Abe had a lucky day: he had several breakthroughs in today’s soccer game. Here is one of them: I put down my camera and tried to locate him: …he almost fell to ground… he kicked the ball… the ball looked going to the net before it hit the post… screams burst from his teammates and [...]
Abe was very excited when he was making the school JV soccer team last week. He had been talking about making the soccer team several times even before the school started. It’s all new to him, like games and practices many times a week, like traveling with other teammates and the coach in a school [...]
We just came back from a long (supposed to be) vacation. In fact, the vacation felt so short, I would say it last no longer than a chess game. Abe, I felt, was curious to everything on the trip, the farmers’ market was definitely different there: The land was poor, so were the people, but [...]
The 9-round 3-day tournament was held over the Thanksgiving weekend. The venue is clean and well lighted, all equipments are supplied—even the food and drink. So the plays just need to show up and play chess. A big feast of chess over Turkey Day weekend, how nice! Abe was playing in the tournament, so were [...]
We had a block party in our neighborhood last Saturday. For several days last week, Abe had mentioned that he liked to go to the party since he wanted to play with the kids of our neighbors. In addition, as usual, he has his soccer games on Sundays. In the past weekends, we, reluctantly, skipped [...]
I read Anxiety On The Grass from New Yorker (issue of June 28, 2010). The article talked about Roger Federer: Unlike Agassi and countless other tennis prodigies, Federer never had to deal with pressure from an ambitious parent…His Swiss-born father… and his mother, who is South African, …played recreational tennis at the firm’s small club [...]
We arrived at our hotel a little bit after noon. Mommy left to her conference right away. In fact, during each day, Abe, his little brother David and I would stay in the hotel most of the time: spending hours playing in the pools and hours watching the World Cup on the TV. As usual, [...]
Last Sunday, the temperature reached 89 °F (32 °C) — very hot considering it was only 63 °F (17 °C) a week ago. Abe’s soccer game was in early afternoon. It would be quite a challenger for the kids to play under the sun in such a hot day. He was supposed to arrive the [...]
Yesterday evening, driving Abe home from his soccer practice, I heard something interesting from an interview on NPR: Some one said that no chess players had reached grandmaster quicker than 10 years. I had an immediate doubt whether it’s a fact. I knew some recent chess prodigies got the GM titles when they were younger [...]
OK, I am kidding. I don’t mean to borrow the title of book: From London to Elista, a chess book covers relative recent events. Abe likes it; he likes to read games, although he has not developed an interest in the anecdotes. Last Saturday, we went to Hales Corners Challenge XI in Milwaukee. Abe was eligible [...]
Abe usually gets up at 7 am at Saturdays, he then dresses up and goes downstairs to watch TV or play video games. But not last Saturday; I told him the night before, if we’d wake up at 7, we’d go to a chess tournament, otherwise, we wouldn’t go. I did not tell Abe about [...]
Yes, the State Scholastic K-8 Chess Championships was last weekend. The day before, last Friday, Abe said, “I don’t want to go to chess tournament this weekend.” “Why?” I asked. “This Saturday, we have a basketball game with the Pacers—the team we lost two weeks ago.” Abe replied. Pacers won Nuggets two weeks ago. It’s [...]
Last Saturday, Abe and I went to the the Blaze Fundraiser tournament. Abe hadn’t been to chess tournaments for about a month since he loved playing basketball games on Saturdays. The reason that I chose this tournament with assumption that Abe can play the chess tournament and still make his basketball game was: The chess [...]
I suggested you to cheer for Drew Brees in this post about two weeks ago. Now Saints won the Super Bowl, for the first time in its franchise history. Why did Saints win the Super Bowl? I think: Saints was the better team in this game, better QB, smarter coach, tougher players. Colts was the [...]
Saints will go to The Super Bowl for the first time in its club history. The quarterback Drew Brees is certainly a favorite among the Saints fans. They are hoping Drew could lead the team to win another championship two weeks from now. Unfortunately, I noticed a sad news recently about the suicide of his [...]
As I mentioned in this post, Abe and his teammates ( of team”Nuggets”) played the Holiday Basketball Tournament from Monday to Wednesday. They played four games within three days and won all of them. The following are the highlights of all the games: Game 1, 12/21/09, “Nuggets” vs “Hornets”, posted in this post. Game 2, [...]
Here is the final game of the tournament, “Nuggets” (in gray) vs “Lakers” (in purple): Congratulations to all players, coaches and parents who cheer for the kids. As coach David said “Wow”. What a team effort! Go “Nuggets”.
The Holiday Basketball tournament is finally here! Abe has been waiting for it since their team started practicing on Saturdays about two months ago, he did not want to miss a single practice. He likes both basketball and chess, due to the time conflicts, he could not play as many chess tournaments as I hoped… [...]
Today, I heard an interesting interview of Andre Agassi on NPR (the website is here). Andre was a very famous tennis star. In fact, he was widely considered one of the greatest tennis players of all time. On the show, he said he did not choose tennis when he was young but his father pushed [...]
