1st time meeting a SC2 legend - Page 3

On April 03 2012 03:27 G-Virus wrote:
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I just wanted to give you guys a good idea of how much of a great, down to earth guy White-Ra is.

Our story begins last friday around 1:30pm (the 30th of march). Me and my friends Vizion (Max) and n0sp00ne (Romeo) were supposed to go to the Peter Molydeux game jam taking place this week-end, and stop by the mssmtl event over the course of the week-end.

I get to Romeo's place, his stuff isn't ready to go we are running late and I suddenly realize he doesn't look too good: ''We're going to the hospital, I can't breathe.''. Romeo has pretty bad asthma, has cats (which he got rid over the course of the weekend) and, which is kind of ironic, stopped smoking 24 hours before having this attack.

So we rush to the hospital, his breathing becomes more erratic and inconsistent, his eyes are watery and his face is bright red. My friend Max also has asthma and told Romeo to calm down, that he will get to the hospital and they will hook him up to an oxygen supplying machine and that max 4 hours later we would be out.

Needless to say, this isn't the way things turned out.

We got there, waited about 10 minutes. They took him in for the sorting process and he wasn't coming back. At some point, a nurse comes to us and tells us we can go see him. He is hooked up to all these machines, even with the o2 mask on he could barely breathe. His osat was below 88 out of 100 (100 hundred being the normal, non-asthmatic people) and was pretty low (Where is House when you need him). An hour passes, two, then three and still no sight of when he is getting out. So I was pacing, going outside to manage Tina, his girlfriend who was very. very scared and saying their son was asking for his father (Romeo, 2 yrs old, awesome kid.) Then came the news he wasn't coming out today, they would keep him in observation until the next morning, but then he would get out. Me and Max left, but Romeo had his android tablet, a wiimote, a classic controller, and a shitload of emulators so he was in good company!

The next morning, me and Max wake up (I spent the night at his place since we decided we would pick up Romeo in the morning and go to the Molyjam after that) and we call the hospital. Romeo still can't breathe, they're analysing his blood now looking for some sort of virus and things weren't looking up. He told us to go without him, but the molyjam was pointless without him since we were going as a team. But we figured we could still go see White-Ra. The worst part was that Romeo was hoping to get out in time for the show, which was not happening. He was pretty depressed when you consider the whole situation and the fact that he was REALLY looking forward to seeing White-Ra in the flesh. His fanboi aspirations wouldn't be fulfilled on this day.

So we leave St-Anicet (google map this shit) and head towards the island. We picked up RokTrooper and TorteDeLini and some hardware and headed for the venue at Concordia. There, we meet a lot of people including Elizabeth, the hottest redhead in the gaming industry, and we just run left and right to get the venue ready to roll on time for the crowd. I crossed paths with White-Ra a couple of times, but didn't want to bother him and was focused on the task at hand (although I gotta say I walked in the staff room at some point and he was filming with his iPhone. I say priviet, guys starts talking to me in Russian and soon realizes I had used up the full extent of my russian.).

Then the show started, White-Ra was on stage, me and Max were watching thinking how much is sucks for Romeo who is a huge fan that he HAD to have this attack on friday and miss the show. I had talked my way into having him sign a bunch of stuff for us but nothing concrete was settled at that point.

Then the second break came aounrd 9pm and I went backstage with this crazy idea: ''Can White-Ra talk to Romeo over the phone? It would mean a lot to him and-'' couldn't finish my sentence and he was ready to make the phone call right away and even asked me where the hospital was! He couldn't go in person since the hospital was an hour and a half away from Concordia but I really appreciated the thought nonetheless. So I set up the phone call, talk to Romeo for a bit (getting an update on his status at the same time) and then I tell him to be ready to have a second attack - passed the phone to Mr Krupnik. He spoke with him for a bit, wishing him a swift recovery and that next time he is in Montreal, he would meet him in person to show him some Special Taktiks! When I took the phone back, Romeo's voice was breaking up (it was later confirmed that he actually cried) and he was sounding a whole lot better, emotionnally at least, then when he first picked up the phone.

After the show, the whole crew went to Reuben's for chow and White-Ra took the time there to sign a poster for Romeo, sign my tablet, Max's t-shirt and even his Domo cap! We talked a lot, he asked me about Romeo, told him he had no idea on the impact he had on someone's life with what he did earlier and that I really, really appeciated it (Romeo is my long-time best friend and the godfather of my 7 months old son, Yanni).

All in all, what set out to be a great day turned out to be awesome and White-Ra, despite his rep and popularity, is one of the greatest on the e-sports scene, and probably the greatest on a human level. Don't ever change Aleksey ''White-Ra'' Krupnik and keep being who you are, for a lot of people on the scene, or otherwise, could learn so much from you.

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