MY REVIEW OF 2021

HEALTH

As I write this document, I am  currently going through one of the worst health spells of my life. For a little over a year now, I have experienced some of he worst asthma of my life. The symptoms were first present in mid- November 2020 after suffering flu symptoms. The asthma has become so debilitating that I have felt very restricted in my everyday activities. There are day where I can barely walk without sweating an feeling breathless. It has lead to me seeing my GP on numerous occasions about my strong and ongoing asthma symptoms. There is now speculations that it can be more than asthma going on in my lungs. Lung conditions including Bronchitis have been thought of to why I continuously have breathing problems throughout the day. We wont know until March 2022 earliest as that is when my spirometry test is due to happen. Until then, I just have to do my best to survive in these trying times.

FAMILY

Family life has been very difficult for me this year with various misunderstandings about certain things the I posted on my personal Facebook account over the reasons for me being unable to find a romantic partner. To this day, I still do not understand why my mother and family  are so upset about me posting my thoughts about why I cannot get a girlfriend.  I can only think that family pride is to blame for this perception.

On 13th of July, I published a blog about what I would like to see more of in my family, which I later posted a link of in my personal Facebook account. The blog was simply about how my family can better support me. This lead to not only a fallout with my mother but also a fallout with my younger sister. My sister thought that I cared about Facebook more than I did about my family but this was simply a misperception of the situation. I actually wrote that blog because I actually do care about my family and I wanted to help them help me in a better way. My sister never understood this and eventually pushed my away saying: "If you don care, than I don't care 

Thankfully, after a handful of conversations, my mother and I have come to an agreement on certain thing like how to get a date and the things that my mother can an cannot do for me.

Throughout my whole life, I have always struggled to have the confidence to talk to my family directly as I have found myself in too many painful fallouts which have preciously lead to a shutdowns in communication and even fights.

Thanks to the help and support that I have received from over-the-phone counselling, I have gained a lot more confidence in verbal communication than I have had previously. That leads me nicely to my next topic.

COUNCELLING

Between early October and mid November, I was given 6 weekly counselling sessions from the counselling organisation Care to Listen. My counsellor was a woman who explained her perspectives of my situation with my family and ill feelings of not being able to find a romantic partner. One concept that she brought consistently was communication. The things that she said about communication was (at least in my eye) ground-breaking. For most of my life, I have always been very structured in my communicating, whether it was face-to-face, over the phone, in writing of even on social media.

The things that my counsellor taught me about communication were as follows:

1). Communication is a trial and error process. 

There isn't always a right of wrong way to communicate to a person. Sometimes you just have to try different things to get the desired result. Different people send and receive different types of communication differently and you simply have to adapt to the person you are talking to depending on his/her way of interprating language.

2). It's OK to ask a woman out. 

This may sound rather obvious to a lot of my readers but before my counselling sessions, I did not believe that is was a good idea to directly ask a woman out. I thought that it would sound cringeworthy to women if a man was so open about his intimate feelings to a woman. I thought that women would simply freak out if I said anything like "Can I have your number please" to them. However, I have been assured that this way of communicating your desire of someone is completely normal and that it is possible for me to say something like this to a woman that I have deep feelings for.

3). You can only control 50% of any relationship.

No matter how good your intentions are, there are always going to be relationships out there that simply will not work. AT the end of the day, you can only do your half of the relationship. If the other half of the relationship is not going to co-oprerate with you, there nothing you can really do about it. Don't take it personally. You just have forget about the person, wish him/her good luck and move on.

4). It's OK to talk to strangers.

When I was growing up, I was told not to talk to strangers. However, one thing that my counsellor told me is that many relationships start with people that are at first unknown to you. One thing that I need to learn is to talk to strangers. Perhaps I can start by saying hello to someone who works a corner shop or a supermarket. I think this will be a good starting point.

5). Stay confident

One beautiful thing that my counsellor pointed out to me is that I am actually a better communicator that I think. I think my lack of confidence over the years is due to the theory that people on the autism spectrum typically struggle with verbal communication. Therefore, when I find myself in a fallout with someone, I often credit this theory and and start despairing at what I have lost. My counsellor however told me that with time. I will eventually find better people to talk to if I stay at it and keep going. There will always be someone good out there to talk to.

CHESS

In what is my first full calendar year without any over-the-board competition since joining South Norwood Chess Club, I think I have achieved various notable things on the playing site lichess.org.

First, I was a regular competitor in the Coulsdon Chess Fellowship (CCF) 10 minute-a-side rapid-play swiss tournaments on the site which was played on Mondays and Fridays until June. I won 3 of those tournaments within this calendar year a few others from the previous year. However, what was even more pleasing was the fact that I have won 2 of the ChessNetwork 10-minute-a-side Rapid-play tournaments that since the pandemic have happened every Saturday afternoon.  It has also been year in which I have reached new peak rapid and blitz ratings.

