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 6th
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.
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| The "CSM Iasi 2020" team. |
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.
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!
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| Before (!) game 1. |
