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Hey guys,
I've decided to write a blog about my two month stay in Korea. Basically, I'm currently on a two month trip to train in the MVP house. Mostly I'm doing this blog for my own enjoyment because I do enjoy writing, but hopefully you as a reader can learn a little something from here as well. I'll aim to write one of these every week or so.
So, let's start from my arrival in Korea. I flew in from IEM Taipei with Rain, jjakji and Sacsri, and they helped me get a taxi to the MVP house in Incheon. The taxi dropped me off close to the apartment building, but the only address I had was in Hangul so I wasn't really able to figure out where it was despite being right there, so I had to find a coffee shop with free wifi and desperately message Seed and Choya on twitter to try to find me. After about a half hour, I was finally able to make contact and arrived at the house.
The Practice Room
The house is basically laid out as follows: You come in through the front door and enter into the practice room (shown above). The kitchen is to your left, and down the corridor are three bed rooms with bunk beds (and exceptionally comfortable mattresses!). There's also two bathrooms with showers and a laundry machine as well, so basically everything you need. Meals are provided in the Dota team's apartment, which is 8 floors up, so we take the elevator up there for lunch and dinner. I haven't really explored their apartment but from what I've seen it looks very similar in layout minus the addition of a dinner table that takes up some of what would be the practice room.
I arrived in the evening, but was pretty pumped to be in Korea and in a team house with so many fantastic players, so I grinded out about 20 ladder games on a new account to get it up to reasonable MMR before bed. On the second day, MVP played their last round 1 match in Proleague, so I tagged along and got to explore the Nexon arena a bit and hang out with my boy Balloon. After the match I had a chance to chat with Brendan and Moonglade as well, so that was quite nice. I'd never met Brendan before, but he's a really chill guy; very down to earth.
Day 3 was when practice started in earnest for me, but the MVP players had 5 days (maybe 4?) of vacation time after Round 1, so I was pretty much the only person consistently playing SC2 for those days (except occasionally Departure, that guy is dedicated and ladders a LOT). Everybody here has been really welcoming and while nobody has perfect English, I'm pretty good at Konglish having had Sacsri and Jjakji come to the mYi house with practically zero English themselves, so communication isn't really all that difficult.
Monday was the first day of earnest practice for the rest of the players. We started with our in-house ranking matches, which are essentially structured as follows: Every day, each player will play two games with each other player on a designated map. The map is different every day until we've gone through the entire map pool (so, for example, Monday was 22 games on Catallena). At that point I'd already noticed some minor improvements as well as that I was playing some of my best Starcraft (motivation works wonders!), so I was pretty excited. When I heard that the first day was Catallena I was a little bit sad, as it's probably my least favorite map and I REALLY didn't want to go 0-22 on my first day and leave a terrible impression.
Overall, there were very many stomps, as expected, but I still feel like I made a very positive impression. With better control of my nerves and slightly improved play I easily could have taken 3-4 games (including one off Marineking). What solidified the day as a really good day for me, as well as provided proof that I am improving (or at least playing my very best right now), was my second game against Panic, where I played completely straight up macro and absolutely destroyed him in a 25 minute game. Considering he was Code S this season, not bad. Overall, my score was 1-21, but I succeeded in my goal of not going completely without a win, though it was at the expense of making Panic the laughing stock of the house for the rest of the night.
We haven't played the rest of the maps yet, but I'm hoping that I can win at least 1 map on each map and maybe get up to 3 or 4 wins on my better maps. I've made one of my goals to take a map off each of the people in the house before I leave.
Today, ranking matches were cancelled (didn't really get the reason, they had trouble articulating it to me so I just nodded and agreed haha), but we did get this absolutely gigantic shipment of basically every drink you could imagine. Vitamin water, Hot6ix, some god awful thing called Milkis, coffee drinks, juice, pepsi, gatorade, etc. etc.
This is not including the 200+ bottles of water that are in the kitchen.
This has turned into a bit of a ramble at this point so I'm gonna cut it off there. If there's anything in particular people would like to hear about, let me know! I'll aim to get another one of these out next week with the results of my ranking match tribulations among other updates.
 
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United States33579 Posts
what kind of illegal PEDs is choya giving the players
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On February 11 2015 06:38 Waxangel wrote:
what kind of illegal PEDs is choya giving the players
An unreal amount of cocaine
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Milkis is amazing how dare you!