On the 5th of August this year, literally 365 days after I had announced my retirement for over-the-board chess, I decided to reverse my decision and plan to play over-the-board chess in the future. However, as of yet, I have not been able to resume over-the -board activity due to the health reasons I mentioned above.

LANGUAGE LEARNING

One interesting ambitions that I had a the start of the year is to start (or restart) learning languages other that Brazilian Portuguese which I have been learning for 2 and a half years. I actually made a weekly schedule at the start of the years about the languages that I would learn. Unfortunately, my problems with my lungs started to take its toll and and in the end, I simply didn't have he energy to learn languages every day. I have however been able to successfully find a good Portuguese teacher who currently lives in Brazil and has given me good lessons via Skype and Zoom for a reasonable fee. 

I feel confident enough in my Portuguese to have confidence speaking the language to native speakers. However. This is not to say that I don't make mistakes nor do I not have moments where I have to look for words to complete a sentence. It just means that I have learnt the language long and well enough to make my own sentences and and keep conversation going within the language. I do however still go through all of the challenges that many language learners go through with pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and even listening to somebody talk a speed. (Mind you, I find it hard to understand a rambler even in English.) The keys to leaning any language is patience, persistence, regular study, practice and having fun.

FUTURE

One thing that I plan to do when my lung health improves is to enroll in a course to become a qualified online English teacher which will give me access to teach English to anyone around the world. With of my experience working with the Brazilian community and helping them with their English, I think I am ready to take that the extra mile and make an official career out off what I am currently doing. It's just a matter of fixing my lungs and getting and appointment with the job centre.

I also want to do a course on accounting as I am currently elected as a trainee treasurer for the West Thornton Community Association (WTCA) and therefore could do with some training in certain fields of the subject. I actually did do a course on accounting in my final year of college but that was 16 years ago and I am sure that things have changed in the accounting world significantly in that time. Also, I think my interest in accounting will be a lot greater than it is in 2005 as back then, I was still in the process of learning about the adult world as well as the fact that back then, I was still trying to work out certain things in my personal life. I look forward to one day taking over as the treasurer of the WTCA when certain things settle down and the current treasurer is ready to step down from his duties.

I have accumulated a good number of Spanish speaking friends on Facebook, so I think that Spanish will be a good language for me to learn next year as well as continuing my Portuguese studies.

Finally I hope to be well enough to play over-the board chess again after announcing that I have come out of retirement. Since the start of the pandemic I have only been playing in online tournaments.  I look forward to one day seeing my old friends one day (and making new ones)  at South Norwood and CCF and showing everyone what I can do in real life games and tournaments.

The End.

Compleated Saturday 18 December 2021

Returning to chess.

 

Returning to Chess

Hello everybody. 

On the 5th of August 2020, I officially announced my retirement from tournament chess. The reason was that I wanted to pursue a carrier as an  English as a second language (ESL) teacher. This thought was originally motivated by the fact that I had started to learn Brazilian Portuguese while I was working for a charity shop which at the time had 2 Brazilian managers. The head manager decided to make an advertisement in a magazine to encourage people to call me language exchange and English lessons. He believed that I would one day find love through this journey. As much as I looked forward to the challenge of helping people with their English (and practicing my Portuguese at the same time).  

However, this journey came with some major difficulties from the very beginning. Firstly, I had no prior experience in teaching anybody. Secondly, I had to travel to far-away places in London which would involve long and awkward train journeys which at one point saw me have to wake up a 5 o'clock in the morning for a 22 stop underground journey. I needed headphones and Spotify to on my android phone to help me cope with the crowds at the station and the rumbling noises of the underground train. Thirdly, I have had to do this virtually without anybody on my side to give me guidance or advice about how to do the job properly. Essentially this was a lone journey where I had to do everything by myself.

I went to different parts of London to see different members of London's Brazilian community and then... suddenly... the pandemic happened. Lockdown of the UK was announced in March 2020 as the world was gripped by the effects of the Coronavirus outbreak which meant that all but necessary travel was banned in order to keep the public safe. Therefore, virtual measures had to take place for me to take language exchange sessions and English classes. I downloaded Skype and Zoom on my laptop and had various sessions with different people. During the same period, I was looking for a personal Portuguese teacher. I saw an advertisement in the same magazine that my advertisement was in, saying 'Learn Brazilian Portuguese'. I emailed the teacher about my interest in working with her as a student of the language. We agreed to meet at a certain time of the week. 3 O'clock on Friday on Skype. So I arrived at my laptop at 3 O'clock of Friday as we agreed by email ... or so I thought. after many attempts to video call her by Skype, I decided to phone her. complaining in Portuguese about the one hour wait that I had. Then she angrily replied in English that I did not confirm the date and time of the class and even claimed to give me an email, asking for confirmation. (which I didn't see.) In the end, she said  that maybe she is not the right teacher for me and therefore, terminated or relationship. This would prove to be one of many fallouts that I would have throughout this journey.

