into my room at 2 AM and jumped on me and said "it's going to be loud so you are probably gonna want to get up". It was a small group but just tons and tons of drugs. Shit I hadn't even heard of. Thinking back on that night and the following weeks I kind of realized that life could have ended up differently if I had partook in a lot of the festivities.
I guess to describe the roommate: hot blonde, bulimic, drug and sex addict. And she was encouraging me to do all kinds of drugs with her. I knew myself even back then that if I lose control bad things will happen to me and others around me. I've never done a hard drug except ecstasy a couple nights later at the Strip Club with her new man. And then her friend did move in and you can guess...she had issues too. Mostly alcoholic also a hot blonde.
To give a good example of what these girls were like, one night I came home from work and they practically cornered me in the kitchen and said they needed a favor out of me. They wanted me to sleep with one of their friends who was engaged at the time to a "douchebag" who is definitely cheating on her. And like a good roommate I gave in. It was kind of weird and nothing I'd do again even though yeah the guy ended up being an asshole and they got divorced pretty quick. And then the alcoholic roommate who had just moved in liked to come into my bed at night after we were drinking. So it was a weird back and forth between engaged chick and hot trashy alcoholic blonde who just happened to be friends and coworkers. But hey life wasn't bad.
The other real troubled roommate ended up moving to Vegas for a bit with her guy and then she had a different friend move in with us. This time it was a guy and he was cool, still one of my good friends today. All 3 of us would go out basically every night of the week and of course I had just won a lot of money... not that they expected me to cover everything but I was generous and free-flowing. Money went pretty damn quick and mostly on non-essentials.
So then trashy alcoholic roommate found a sugar daddy and moved out. By the time it happened it was a good thing. Even as much fun as it was it was depressing in a way to deal with someone that irresponsible. She was 6 years older than me, about to turn 30, and she was just a total mess. I still was good friends with her and she introduced me to one of her friends from the bar she worked at. I of course went in with limited expectations. She just said this girl is "HOOTTT and funny, and smart". I figured the first one was true, the 2nd a possibility and the 3rd...well anyone is smart compared to her. But I met her friend and wow, it was no exaggeration. Gorgeous, hilarious, very smart, extremely talented too. I admit I got hooked pretty quickly which is not something that happens to me. I did not sweat her but we hung out a good amount for the following 4 weeks, it didn't take long to realize this was not a good situation. Total whore, drugs, drinking, anorexic, etc.
I basically did not listen to my instincts and it got me burned. She acted all into me and she was convincing but this was someone that just used people. And on the night of her 22nd birthday she invited us out to the bar with her. She left with some other dude who she had told me she was doing nothing with, this guy happened to be her best friend's boyfriend and here was me, single as can be and showering her with attention and holding dick in hand. Unfortunately that night I lost control. After she left I remember calling her a stupid cunt and wishing she'd die in front of her friends and fellow bar flies. I went to the bathroom and then just not controlling the rage, trashed damn near everything in sight from soap dispenser to punching the mirror. I then jumped in my car and was driving home, the drunkest I've driven home. I then got a call from the trashy roommate screaming at me and telling me to get my ass back there. Even though I almost made it home I was dumb enough to go back where they of understandably were going nuts on me and telling me they should call the cops. I just said I'd deal with it later and drove home. Thankfully the owner didn't charge me anything, he just said "you should stay away from her, she's awful."
The girl was confused why I would verbally abuse her which was funny. Anyways we were done and that night put a strain on my friendship with trashy roommate which isn't an awful thing really. They said it looked like a tornado had gone through the bathroom. I had never and will never be like that again. I've seen the subject of my rage over the past couple years at a popular cocktail lounge downtown. We both did a good job pretending not to know each other. It's not really a story I'd want to tell the Missus about especially when said girl is right there.
This all happened early November and thankfully I had a big trip right after going to Beijing for 10 days to visit one of my best friends. Hell of a trip, hell of a shitshow. It was probably a handful of the drunkest nights of my life. Never going to do multiple Bacardi 151 shots dropped in beer again. Blacked out pretty quick and apparently was pounding on my friend's bedroom door most of the night. So his girlfriend at the time (now wife) wasn't a big fan, didn't speak to me for a couple days. We saw tons of stuff too of course, did the Great Wall quite hungover, went to Olympics stadium (they had 2008 there), did the Forbidden City and Mao's tomb. We also went to Xian the ancient city which is well known for having the Terracotta soldiers. That was a hell of a site as was some of the temples and other things they had there. We stayed at a hostel which led to a couple memorable events. One night we were at a bar there and I turn around to see my friend's girlfriend and some random guy face to face with their middle fingers practically in each other's eyes. Of course both his GF and the random dude barely spoke English but I go up and push this guy off and just said "what the fuck is going on here?" Apparently in China if the F word is used in a sentence in any context it means F you. So this guy grabbed hold of a beer bottle as did his friend and he said tell your girlfriend to obey. By this time my friend (totally fluent in Chinese) had come back he was able to diffus the situation. Apparently Xian is very backwards and this guy didn't take well to being rejected and thus the near brawl.