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You have come a long way since the first time I met you pengu! I wish I could still play sc2 :< Keep being handsome <3
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On February 11 2015 07:25 Pandemona wrote:Who won the rankings on the day you did them? Could be nice if you remember to say who wins the day, im intrigued to see if it is MarineKing for example. Thanks for the blog of course 
I'm pretty sure that MVP wouldn't appreciate me publicizing their own in-house rankings as it (presumably) directly affects who they'll be sending out in upcoming SPL matches etc. so I'm not really comfortable divulging that, sorry!
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Thanks for posting the blog, looking forwards to more insight in the Korean house scene.
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thanks for this blog, it sounds like an amazing experience. Good luck in the in-hous games too!
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Awesome! I would be terrified to train in that environment, knowing I would be by far the worst player in the house. But it seems like you really enjoyed yourself and that is awesome! Great read!
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On February 11 2015 08:09 vult wrote:
Awesome! I would be terrified to train in that environment, knowing I would be by far the worst player in the house. But it seems like you really enjoyed yourself and that is awesome! Great read!
Honestly, beneath all the ridiculous skill the guys have they're all just a bunch of dudes who like Starcraft. They're all really welcoming, and if anybody feels in the slightest that I'm missing something they'll offer to help me out in a second, so that brings down the pressure quite a bit. I was really stressed about potentially going 0-22 in the first day of matches because I really don't want them to feel like it's a complete waste of time to have me included in the ranking matches, but the win against Panic really relieved a lot of the stress. That and Center being an absolute bro. Center sits next to me, and I remember a few days ago I was having a really terrible day (something like 3-17 on ladder or something), and Center's says "PengWin, your mental broken? It's ok, everybody mental broken sometimes, tomorrow fighting!" and that cheered me up pretty much on the spot, so I do feel like even if I was playing terribly and never coming close to making a game out of it with the guys they wouldn't look down on me or anything. Any potential fears have basically been allayed because of how awesome everybody is
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more pics!
sounds awesome - have a blast!
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You dont like Milkis? I love that stuff. When my mom came to Korea it was one of the only non western things she ate or drank. She couldnt even eat bibimbap.
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Now that is some serious beverage, wow!
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On February 11 2015 08:30 PengWin_SC wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2015 08:09 vult wrote:
Awesome! I would be terrified to train in that environment, knowing I would be by far the worst player in the house. But it seems like you really enjoyed yourself and that is awesome! Great read! Honestly, beneath all the ridiculous skill the guys have they're all just a bunch of dudes who like Starcraft. They're all really welcoming, and if anybody feels in the slightest that I'm missing something they'll offer to help me out in a second, so that brings down the pressure quite a bit. I was really stressed about potentially going 0-22 in the first day of matches because I really don't want them to feel like it's a complete waste of time to have me included in the ranking matches, but the win against Panic really relieved a lot of the stress. That and Center being an absolute bro. Center sits next to me, and I remember a few days ago I was having a really terrible day (something like 3-17 on ladder or something), and Center's says "PengWin, your mental broken? It's ok, everybody mental broken sometimes, tomorrow fighting!" and that cheered me up pretty much on the spot, so I do feel like even if I was playing terribly and never coming close to making a game out of it with the guys they wouldn't look down on me or anything. Any potential fears have basically been allayed because of how awesome everybody is
Haha that sounds awesome! I have always really liked Center ever since his TSL days, I have had high hopes for him for a while and think he can be really great!
Pengwin fighting!
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51567 Posts
how could someone hate on milkis
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Wow, thanks a ton for the report. Very interesting read.
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Fun to read really, have fun and enjoy it!
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Comfortable mattresses in Korea? Must be a progamer perk or something.
Thanks for the report, really enjoyed it.
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Pandemona
Charlie Sheens House51493 Posts
On February 11 2015 07:27 PengWin_SC wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2015 07:25 Pandemona wrote:Who won the rankings on the day you did them? Could be nice if you remember to say who wins the day, im intrigued to see if it is MarineKing for example. Thanks for the blog of course I'm pretty sure that MVP wouldn't appreciate me publicizing their own in-house rankings as it (presumably) directly affects who they'll be sending out in upcoming SPL matches etc. so I'm not really comfortable divulging that, sorry!
True 
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EPT
