The End Of My Holidays

No chess related post today.

As they say, all good things must come to an end. And such it is with my stay here in sunny, humid Singapore.

The thing I really miss most of all is my family, my in-laws and most of all, my brother.

It's been fun but alas, the 3 weeks flew by so quickly I felt like I really didn't have much of a holiday.

I've not been keeping up to date on working on endgames. Instead, I got sidestracked by the many many days I spent shuffling to and fro my parents, my in-laws and my brother.

By the way, I've did some reconnaissance on the local bookstore scene. If you're looking for good chess books, you can pretty much forget it. Borders downtown doesn't contain nice chess books although if you like to order them in, you can - it just takes a couple of weeks.

Kinokuniya at Ngee Ann City (it's not a city - it's actually a shopping centre) stocks slightly more chess books but the section is really hard to find, being placed at the back in a rather obscure location.

However, the chess books in the local libraries are frankly very good. They contain a nice spread of books, from Kasparov's My Great Predecessors to Kutov's Think Like A Grandmaster.

For the last few days, I logged onto FICS and played a few games. I noticed that there are some players using some kind of automated bots to constantly challenge you if you lose. It's kind of funny, you resign, your opponent challenges, you accept, resign, he challenges again.... repeat ad infinitum.... and the move frequency is odd. For example, simple moves take a longer time than you would normally expect and complex positions takes the same average time as an opening move which only shows that there's a silicon behind that brain - some people just have too much time on their hands.

In the meantime, I'll be packing my bags and getting ready for the trip home. Speaking of which, my study term starts on Feb 14. Drats.