I also seemed to have many miscommunications with other people who contacted my service. Some wanted English lessons, some wanted language exchange and I wasn't always sure what the person wanted. These moments really destroyed my confidence as I felt like I was desperately letting them down. There were many moments when I asked myself "What did I do wrong?". I got the awful feeling that luck was simply not on my side when it comes to working with other people. 

Then, come the start of 2021, my family got upset with me after I made a post , giving possible reasons why I have not been able to find a girlfriend on Facebook. I had demands from my family to delete the post, even though the post had absolutely nothing to do with them. To this day, I still scratch my head about what the fuss was about. I got into trouble with my family again in July 2021 when I wrote a blog about how my family can better support me. Once again, they were offended by the post and demanded for it to be deleted. It is obvious to me that my family does not want to know about my life desire, nor do they want to know about my ambitions.

One thing that I have known for a ling time is that people with Asperger Syndrome seem to have a much harder time making and maintaining relationships with other people. No doubt that I have experience this in so many ways in the last 2 years.

There has been a handful of moments in my life where I thought that I can get something out there that is somehow 'better' than chess. As you can see from the stories above, that has proven to be just a big illusion. No matter what happens to me in life, I will always love the game of chess and I will always have the game o chess in my life. It's simply what I do when the worst comes to the worst in life. Quite simply for me, Chess IS life. It's my past, my present and my future.

Hence, I will be making a return to over-the-board chess at some point. However, the return will not be an immediate one as I plan to start a ESL training and accounting courses before returning to the real life 64 square battlefield full-time.

Moral of the story is this. Never leave your biggest passion in life. You never know when you might need it.

Thank you for reading.

The importance of family support.

 The importance of family support.

The last 2 years of my life have been quite drama and at times traumatic. This has been mainly because of the false anticipation of of having a romantic partner in my life which in the end, didn't look close to happening. 

One of the most ongoing feelings in my life is loneliness. This is because I have had a lot of negativity from other people. I think that I am often a misunderstood person because I have certain interests that are not particularly popular and do things that not everybody understands. 

Throughout my life, I have struggled to gain and maintain relationships both personal and professional. At the age of 35, I don't think it is even worth it anymore to look for 'the one' as I have struggled so  much to gain and maintain relationships. Instead, I ask for all of my family to be as supportive as they possibly can towards me. That means that whatever dream that I have in life that they support it without question.

Here is what I want from my family:

Empathy and forgiveness

I want my family to be supportive and understanding when the worst comes to the worst. They have to understand that I will make mistakes along the way and will misunderstand certain things.

Counselling

I want my family to feel like a safe group to talk about the deep and difficult personal issues in my life so that they don't linger in my head.

Backing

I want my family to support and respect whatever life direction that I intend to make. They have to understand that it is MY  life.

Appreciation

I want my family to understand that I make a lot of efforts for them because I want them to be proud of me. I may not be the son or brother that they dreamed of but I always do my best for the sake of may family.

I hope my family can understand all of this.

My road to chess glory Part 6: Overcoming Hurdles.

The summer of 2013 would prove to be a time of emotional uncertainty as I really didn't now what to do with my life without the game of chess. In the end, I decided to go on a ten week adult education course learning i byntermediate French which I received a certificate for at the beginning of 2014.


Although I at the time announced that I would no longer be a member of South Norwood Chess Club, I realised that the was one big problem with that decision; the fact that I would not be able to get my hands on the Ellary Williams Memorial and Stoneleigh trophies. Therefore, in order for me to receive the two trophies that worked so hard to earn in the first place, I would have to reverse my decision and return to the club. I eventually received the Stoneleigh trophy on Wednesday 30th October 2013 before the start of an away match at Wallington and the Ellary Williams Memorial trophy the following day on Thursday 31st October 2013 at South Norwood Chess Club. 

I started 2014 with one of the biggest scalps of my career, beating Koby Kalavannan in a major scalp in the first knockout phase of the CCF World Cup. At the time, his ECF grade was 159 while mine was only 121. At the time of writing, (February 2021) his grade has now increased to 226. I started with a very quiet opening in order for me to recover from the heavy rain that I had to travel in that night. He responded dynamically but left some holes in his defence and made a bad exchange that really allowed my position to gain power towards his own king. In the end, he simply suffered due to the growing positional pressure of my well placed pieces. Although the game lasted long into the night, I was confident after a while that I was going to win this as my positional pressure started to materialize. I can't even put it into words how joyful I was when the game finally ended. It really showed me the value of learning positional understanding in chess and how it can beat even significantly stronger opponent.

