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Hey hey, I got bored one day while I was freezing my hands off (and thus unable to do anything but watch streams) and decided that I'd do a blog of the events I've went to, starting with MLG Columbus. This'll probably help me collect my own thoughts, as well as give you guys an insight into what it was like for me.

So, I guess we start the day before I leave for America. I went in to intime cyber cafe, meeting Dan (FXOUnstable) to play a few practice games during the day at a lan setting, really just getting used to setting up my gear and tweaking it at a lan. So, after doing a proxy hatch versus a toss and god knows what else in my games, off we were to my place to get some sleep before the 32 hours in transit!

Get home, mess around a bit, hang out waiting around for my girlfriend (I'm not going to go to sleep before she comes over, that'd make me an ass), have dinner and sleep. Wake up around 5am, turn on Dan's laptop and see that it's decided that it absolutely hates his guts and windows was corrupted: awesome. His laptop has a horrible battery anyway, so it would've only lasted ~1hr.

Plane ride to LA, 14 hours. Now, I've been on a plane once before, and that was to Queensland: there's a big difference between a 45min plane trip and a 14 hour plane trip. I had a guy in front of me coughing too much, a guy behind me treating my chair like a punching bag and a kid crying as if he'd broken his arm the whole plane trip, but otherwise it was pretty awesome. We each had a Nintendo DS with pokemon games (I got pokemon White ) and played those until the batteries died, as well as a tonne of movies / TV Shows to watch (which were all complimentary), and the captain was awesome. I didn't think they had a sense of humour, but they did. (When talking about food, the remark was something like "If you're right at the back, they'll probably be out of chicken by the time they get to you, but don't worry, when they come with beer and wine, I'll make sure they start from the back).

So, we arrive in LA and have a stopover.

A 5 hour stopover.

There is absolutely nothing to do at an airport, so we found a power supply, charged the DS' and sat down. I dozed off for 20 minutes at a time, waking up constantly because chairs are not beds. They are chairs.

Eventually, we get on the flight to St Louis (I believe, I may be wrong), and thankfully, it was only like 4 hours. We had no movies or TV shows on this one, but the DS' and my iPod lasted the whole trip. Also managed to get some sleep, thanks to scoring the window seat (aww yeah) and having the 3rd guy in our seats talk to Dan the whole way. Thanks for being a scapegoat!

We get to the airport with something like a 3hr stopover, and it felt like it was longer than the last one. We grab subway for ''lunch'' (at this time, I'd been up for something like 28 hours) and let me tell you, coke tastes different over there. It's weird as hell.

'3' hours later, we get on the 1hr flight to Columbus, exhausted as all hell. It's ~10pm when we land, so we get a taxi to the hotel (~20minute drive by normal person, 10min by taxi) and wake up Josh. Up at our rooms, I knocked on my door (I was sharing a room with Shawn, aka Sheth) and no-one answered. The door next to us, however, opened to reveal Karl (Optikzero) looking tired as hell, and I think he said something like "SLoGs snoring really loudly", followed by what could've been my imagination, but a giant anime sweatdrop almost bringing him to the ground.

So, we go into Dans room, talk for a bit until we're greeted by Shawn and QXC, who had left to get food.. at least, I think. We keep talking for a little while longer, everyone being pretty casual and open considering we had known each-other personally for all of 30 minutes. Eventually, we all retire to bed, eager to get up and practice the next day!

Shawn and I were room-mates, I like to call us the manner zerg room, because I'm known for my amazing well-mannered style, and man. The rooms were pretty cool. We each had a double bed, and that was about it; perfect! All I was in my room to do was sleep and get changed, anyway. The beds were comfy as hell, and I had something like four pillows to myself.

The next day, I was woken up at like 8am because breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Everyone else was already up when I got up, because I'm a lazy prick, and we go downstairs. Breakfast was free, and awesome. Everything in America is just... bigger. The breakfast itself was great, except for the bacon; American bacon sucks. We just spent the breakfast talking crap to each-other, especially about how quiet Karl is. For a guy known as the biggest cheeser on ladder (apart from Picnic, Piqliq etc), he is very quiet and nice. Usually cheesers are jackasses.