And well I was still licking my wounds from the stuff back home and all drunk. We went to a club a different night out there and there was a pretty big group of girls and my friend wingmanned for me in Chinese for one that liked me for whatever reason even though she didn't speak a word of English and I don't speak a word of Chinese. I remember when my friend was telling me to go back to the hostel with her and me being like, "Matt, you're sure she wants to fuck." Awkward looking back on it.
The rest of the year after coming back was fairly uneventful. But I had burned through the money quick, and didn't pay any taxes on it originally. I was actually pretty much broke and I was still really not feeling right about what had gone down the past few months and the way I had become. So I ended up moving back home by end of December and was there through June 2010.
It was also the first year I went to a tennis tournament. 2009 USO and we saw all the big hitters over the 3 days we were there. Fed destroyed Robredo, Nadal beat Monfils and Novak beat Stepanek. Serena had a decent match too with Pennetta I believe and saw the Woz beat Kuznetsova.
I know it's a crazy long post but a lot happened and there is plenty more that sticks out that I omitted, got to keep some secrets right?
I nominate @Murat Baslamisli to tell us something about 1990.
I guess I'd start off by mentioning late 2008, I had graduated with a Masters in Accounting after 5 years of college and moved back home. I never found the adjustment of being back home for summer or winter to be difficult before but after graduating I needed out of there right away. So I used Craigslist and found a duplex to move into, super cheap and in not the greatest part of town but not too dangerous. I had two roommates, both girls and I would find out later in the year that one was a looottt of trouble.
2009 started off quiet enough, in January I was accustomed to at least seeing a Packers debacle in the playoffs but they missed it that year. Interestingly enough the Super Bowl was a fairly decent game but I still fell asleep for a couple minutes in the 4th quarter because I was tired from waking up for the 2009 AO final. Of course that final was huge too. I still had some glimmer of hope Fed would be able to pull it off but that was all gone by the time he lost the back and forth first set. The most telling part of the match was his serve. That was the first big match I remember where his serve was terrible. I think he ended at 52% first serves and even that was misleading.
Professionally it was my first busy season which for accountants is just code for tax season. I work for a small firm but it's still 6 days a week late January - early April and a little over 55 hours on average. Definitely enough to keep you busy. I also passed the CPA exam, finishing up in August 2009. There are 4 sections and I failed one so 5 total tests.
The life at the apartment was boring until mid way through the year as the aforementioned troubled girl had moved into a condo with her boyfriend. Given that and the stresses of work I joined a tennis league at a local club. I asked for singles and they gave me doubles. I played a whopping 10 matches and total cost of everything approached $800 so that is probably something I will never do again. I still had the crazy temper which really made tennis tough for me and made everyone who played with me pissed off too. I do feel like now I'm not as crazy competitive and crazy overall as back then unless we are talking chess.
And speaking of chess it was a great year for that. I had been playing Chicago tournament for the 5-6 years before 2009 and it was close to home and decent money. Then I caught wind of the World Open in Philadelphia. Played over 4th of July weekend and top prize in my section was $14,000. So I played a decent amount of chess after work too especially since there wasn't a ton else going on. For those tournaments I'd break down and practice online by playing longer games of 15 minutes each player or more. Usually I play 3 minutes or less.
The tournament was 9 rounds and I did the 3 day schedule (I think you can do 4 and 5 days as well). First game was total slop which is something I'm always afraid of since I literally almost never play long games or over-the-board chess during the year. It's different online especially due to quicker time controls. I survived the first game, a total blunderfest, and then found my form pretty quick and somehow managed to win the first 7 games played over two days. The only other one that was tight was game 7, the guy was down to seconds before move 40 and on that 40th move if he recaptured with his queen it was an easy draw and if he recaptured with his knight it was forced checkmate in 2. Lady Luck shined on my ass again
So going into round 8 I was up a full point which is surprising at a tournament that size but 7-0 was also a surprise. I expect a lot of myself but I'd be happy with 6 wins and a draw or 5 wins and 2 draws at that point. Match started at 10 AM on a Sunday...1 hour after Fed-Roddick Wimbledon final started. I saw the first set which Roddick won. I still wasn't worried and believe it or not the match wasn't on my mind in the slightest as I played round 8. In chess I have the ability of tuning everyone and everything out of the world when I am playing a game, especially a big one. I was white in round 8 and the guy went for the Marshall's Attack (some here will know that). And I fucking hate playing against that, especially then. My thought process is I can outplay this guy and I am also OK for a draw. So I declined to take the pawn which is definitely weak, and despite being worse out of the opening as white (always a shit feeling) I did manage to outplay him a bit leading to an even endgame. I had a knight to his bishop and we each had a rook and 5 pawns. Now bishops are often stronger than knights in endgames but there was no edge in the position. He pushed the pawns like a madman which I knew wasn't really sound yet I failed to punish it. And one slip up in the last 10 minutes or so missing a fairly routine move which cost a pawn and gave him a passed pawn gave him the win. It's still the longest game I've ever played, approximately 5 hours and 55 minutes as we both had less than 3 minutes on the clock when I resigned. Of course I was pissed off and it took me 10 minutes to even think about the Wimbledon final. Back then I texted a number for sports scores and got the Wimbledon score. Only allowed for slight relief as I figured I'd pissed $14,000 away.
