Stormy greetings and complains

Pulling the curtain aside, a stormy Black Sea greets me. A cyclone felt like visiting the Romanian League in Mamaia, sharing with us the delights of heavy wind and rain. As chess players are widely known for their lack of imagination when it comes to complaining, let me not fall out with this presumption. 

Settling comfortably in an armchair right next to the wide window, I deliberate on what to start with. They say this weather makes it impossible to sleep at nights as it is way too noisy. Well, I can’t really relate, as I cohabitate with a nice pair of noise cancelling headphones, occasionally having flings with random earplugs. And the alert the government kindly provided us with in the middle of the night (read: early morning in chess language)? There’s a reason my phone enters the airplane mode whenever I reach the heights of my 6^th floor room, closer to early evening (read: approaching midnight). Continuing the weather criticism- how not to fall victim to the meteorological blues under these circumstances? Unrelatable to me as well- just find a photo of me smiling or looking happy during a chess game. I’ll spare you the effort and just tell you- no such thing exists. Weather blues are just part of my natural state. 

What should I complain about next then? Let’s pick food. “Too salty, undiversified, not tasty.” With this I can relate, and I’d even add that the two minutes distance I must overcome every time I walk through wind, rain and gigantic puddles to the nearby pub are very hard to bear.

The "CSM Iasi 2020" team.

Should we take the playing hall next? “Too little space, too warm, too cold”. What can I say? There hardly was any playing hall which had ever fully satisfied me. It would take something shockingly bad for me to get annoyed.

No hot water on some floors, with the only offered solution being to let it run for 30 minutes before taking a shower. That’s not ideal indeed. I see a few ways of fixing it. First- try moving to another floor, second- challenge your inner fighter with a cold shower, third- find a friend with a room on a different floor, fourth- train those prophylactic skills and try estimating the time you’ll need hot water, fifth- if all these are not possible, don’t despair, you won’t be the first chess player skipping showers for a whole week.

What else might there be left to complain about? People! The hardship of living among like-minded souls can’t compare to anything else… You whine about making some inaccuracies on your way to winning against a lower rated opponent while your companion replies that they didn’t manage to win at all.

Let’s now touch the money subject. “I get peanuts for playing here.” To this I can only remark that if it was money you wanted to get in this life, perhaps a career in chess was not exactly indicated. Looking to the restless sea I take another sip from my sparkling water and let this thought sink.

Certain that I could continue this post, I think I’d rather stop now and get back to how I initially intended to spend my free day. The plan was to enrich myself with some Salinger dialogues while listening to the ‘Discover Weekly’ playlist. I actually managed to read two of his stories before feeling the urge to complain. For now, I can just say that those hardships I hinted at while at the ‘People’ paragraph include more interesting dialogues with like-minded friends than the ones I’ve been trying to enlighten myself with. Perhaps the best is yet to come. As about the ‘Discover Weekly’, I ended up with my ‘Classical’ playlist, though music isn’t something I’d like to add to this list of complains, for now.

Stormy greetings from the Romanian seaside and may you have a week full of something else than grumbling!

Before (!) game 1.