After breakfast, we decide its time to find a netcafe. Alright, not too hard. We'll just google it.

Fail.

It's okay, qxc will use his twitter army to help us!

Fail.

Whatever, we'll just go out, buy essentials (food etc) until it's time for dinner, and the infamous MLG relay race! This leads us to possibly the most hilarious moment of the whole week, when we're walking around looking for a supermarket, Andy (SLoG) stops a random person and says "Hey, do you know where there's a Supermarket or a Deli, you know, to buy soap?".

I covered my mouth, turned away and giggled like a schoolgirl, as the stranger looked at him bewildered and explained there was a CVS about two blocks away. There is pretty much nothing else in Columbus, it's barren as hell.

So, we all get essentials (toothpaste, deodorant, QXC stocks up on 'snack food' aka cereal w/o milk) and walk back to the hotel, having fruitlessly attempted to find something. Dan takes this time to reinstall windows on his laptop so we can set up our own lan center in the hotel room. A few hours later, Moonan is arriving at the airport and everyone but me and QXC (we stayed back playing magecraft, essential practice for MLG) went to greet him at the airport. When he got back, he set up his laptop and we now had three laptops to play with, giving us more space to practice. After just chatting, practicing and generally wasting time, we head off for dinner.

For dinner, we went to a restaurant which was nearby, although I can't remember the name. It was pretty awesome, the food was great (did I mention it was also huge?) and then headed off to the convention center for the relay race.

At the convention center, we met up with team EG, torch, seltzer, most of sixjax, artosis, teamliquid and more. I came into this expecting it to be a giant joke and more of a meet-and-greet than anything else.

MLG had other plans: they pretty much had a collegiate relay team on their side, and teamliquid also took it pretty seriously (equipped with sweat bands, etc). We took it pretty casually, besides QXC, who ran like a parkour boss, and ended up not coming last (because EG was in the relay race, keke) and had some fun. Man, I wish we just played soccer or something instead.

Ah well, it was a fun night; we return to the hotel and I go to bed pretty quickly, just tired and not having much else to do. MLG tomorrow! Yeaaaaaaaaah! Anthony gets in early next morning (~8AM or something?) and wakes up someone, I barely wake up in time for breakfast and now, with the whole team, we have our first team meal. Everyone was happy, we chatted about everything (I zoned out and switched my brain off, really, who gets up this early?) and had a pretty good start to the day. After which, we went back upstairs, Anthony set up his laptop and we now had four computers upon which we could practice on! Hurrah!

Anthonys laptop sucks. Alot. I played Karl and him on his laptop before I gave up, as during battles it became a slideshow, and outside of battles if I got 10fps I was amazed. But, you get what you're given, at it was still good practice. Other than that, we messed around until ~midday which is when we set off for the convention center: time to get our passes and play, right?

Wrong.

The line to buy our passes was really short, and we got our media and played passes in like 10 minutes, allowing us to go off with Raelcun and grab lunch before entering the actual room and playing. Raelcun is a great bloke and chatted with us about everything; he also has a sick scar on his arm. Ask him about it!

So, we walk back to the event, and the line is all the way to the escalator. I'm telling you, this line makes the xbox look like a nintendo DS. It was a joke. We, being smart, said **** that and walked off to the side. Shawn and Mingyun, who had top16 passes, were able to walk in without waiting in the line. Lucky bastards.

ESFI comes up and does interviews with everyone, which for a lot of us, was very strange. We weren't used to attention, Andy just rambled a lot, Karl was very quiet, Anthony also rambled and I have no idea how I was; I haven't seen the interview, but I'm going to guess I was probably as uncomfortable as the rest. Then Josh (FXOBoSs) had his interview and made us all look horrible; the guy is very well-spoken and knew how to get his point across. He also ended the interview with "Haters gonna hate".

After the interviews, I met up with some friends (RNA, Bluetea, Buffy and Cheekz) whom I met on Destinys stream, exchanged pleasantries, showed them my awesome Koala (as seen here: http://sea-play.com/pics/dox/FXO_MLG/FXO_MLG_005.jpg) and then went inside, keen to experience my first big lan event.