Of note is that my mom came to this tournament instead of my dad. She was huge in calming down even as she heard my usual tirade after losing a game saying that I should kill myself, i'm a fucking retard, etc. I was shocked how well she handled it and the turnaround for the next game was barely over 90 minutes so we got a quick bite to eat. She just reminded me that one win would still be good cash (at least $10,500) something that was easy to lose sight of. And so I played round 9, I had black which screwed with my mind a bit even though I knew I'd have it. You'd have to play, and lose a long game and then have to play immediately after to really understand. I was thinking do I just play safe? I'm rattled and if I play aggressive and mess up right away I'm done. Losing and coming back to play right away just makes you question yourself and in previous and subsequent tournaments I've often lost the plot for a round or two after losing, and then recover the mentality the following day.
So I sit down and I'm playing a kid that had to be 11 at most, his mom is there all nice, kid is happy as can be and I probably looked like a serial killer to them. The kid had 5 wins and 3 draws, tied for 2nd place. He was also of the age where he had no value of money and therefore couldn't realize just how big this game was to his older opponents. In a way I thought that made it more dangerous. He played e4 and I though for a few minutes before going with my Sicilian, staying true to myself. And I ended up slaughtering him pretty quick. Just a clean game done in less than 2 hours which is very fast for classical chess. And so I had won $10,500...at least. The guy I lost to was playing the other guy who was tied with me going into the last round. His opponent had an easy win, up 2 pawns in a rook endgame and totally screwed it up leading to a draw. So I pocketed the full $14,000 after all! I remember going upstairs, relaxing first time in 3 days and turning on Sportscenter to see the news that former QB Steve McNair had been murdered by his mistress who then committed suicide. It was shocking as that was a QB I liked a lot and he was a great player when I was growing up.
So I went back home and low and behold the trouble had moved back in after breaking up with her boyfriend. She had kicked the other girl out mostly because she just wanted a friend of hers to move in. I knew there'd be more excitement but not to the degree there was. The girl quickly found a rebound in the form of a Las Vegas area drug dealer who was visiting home here in Milwaukee. I remember one night the roommate busted into my room at 2 AM and jumped on me and said "it's going to be loud so you are probably gonna want to get up". It was a small group but just tons and tons of drugs. Shit I hadn't even heard of. Thinking back on that night and the following weeks I kind of realized that life could have ended up differently if I had partook in a lot of the festivities.
I guess to describe the roommate: hot blonde, bulimic, drug and sex addict. And she was encouraging me to do all kinds of drugs with her. I knew myself even back then that if I lose control bad things will happen to me and others around me. I've never done a hard drug except ecstasy a couple nights later at the Strip Club with her new man. And then her friend did move in and you can guess...she had issues too. Mostly alcoholic also a hot blonde.
To give a good example of what these girls were like, one night I came home from work and they practically cornered me in the kitchen and said they needed a favor out of me. They wanted me to sleep with one of their friends who was engaged at the time to a "douchebag" who is definitely cheating on her. And like a good roommate I gave in. It was kind of weird and nothing I'd do again even though yeah the guy ended up being an asshole and they got divorced pretty quick. And then the alcoholic roommate who had just moved in liked to come into my bed at night after we were drinking. So it was a weird back and forth between engaged chick and hot trashy alcoholic blonde who just happened to be friends and coworkers. But hey life wasn't bad.
The other real troubled roommate ended up moving to Vegas for a bit with her guy and then she had a different friend move in with us. This time it was a guy and he was cool, still one of my good friends today. All 3 of us would go out basically every night of the week and of course I had just won a lot of money... not that they expected me to cover everything but I was generous and free-flowing. Money went pretty damn quick and mostly on non-essentials
.So then trashy alcoholic roommate found a sugar daddy and moved out. By the time it happened it was a good thing. Even as much fun as it was it was depressing in a way to deal with someone that irresponsible. She was 6 years older than me, about to turn 30, and she was just a total mess. I still was good friends with her and she introduced me to one of her friends from the bar she worked at. I of course went in with limited expectations. She just said this girl is "HOOTTT and funny, and smart". I figured the first one was true, the 2nd a possibility and the 3rd...well anyone is smart compared to her. But I met her friend and wow, it was no exaggeration. Gorgeous, hilarious, very smart, extremely talented too. I admit I got hooked pretty quickly which is not something that happens to me. I did not sweat her but we hung out a good amount for the following 4 weeks, it didn't take long to realize this was not a good situation. Total whore, drugs, drinking, anorexic, etc.
