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Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Weiqi

Well I decided to take a break today, went to my favourite bookstore at Bras Besar to look around. Found a guitar that I might consider buying, wondering if any one wants to buy an old guitar with electronics. (Geri if you still want it you can have it cheap).

Quite lucky, since the one that kind of suits me (but not quite) is only $500 bux. Half what I expected to pay and I'm pretty picky.

I bought a guqin CD today, which kind of surprised me, since it was the last CD in the store, and I've been listening to it. Found a place which sells pretty good Chinese Orchestra CDs, but what I really want perhaps is the more meditative sort of music. It's really nice. Guqin playing, but i see how it would be a terrible sort of music to perform. Even with excellent headphones like what I have, some notes are just so subtle you'd just hear silence with anything else. And i hear silences too, which makes me wonder if there are other notes there.

I think we need to find our feet again. The Cultural Revolution took away so many things we had. Took away thousands of years of history, historical artifacts and all. I guess all Chinese are encumbered by history, and we don't talk about this topic very much in sunny Singapore. But as an intellectual (like all university students should be), reading about the amazing loss of culture, and how people have banded together to record and restore this culture across national boundaries is incredibly heartwarming. It's like Go, it's like Guqin.

But these things do have their philosophical value. I was reading this book, a collection of interviews of Weiqi masters. (which i'm thinking of buying, but I will only buy when the exams are over, so that I can spend time devouring it) And there was this question that the interviewer asked: Do you think there are rules to Go playing? After playing and studying so many games, are there secrets to success that you can perhaps share with our readers?

I forget the name of the person who answered, but this is what he said: There are many sets of "fixed sequences". For example, the opening sequence "1,3,5" has been exhaustively studied and used for hundreds of years. At that time, it was without a doubt, agreed to be the best. But that was because for that style of playing, that was indeed the end of the road. However, Go Seigen came along and started with a new unorthodox opening that puzzled the grandmaster of the day, and he narrowly lost by 2 points. His opening showed that other forms of opening can be as strong, if not better, and that spurred the search for other openings that were better depending on the style of play. The strong ones survived, and the weak ones fell out of use. There are always ways to improve on "the best", and only by examining your assumptions can you make a breakthrough.

It is the same thing with "fixed sequences". Lots of beginners memorize these "fixed sequences", and play them, and that is good for them because they can focus more of their attention on the bigger issues of the day. But experts do not use "fixed sequences" at all. For experts, "fixed sequences" do not exist, and the only way to master the game, is to master the understanding behind each move, and the right sequence will come naturally.

To answer your question, there are two types of understanding in Weiqi. There is the understanding that comes from the written word. An expert has spent time crystallizing his understanding of the game into words and diagrams, to hopefully ease the learning curve of the beginner, so that he can focus on the things that matter most. However, there is also the understanding that cannot be put into words, that comes from years of experience at the weiqi board, and countless games. That form of understanding is not concrete, and changes with every game, as the player matures. Thus to your question, there are rules, and there are no rules at the same time.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Hall and Space.

I feel so happy now.
I have all the space in the world, friends all around me, eyecandy.
Life is a never-ending set of sensations. Emotions.
They are all there, they are all out there
For me to find, crystallize and put in my pocket.
Compress the world to a point,
and revel in the space.
A lifetime in a moment,
And forever in day.