For those that attended NRG, you would know that the atmosphere at a LAN is unreal; this was way bigger than NRG. This was huge. The problem, however, was there was pretty much no PCs to practice on: every PC was taken, and SC2 had been blacklisted from the blizzard servers (yay for LAN support! Oh, wait..) so you couldn't even log in. Whatever, walked around, met more people (MikeD, Herpderp, csOBroto and goswser) before stealing Kevin (QXC)'s computer to play a practice game. This is when I realise that Destiny and ROOTFayth are both behind me, and I spam them both with messages because they were on the feature PCs, thus broadcasting the messages onto the big screens above them. Kekekeke.

So, I get halfway through a practice game before they tell us to piss off, get up and introduce myself to Destiny, and end up sitting down while they sort out the brackets. Turns out I'm in 'heat 3' of the brackets, So I'm still not playing for another hour or so. Awesome! As the brackets fell, I can't remember who played in what heat, but the downtime was filled with either us sitting down on the floor, because chairs are expensive and talking with each-other (everyone in FXO usually hung around each-other), cheering on teammates or attempting to find out who we played next.

Come the first game, I figure out I'm playing a guy called xiNizzy, a ~1400 Masters terran. "Ez win! Ez game!" I'm thinking to myself, as I set up. After all, I'm a grand master, I should easily take this game! Aww yeah! One of the tournament officials came over and asked me for a veto, but before he could finish his sentence I said Typhon Peaks, as the map is a giant joke. I can't remember what he vetoed, but I didn't care either way.

Game one on XNC, and away we go. 14hatch 14pool, he opens with a stanard walloff + techlab rax. I drone up a bit and poke his ramp, and see a cc building. Cool. I sacrifice my overlord, and scout something that's strange: He hasn't moved down to expand, and he has units.

A lot of units.

Alright, he's all-inning me, sure. Easy to defend. He comes down the map with 6 hellions, a bunch of marauders, marines and a handful of scvs. I bring all of my units (leaving one zergling below his expo, incase he tries to send out his cc while he attacks) back and barely hold off the attack, and comically, his natural CC is left hovering over my zergling, as they didn't want to get blood on the paintjob. GG, game 1 goes to me, and I'm ecstatic at this stage; I didn't choke! I won the first game! YEAHHHHHH! I was a nervous wreck, but outwardly, I was trying to hide it.

Game 2, he picks Shattered Temple. Damn, that sucks. We spawn cross spawns, and the openings are the same; this time, however, he gets a reaper out early and does 0 damage. Thank you to Filthy (Phil) and Kevin for the practice, as your reapers are infinitely more dangerous than this guys were. I poke the ramp and see the same thing as game 1; walloff, techlab rax and an orbital. Awesome, macro game time!

Except not really. I sacrifice my overlord from the top of his base (the cliffs above his mineral lines are imbalanced) and scout 3 extra techlab rax and a factory w/ techlab. Awesome! At this stage, I have two spinecrawlers and about 8 roaches, while I have no idea what he has. Again, I move everything back, leaving one ling behind his expo to see if he's just playing a really weird (see: stupid) macro build, and prepare. He wasn't playing macro.

He sieges up and starts crawling towards my base, carefully staying behind the creep. Luckily, my creepspread was good, and he took his time getting to my base, allowing me to amass 4 queens and a bunch (20~) of roaches, against his mix of tanks, reapers and marauders. No worries! I'll get lings!

I don't have ling speed. T_T

It's okay, I got this. His timing was late, allowing me to make use of my natural. I send a queen forward, transfuse it like a boss (I hit ~5 transfuses before this queen dies, soaking all the tank shots) and break everything but one tank and a bunker, while he still doesn't have his expansion down. Ok, stay calm and keep playing. I make more lings, break down my back expo and take a 3rd. Wait... he still doesnt have his natural. What.

Alright.. I try to break him again, and get everything but the bunker this time. However, I run 6 roaches past his bunker and intercept all his reinforcements. Soon after, he types out GG and I'm extremely happy; he might've been a relatively easy opponent in retrospect, but the feeling of winning was awesome. A fistpump and a handshake later, I pack up all my stuff and turn around to walk off.

I left SC2 open, with my account up. Derp. I plug my keyboard in and ALT-F4 starcraft, hoping no-one had seen what I just did.