I basically did not listen to my instincts and it got me burned. She acted all into me and she was convincing but this was someone that just used people. And on the night of her 22nd birthday she invited us out to the bar with her. She left with some other dude who she had told me she was doing nothing with, this guy happened to be her best friend's boyfriend and here was me, single as can be and showering her with attention and holding dick in hand. Unfortunately that night I lost control. After she left I remember calling her a stupid cunt and wishing she'd die in front of her friends and fellow bar flies. I went to the bathroom and then just not controlling the rage, trashed damn near everything in sight from soap dispenser to punching the mirror. I then jumped in my car and was driving home, the drunkest I've driven home. I then got a call from the trashy roommate screaming at me and telling me to get my ass back there. Even though I almost made it home I was dumb enough to go back where they of understandably were going nuts on me and telling me they should call the cops. I just said I'd deal with it later and drove home. Thankfully the owner didn't charge me anything, he just said "you should stay away from her, she's awful."
The girl was confused why I would verbally abuse her which was funny. Anyways we were done and that night put a strain on my friendship with trashy roommate which isn't an awful thing really. They said it looked like a tornado had gone through the bathroom. I had never and will never be like that again. I've seen the subject of my rage over the past couple years at a popular cocktail lounge downtown. We both did a good job pretending not to know each other. It's not really a story I'd want to tell the Missus about especially when said girl is right there.
This all happened early November and thankfully I had a big trip right after going to Beijing for 10 days to visit one of my best friends. Hell of a trip, hell of a shitshow. It was probably a handful of the drunkest nights of my life. Never going to do multiple Bacardi 151 shots dropped in beer again. Blacked out pretty quick and apparently was pounding on my friend's bedroom door most of the night. So his girlfriend at the time (now wife) wasn't a big fan, didn't speak to me for a couple days. We saw tons of stuff too of course, did the Great Wall quite hungover, went to Olympics stadium (they had 2008 there), did the Forbidden City and Mao's tomb. We also went to Xian the ancient city which is well known for having the Terracotta soldiers. That was a hell of a site as was some of the temples and other things they had there. We stayed at a hostel which led to a couple memorable events. One night we were at a bar there and I turn around to see my friend's girlfriend and some random guy face to face with their middle fingers practically in each other's eyes. Of course both his GF and the random dude barely spoke English but I go up and push this guy off and just said "what the fuck is going on here?" Apparently in China if the F word is used in a sentence in any context it means F you. So this guy grabbed hold of a beer bottle as did his friend and he said tell your girlfriend to obey. By this time my friend (totally fluent in Chinese) had come back he was able to diffus the situation. Apparently Xian is very backwards and this guy didn't take well to being rejected and thus the near brawl.
And well I was still licking my wounds from the stuff back home and all drunk. We went to a club a different night out there and there was a pretty big group of girls and my friend wingmanned for me in Chinese for one that liked me for whatever reason even though she didn't speak a word of English and I don't speak a word of Chinese. I remember when my friend was telling me to go back to the hostel with her and me being like, "Matt, you're sure she wants to fuck." Awkward looking back on it.
The rest of the year after coming back was fairly uneventful. But I had burned through the money quick, and didn't pay any taxes on it originally. I was actually pretty much broke and I was still really not feeling right about what had gone down the past few months and the way I had become. So I ended up moving back home by end of December and was there through June 2010.
It was also the first year I went to a tennis tournament. 2009 USO and we saw all the big hitters over the 3 days we were there. Fed destroyed Robredo, Nadal beat Monfils and Novak beat Stepanek. Serena had a decent match too with Pennetta I believe and saw the Woz beat Kuznetsova.
I know it's a crazy long post but a lot happened and there is plenty more that sticks out that I omitted, got to keep some secrets right?
I nominate @Murat Baslamisli to tell us something about 1990.
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don_fabio
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mrzz
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Crazy long is a virtue when the post is good. And that was a damn good one. We can imagine the redacted parts...
Moxie
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Shall we revive this thread? Things are still quiet around here, and I just got a "like" from @imjimmy for my post on this thread, so I'm going to be brazen and go ahead and nominate Jimmy for the next post, and I'm going to say just pick your own year that you want to tell us about, if you're interested. Anything since 1939.
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