Me and the board

  I was young that time, a kid; Sergiu - my brother is one year older than I am and that times, 198*, we learned together football, chess, îMoaraî and other games, father tried hard to teach us how to hit the ball, but in this area neither me nor Sergiu werenít exactly good. Then later, playing soccer also with Deli, our sister, she had a habit of sending the ball in our nose. I need to mention from the start, that Oli and Buf were very îOpen mindedî inviting us to games, showing the directions and path, trying hard to stimulate all of us, into languages, computers, newly developed fields. Iíll give an example, well, Oli used to teach French language in our highschool, she always told us, îHey, learn some foreign languages, you can Never know When you actually need itî.
  Sure we didnít listen much, but finally, look at me, I am also surprised that Now the words are being typed in English. So, beside a collection of mind games îFLEXî she bought also ìGOî and also a book, a blue one, called îInitiere in GOî I suppose you can understand the title, even it is in Romanian language, it was written by Gheorghe Paun, but who was I to know anything about him ?
  Also I need to mention that my passion for reading, came only later, I think it was after finished the book called î Quetzalquatl - the snake with feathersî
  So, me and Sergiu looked at the box containing 碁 , opened it, and read the one-page-manual, the eyes theory, and where to place the stones. Then, we played. If I am not mistaken, he won. I mean he won at that game, what we played, surely had a different name, Not îGOî. Unfortunately I do no remember the rules, i can only remember that we made many, many moves. Then, we only played sometimes, when there was a break from îREMYî
  The dust did cover the box that said GO, but we could still see the design, the FONT used was highlighted. Then I started reading. Not much, but it was an interesting habit. I almost finished high school, (1995-1996 or so) when I looked around the large library of my parents, when I got to that blue book. This time, I did understand the rules, and the structure of the book was one that fit my tastes, fuseki, problems, TEXT - explanations, some history and so on. Then I learned keima, ikken-tobi, joseki. In evenings, I wish I could say that AFTER finishing my homework.., I used to have a pen and paper and try some variations. Just to see what would happen IF.
  In school, one day, Apostolescu Adrian said to some colleagues, îyes, right, Add one stone, then sacrifice bothî talking about a totally different subject. So I asked him, î hee, how come you know this proverb ??î So he mentioned about playing Go, and we talked about the way Go was learned from master to student using also proverbs, so next day, we played a few games.
  We were about 35-40 people in our class, the î Computer-scienceî class of C.Brediceanu high school in Lugoj, and two of them did something else than the usual chatting, they stayed calm, over a board, thinking-around ! That Was strange, the two boys werenít used to ì pose î like that. So, finally Alin Valcu, Mitar Flavius and many others, learned the rules, and played some, surely very aggressive. Then we played more, and suddenly we finished high school, went into other directions, different universities, or different faculties. Sometimes, instead of the newest hobby of mine -painting-, I used to take a pen and paper, to check What IFs. Then Horga Victor was î my studentî well actually not exactly MyStudent, because also me I did not know If I play good or so-so or whatever. Anyway, beside study, I was absorbed in painting.
  Then I came to Japan. Did I play IGO ? sure. but Not as much as I expected, mostly I watched on Sunday's TV tournaments , and 2-3 times I played with some people from Universityís factory. I lost drastically, just letís say he is a very good player instead. I kept on painting, though.
  The flight to Romania on September 2001 was full with emotions, finally I was going to see Oli, Buf, Sergiu, Deli, Oma, Bunica, Tica, Ioana, Miruna, Dele and the list surely can go on, I only put a FEW of Grangure hihi, then, I already started to miss Nuch, and was wondering how it will be, she went back to Thailand, me back to Romania, when will we meet again ? Well, first we met on yahoo messenger then Msn, the yahoo, then Netmeeting and on phone. I had to use a lot of ..internet, so finally I got to find out about IGS, KGS, NNGS. So..Sergiu asked me, well, how to start, you need to input a initial Rank. I said well, 20 kyu sounds like a good number, why not. I havenít played much, I subscribed on February 2003 and until now, December 2003, i played around 100 games. Well finally they cut my account, also my wife ís, I am not sure why, maybe because we are in Japan now. Anyway, this led me to KGS, place that seems to be very interesting, with special rooms, including Tournament rooms, English room, Romanian room, Japanese, Thai, and many many others. Also, not long time ago, I found the Yahoo groups for Romanian Go players, a very good place for anybody.
  As a comment, I need to say that Internet introduced me also to Hikaru no Go -very popular manga and anime, because of this cartoons, japan Go society got larger, and the average age of players decreased !

As I was saying, I enrolled in playing on Jotsu, that is great because of playing more and chatting more, so one day maybe bit progress could be seen. Speaking of it, I jumped on 17kyu after I sent an receive a SGF game to Radu Baciu, who is a living legend in Romanian Go history, I advise everybody to read his biography, it is a great explanation about people and Go in Romania and their parallel progress. It is yet only in Romanian language, but maybe one day it will be translated. By the way, the blue book, that I received from Oli long time ago, was written by Gheorghe Paun, who actually is a friend of Radu Baciu, and both of them established Go in Romania. Actually, my blue book got lost on the way, so before coming back to Japan, (we came on April 2003), again Oli found a shop and bought a second hand book, a red one, called î Initiere in GO î the 3rd edition, and guess what, this red, contains also an article of Radu Baciu.

Future projects ? Not yet, as we like to say, but I did go to University ís club, seems to be interesting, then sometimes Nuch plays with me, or against the computer, also my Sensei Masanori Kunieda, Bogdan, and sometimes Adina, Mike, Rasuli.

  There are many people around the game of Go, starting with the Chinese 4000 years ago, becoming tradition, culture, art form not only in China, Japan, then Korea, but later also America, Europe, Africa. Even though we are only beginners, I do consider that Anybody that has some interest, HAS a place around this table, no matter kyu player or maybe dan player. I might not be in position to Advise YOU, but let me just say that you will enjoy the game if you start it, actually, it is an Addictive game, and You also have a role in it. OK, see you around GoBan.