After the game, I walk back to my teammates (most of which had watched me play and laughed at how emotional I was whilst I played) and sat down for another hour or so, talking with them, random friends, fans whilst wondering who my next opponent would be.

"Hey tgun, the brackets are online, you should just get on and check them out dood"

Well, alright. I find out that my next opponent is none other than sixjaxMihai, another terran player. A very good terran player, at that. If I lose here, no-one will be pissed at me, but I don't want to lose. I hate losing. I'd be dissapointed in myself if I lost, as I worked so hard to get out here, practiced my ass off and wasn't about to lose second round.

Going into the games, I only wanted two things: to not play on typhon peaks, and to play macro games. The tournament official comes over, and again before he says anything, I just say "I veto typhon peaks regardless of what mihai vetos, it's a shit map"

"Sorry tgun, Typhon is the starting map"

Fffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

Two vetoes later (I veto'ed Shattered, as he said he didn't like Taldarim (I don't like it either, but that means he'll veto it, which he did), we begin on Typhon peaks. God, this'll be hell.

Alright, 14hatch 14pool, he doesn't get special treatment, and I see that we're horizontal spawns. These spawns are possibly the worst spawns for ZvT on this map: vertical spawns are bad, but every attack will pretty much always go through the backrocks, horizontal they have a lot of attack paths, all of which go through small corridors, and pretty much get a free 3rd base.

Well, the start goes standard. I scout that he's opening reapers, and he does 0 damage. I mean, absolutely 0 damage. I think he hit a queen once. Whatever. I made nothing but drones to ~30 supply and had both my queens up at this stage. I had ~150 gas, and it hit me. Ling baneling allin would crush him at this stage, there's no way he can go 1rax reaper and stop ling baneling allin, unless he instantly goes tanks off 1base behind it, and if he does that, I'm on even footing going into midgame.

So, I start ling speed, I put my baneling nest behind my mineral line at my natural (if a terran is going to scan, he'll scan my main for tech structures) and I rally my lings to the middle point between my base and his base, behind the tall grass, just so he can't accurately predict my unit numbers. Eventually, my ling speed finishes, I morph a tonne of banelings (something like 16) and here we go, f*** it, we'll do it live. He has a bunker with 3 reapers in it, and let me tell you; when things go right, you feel amazing. The bunker explodes, and the reapers instantly die to banelings as it goes down. I catch his scv's as they try and get back into the main with two banelings, and he gg's as my lings stream in.

I just won a ZvT, vs a good terran player, on my worst map. How the heck could he beat me now?

He picks XNC; alright. I've played on this alot, I should be fine.

We play a relatively long macro game, and I forget a crucial part of my strategy in the style that I was playing. I need a macro hatch when playing ling infestor, and I usually forego it to put up an extra base quickly.

Mihai was on top of me the whole game. He dropped every base, denied my gold, denied my 3rd and eventually forced a 'gg' from me, even though I had contained him to 2base all game.

I was furious. I had just typed 'gg' in, whilst floating 2k/1k against a guy that I could've easily beaten. I wanted to break my monitor, his monitor, his face and the desk all in one swift motion, but I restrained for dropping my head to the desk for a moment, recollecting my thoughts and telling him to create on metalopolis.

"Don't worry, you only lost because you forgot a macro hatch; you can beat this guy" Dan told me reassuringly, "Just don't tilt like a jackass". So, I calmed myself down as we went into the third and final game. I was shaking, it felt like everyone was watching my game, when in reality, It would've been the FXO guys, and probably ~8 friends that I knew there, everyone else would've been watching the main screen or one of the featured pool play games.

I force a macro game on cross spawn metalopolis. How can I lose, when I'm in my nature? I take a fast 3rd, crush all of his harass and get my mutas out, going back to basics; muta, ling, baneling. No need for fancy play, no need for cute tactics. Just play solid.

We get into the midgame with myself on 3 bases, him on 2 and my creepspread starting to envelop the map. However, he doesn't actually push out much. Actually... he doesn't push out at all. My muta harass had kept him contained. I felt like Julyzerg for a moment, applying so much pressure he couldn't even leave his own base. Into his third base (which he hadn't taken), behind his base, along the outskirts. He had spread his marines everywhere and had spotter supply depots / turrets everywhere to detect me.

