The Airbus A380

Thanks for the well wishes, everyone!

I've touched down safely in sunny Singapore.

I'll be checking out the local chess scene here. the Singapore Chess club is located quite near my brother's home (where I'll be staying most of the time).

My wife found the chess-set (nothing get past this woman, I tell ya!) but she allowed me to bring it over. *grin*.

Oh folks, I flew on board the new Airbus A380 so being naturally curious, I decided to give the inflight chess game software a whirl. Big mistake.

The chess games software on the A380 was torrid. The 3D chess game was .....urgh. It barfed (ran out of time!) on me after 10 moves on the Nimzo-Indian. :(

The 2D multi-player chess vs computer software was harder but for some odd reason, it keeps playing the Alekhine Defence. I lost to it about 3-4 times before I finally managed to work my head around it and beat it soundly. Stupid computer refused to resign in an K+Q+N+P v K endgame.

The airbus A380 has nice video screens aka. awesome. Guess what kind of functionality they have in there?

The screens allows you plug in via an Ethernet connection or/and a USB key. A good thing I brought my USB key - which had some chess PDF files on them (that I've downloaded for free from the Net). You can play Movie files, browse pictures and read PDF documents. So throughout the 8 hour flight, i was busy reading the chess PDF documents instead of watching movies like Rush Hour3 (hmmm...).

My wife who was sitting next to me, shook her head when she saw me. :)