Day 1 at Asia Plus Championships

And we are headed off to Taiwan! Super early morning flight but still quite a lot of people came to send us off, thanks everyone, especially considering we were meeting at the airport at 5am. Flight took us about 4+ hours and we arrived in Taiwan about noon and took a long 40min cab ride to our hotel, Hotel Eight Zone. For more info about the first day, click on~





Typical quiet first day I guess. We arrived and checked into the hotel at the usual check-in counter for players. Im actually staying in the same room as the head judge from Hong Kong. Guess its meant more to be a chance to build up relationship for me since I will be working with him for next year's Asias. Anyway after checking in it was already 2pm and we were starving, so off to grab some lunch. We managed to find a place that had pretty fantastic food! ($2 rib cutlets are awesome, true story)

After that we went around the area to shop at a nearby electronics plaza. Prices are really cheap, i managed to buy my portable hdd at 2/3 of the price I would have to pay in Singapore so its really cheap. Anyway basically walked around till it was time to go for dinner.



Considering that it was near, we were asked to take the train since it was just 1 stop. Bad move.... Taipei was flooded with people doing christmas shopping and we were squashed like sardines. That photo you see is the back view of all the various country reps getting out of the train station as we made our way to the restaurant.


Singapore reps getting involved in icebreaker games


More reps getting pulled in for games


Konami in charge Wylie declaring how our Singapore William is her close BROTHER lol


Gifts for all the players. Nothing exciting pack wise since theres only a box of EXP2 but they had the full set of accessories like dice, calculator, playmate, deck sleeves that they can use, though no new exciting accessory.


Team of judges! Head judge Simon is 3rd guy from the left


The various Konami staff and distributors from each country getting together for a toast.

I was asked to be the emcee for the evening so was practically on my feet running around and announcing stuff for almost 2 hours while people eat. Pretty fun to interact with the various countries reps I guess. Aside from the player welcome gifts, each player also got a medal for winning the respective qualifiers in their countries. Either way, dinner ended at about 10 and we took a long 20 minutes walk back to the hotel to avoid the train crowd. Heard we're walking to the event site too, hopefully its not that far...





And back to the hotel room! The only thing i have totally no complaints of. Room is really big, and the jacuzzi looks like it can easily fit 2 people. I would probably consider staying here again if Im ever back in the future. Only sad part is wifi in the room pretty sucks so I have to go to the lobby and make do with whats still pretty sub-standard wifi. Ah well, I need to get ready for another long day tomorrow so here's DSummon, signing off.