That's fine, I'm on 3, you're on 2. I win! Right?

So, eventually, I get sight of him starting to siege crawl out towards the gold. What. My muta ball, at this stage, is around ~32 +1 mutalisks, which were primarily grouped as he hadn't shown any Thors. I was confident. At around ~180 supply, he starts moving further and further to the gold, and to my dismay, I see a CC going towards the gold. I put down my 4th hatch at the bottom left (because the gold is suicide, damnit) and prepare to hit him. My mutas are harassing his cc, and he stims a group of marines to shoo me away. The cc is at about 40% health, and there's only like 18 marines there. I poke back in, hit the cc, and he stims more marines up.

Whatever, bro.

I run my mutas around the cc, hitting and moving, taking huge losses, watching the bar tick down slowly. The scv's were in transit, mules were dropping down, I have to kill this CC here or I've just lost a tonne of mutas for no reason. My mutas were exploding, but there's only one red bar left!

Suddenly, explosions. The cc dies at the gold, and I'm ecstatic; to me, I had won the game here. I fistpumped, mid matchup, and screamed a little at how happy I was. I had something like 4 mutas left of my initial ball, moved back and readied myself to slowly break him. I was already back at 200/200, my 4th was running, it didn't matter than most of that was in zerglings and he had tanks; I was 2/2, his mech was 0/0 and his bio was 1/1. I attacked his forces and killed almost everything, my muta count rising again. Slowly pushing his forces further and further back until he was stuck in his natural again.

Oh shit, a thor. Byebye to about half my mutas again, I was clumped up. Doesn't matter: I'm on 4bases and I've scouted everything; he only has two. I'm rallying into his gold and attacking in waves, and shortly after, he GG's.

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I had just beaten the #1 open bracket seed; a guy who had worked his ass off at Dallas, gotten through the open bracket and into pool play, and let me tell you, I felt ontop of the world. Shook the blokes hand, closed SC2 and walked out to my teammates who were sitting down. "So how does it feel to win, tgun?" (Mockingly) "Yes!!!"

Smartasses, just because I get excited and show it.

So, whoevers next couldn't possibly be as good as Mihai, right?
http://www.sc2sea.com/blogs/showentry.php?e=60

Well.. wrong.

I had colCruncher next, a protoss player. A very strange protoss player, who had two very distinct playstyles; either I'm getting ridiculously allined, or he'll turtle up.

"It's okay, he can't be better than Andy or Karl; no way!" I think to myself. I had a while to prepare, speaking to Shawn and others before my game, calming myself down. I tried not to think about how this was the guy who qualified in the TSL and took out some Koreans in the FXO tournaments a while back. I just thought, it was another protoss, how could I lose? My ZvP is awesome!

What map do I veto? You should know this by now..

First game, Taldarim Altar.

Eww. Not the best map. I start the game, thinking he's going to forge expand into 6/7gate. That's all I could see happening, and I decided I'd counter it by going for a fast +1+1 ling/muta style, allowing me to punish him as much as possible. The problem, however, was the spawns. I was at bottom right, he was at top right.

How do I take a third? I took the bottom middle, but getting drones there is a joke. My +1+1 was late by 15 seconds, and I mean 15 seconds, and that's all it took. His 6gate came, exactly as expected, and there was notta hhing I could do. I put my head down, feeling like crap. I wanted to cry, I felt horrible, but again Dan walked up behind me, put his hand on my shoulder and reassured me that I'd just bring it back the next game.

Alright, let's go metalopolis. That's my map. We get cross spawns on it, and he opens with a 3gate expand, and I take my 3rd super fast. This is my game to lose at this stage, as I had went roach/infestor versus his stalker/colossus ball, and I was keeping up on upgrades and keeping his colossus ball down.

My 4th is up as his 3rd goes down, I had been pressuring him and pulling his units out of position constantly. I'm feeling great at this point, playing at around ~300 apm purely due to how much of a nervous wreck I was. My creep was across the map, my hive was going up and my 5th was going up.

I engage him at his 4th just as he begins to take it, and kill everything but ~8 stalkers and a sentry. All his colossus are dead and his 4th isn't operational. My 5th is going up and my 4th is operational. I'm remaxing roaches, and can't even see how I can possibly lose from this point.

I remax my ball of roaches, and go again. I still can't kill his 4th. His blinkstalker micro is great and he has 3 colossus. I kill everything but 1 colossus and 6 stalkers, and realise... I can't remax again. I can only get to ~170 before I'm out of money. What the hell.

I take the gold and my 5th is up. His 4th is barely up. I'm still ahead, I just need to keep pressuring. I send my next wave, and I get decimated. My infestors get neurals off and I kill alot, but he pushes through with 20 stalkers and warps in reinforcements. I can only get to ~145 supply of roaches/hydras and he's killing my gold. I regroup and fight off his army, but he's still remaxing and pushing through.

My head lowers to the desk for a moment, as I know I've lost. I should've won this game, I should've rallied into his 4th during the first engagement and won there, but a simple mistake due to fatigue loses me this game, and I am absolutely devastated. I gg, shake his hand, and drop my head to the desk, wanting nothing but to go back to the hotel and turn in for the night; two games which I could've easily won down the drain, losing 3rd round to something I should've beaten, making me absolutely distraught.

I walk out to my team, explain that I lost, and they're all trying to cheer me up. Josh tells me that he's already happy with how I played, and that even though I went down 2-0, I definately put my name out there, beating Mihai 2-1 (which should've been 2-0) and pushing Cruncher very hard, even though I lost 2-0. I stick around, however, chatting to people and cheering on teammates until about 2am, when Shawn plays his last game, going 3-0 for the day, when we finish for the night and go home as a team, all in good spirits except Kevin, who had lost to Thorzain 2-1 in the very last game of the night, in a nailbiting, extremely long series. He walked home while we all took cabs. I understood exactly how he felt, because it was how I felt when I lost: Kevin is the only person who I have seen that is as passionate as me in this game, that takes losses as hard as I do.

I wake up around 11am to someone knocking on my door; apparently, they almost forgot to wake me up.

Wankers.

It didn't matter, I didn't play until ~2pm, but I wanted to be at the venue to cheer on my friends (Destiny had lost first round to Darkcell 1-2 in a ZvZ that he should've won, but he did well in the losers bracket). So, we get to the venue, and today was crazy. I meet thundertoss, ascend, UnderlineEnt and some fans. It was a great day. I go into my game feeling great; colFireZerg: He can't be that great. Shawn had told me he's just going to allin me twice. Ez.

He allined me twice, and he won. I was out, 0-2, feeling shitty. Again, I felt the same as Kevin did; I had lost two games where I should've won, as I knew exactly what was coming, and fell short of my goal. Nevertheless, I stood up, shook the guys hand and walked away, confident that I'll do better both in Korea and at the next LAN I attend.

After this, I don't actually play any more, I only hang around and cheer on my teammates. I love my teammates; we're family. I can't actually remember everyones results, but everyone in FXO played really well. My memory is pretty hazy at this stage, but most of the rest of the day was spent talking to random people and sitting down on the floor, really angry at myself at my losses. I just wanted to get back to the hotel to practice, or get to Korea to practice. I wanted to do better than I did, but as I don't own a time machine, I couldn't really do anything to fix it.

By the end of the day, a lot had passed; I had met pretty much everyone I set out to meet (apart from a friend of mine whos babysitter flaked on him, and thus, he couldn't drive out to the event) and had an amazing time so far. All that was left was to go home, sleep and get up for the finals day, Shawn carrying the hopes of our team on his shoulders going into the day.

We all wake up, getting out there nice and early to cheer up shawn. He's playing FnaticFenix, definately no pushover first round in the championship losers bracket, and is in good spirits.

However, he goes down 0-2.

Fast.

He lost to a 2rax which he expected to be a 1rax FE, and a strange hellion build that I can't quite remember; it just wasn't his day. However, being the nice guy he is, he stood up, all smiles, shook Fenix's had and then turned around to chat with his fans. It's amazing how nice he is.

At this stage, everyone I knew personally was either out or playing consolation matches. Shawn 'plays' his consolation matches (terran imba at coinflips) and then we head off for sushi at lunch, eager to watch the finals later that day. I met Naniwa, Sjow, Ostojiy and Odee (Dignitas manager) and the lunch, and they were all really cool. We joked as we ate, until Naniwa and Sjow parted us to go get ready for Naniwas match.

The days before this were nothing in comparison to the atmosphere today; every game had a tonne of onlookers, and every game had a crazy atmosphere. I wont go into too much detail, as they were all covered extensively in the MLG threads on teamliquid and other writeups themselves (and I couldn't do them justice), but it was insane. Watching MMA kill his own CC at the event; you can hear the crowd on the stream. Imagine that, only 100x louder. For the commentators to pick up the crowd, it has to be loud.

I mean, loud. I was actually standing next to Shawn when it happened, and he turned to me bewildered, and said "Why couldn't he do that against me?"

All in all, the event was amazing. I wont spoil any more games or go into detail, but I must say; if you can get out to an MLG, or any big event; do it. It's insane; the amount of people there, that all love the game that you love. Watching the players work their asses off to try and edge out that little advantage, doing what they can to win.

Hearing the crowd scream in excitement as something amazing happens.

It's extremely hard to convey in words how simply amazing it is.

At the end of the day, however, the event finished, we were kicked out pretty quickly by security and the afterparty began. FXO went out as a team (with raelcun) to have a quick dinner before we went to the bar to meet everyone. If playing and watching a game that you love with nerd friends isn't enough, going to a bar with your nerd friends to talk about the game must be even better, and I don't even drink.

Myself, Shawn and Catspajamas (whom is very wellspoken and a nice guy in his own right) left at about 2;30am with the intention of going to meet tastosis at their room, but decided against it when we heard they were busy kicking people out, as their room was basically over-run, so we hailed a cab and got home, exhausted.

I woke up reasonably late the next morning, with a day free to do whatever. Mingyun had left early in the morning (he had to leave for some reason, I forget), so we were down a laptop, but we were all happy and already back to practice.

But not before we did a cast of a game. I'll post that later.

This is where I learnt that Kevin is easily one of the smartest players playing SC2 right now. He spent 3 hours in the unit test map, testing different openings as he decided he wasn't happy with his current openings.

Later that night, we went to Latitude 41 for dinner, accompanied by Cheekz (as she lives in Columbus and is a nice person, I invited her along). So it was FXO, sans Mingyun. nom nom nomming. Was a pretty awesome dinner.

Come morning, I had Anthony wake me up at 8am so I could get packing. We had one last breakfast, consisting of myself, Dan, Karl, Andy, Kevin and Shawn, before Kevin and Andy bailed to the airport, as their flights were ~5 hours before ours.

Fast forward 5 hours, we check in at the airport and go through customs, leaving Karl to go off on his own (he was in concourse B, we were in concourse C, so we couldn't stay together ) and possibly the second funniest thing happened.

Shawn got airport security to go along with a prank. What the ****.

I go through the security checkpoint, Shawn goes in ahead of me and convinces them to troll me. So, I get through fine and two security guards say "Sir, we need to take you behind the screen there for about five minutes for additional screening"

Now, I thought this was bullshit, and probably a violation of some law, but being the guy I am and not wanting to make a scene, I wearily reply "Ok, sure, no problem mates."

They then turn to Shawn and say "Was that good enough?"

Prick.

So, after that, myself and Dan begin our 32 hours of travel, which was accompanied with a ~45minute delayed flight in Dallas which almost made us miss our connecting flight in LA (I sprinted across the whole airport and the doors were still shut, Dan popped his shoulder out whilst running and was something like 5 minutes behind me).

So.. here I am, back in Australia for a few days, waiting to go off to Korea to participate in the GSTL. We'll be practicing our asses off and trying our best to represent not America, not Australia, but FXO as a team. I'll keep updating this as I'm over in Korea, as well as hound Unstable to update his blog post aswell.

This was a good hiatus from practice, as well as helped me clear my head and arrange my thoughts. If anyone has any questions about anything I didn't cover, feel free to PM me here or on skype (tgun.143), and please leave comments.
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