 During that summer, I would participate in the Felce Cup for  the first time since my disastrous debut campaign in 2010. I would have to travel to the Trinity Road Club in Wimbledon as there were not enough participants from south Norwood Club to form a South Norwood Section. I was always fond of the venue as it was an elegant little room that was upstairs from a pub that had a pool table, a dartboard and a TV screen.  My campaign got off to a slow start with 2 draws with black but with my first game with white became the moment that I had waited 4 years for. My first ever win in the Felce Cup after I had out-played my opponent in a rook and bishop endgame. I was soo happy and releived to finally end the curse of never winning a Felce cup game before. It meant that I was able to simply enjoy the rest of the tournament. However, this was as good as my tournament got as I could only mange one draw with my last 3 games, losing the last game tragically haven't earned a winning position. This ment that I had finished the tournament with an equal record of 1 win, 1 loss and 4 draws. Still, I was nice to end the wait for a Felce Cup which also meant that I can go into the new season in good spirits.

My review of 2020

My review of 2020

Before COVID

For the first 2 months of this year, I was traveling around London to help the Brazilian community of London with their English as well as working vigorously on my Portuguese. At that time, I was still playing out my final season Over-the-Board tournament chess and even leading my 2 usual rapid-play teams. However, in March, we all of this suddenly had to stop because there was a little something out there called... the pandemic. Yes this was the time the initial Coronavirus outbreak was affecting lives in the UK and therefore when almost everything we were doing had to stop. Phrases like "Stay at home" "Wash your hands" and "Wear a mask" was repeated continuously across the country as well as most of the world in what was a very uncertain time for humanity. Thankfully, for someone like me, the concept of staying at home was not a major problem for me as I am normally content with my own company. I had to finish the rest of my individual league standard-play games online via lichess.org.

My Birthday

This meant that on my 34th birthday on 12 April I had to do things for myself for my own birthday celebration. I decided to order a pizza with garlic bread, cookies and a tub of Ben & Jerry's birthday cake flavoured ice cream. When I ordered the food online, I was amazed that they can be such a thing as birthday cake ice cream but I really enjoyed it as well as all the other food that I bought.

Finding a teacher

During the year, I was looking for someone to be my professional Brazilian Portuguese teacher. During the month of May, I found an advertisement in the Anglo-Brazilian magazine 'Leros' of somebody offering lessons. After a small exchange of emails, we finally agreed to have a two hour class on Friday 5th June 2020.... or so I thought. However, after waiting for over an hour for a call to start on my Skype account, I decided to phone her to see if she remembered the agreed appointment time. I told her (in Portugese!) that I was waiting for her for over an hour. The response that I received was quite unexpected to say the least. She told me that I was meant to confirm the time of the class with her by email. She said that she had a screenshot of the email in which she asked for a confirmation. I never saw such an email and in fact, the last email that I received from her said "Yes, I confirm that I have your Skype contact details, no worries. No need to reply this email, I hope our next contact will be to confirm the payment and lesson time, ok." I thought that this meant that the lesson had already been arranged. I guess I was wrong. The phone call ended with he saying something like: "OK Richard. There has obviously been some misunderstanding so obviously I am not the right teacher for you so if you like Richard you can try someone or something else. You have many options. You have your blog, you have a lot going for you Richard so I'm sure that with the right teacher, you'll will you far. I love my language. Portuguese is a beautiful language and I wish you good luck. OK? Thank you. Goodbye.".

I was left completely dumbfounded by the whole experience. I couldn't believe that she would just give up on me after our first attempt to arrange a class. I would have thought that she would at least arrange it for the same time the following week. I would have thought that would have been the most sensible thing to do in such a situation. So I continue with my Memrise app and the tense book with exercises for me to do and just move on in the hope that one day I would have an official Portuguese teacher to work with me.(1) What a shame.

Final Season Finale

As a substitute for what would have been the remainder of my final chess season, Coulsdon Chess Fellowship decided to start a series of online speed chess tournaments on lichess.org. It took me a while to win one of these tournaments but I eventually did on the evening of the 2nd of July 2020. At the time of writing, I have now won 5 of those tournaments.

On the 5th of August 2020, I would officially announce my retirement from over-the-board tournament chess after 15 years. This was so that I can focus more on my new career as an English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher as well as other personal and professional pursuits. 

Online work and loneliness.

I spent most of he rest of the year studying Portuguese, playing chess and giving English and language exchange sessions to my clients online. However, towards the end of the year, I was seriously doubting my chances of ever having an intimate relationship. It was thought by many people that learning Brazilian-Portuguese will eventually see me with a Brazilian girlfriend. However, because of the ongoing pandemic, I was not able to see any of my clients physically. Perhaps inevitably, this lead to a small period of loneliness as it made me feel as if I was going to spend the rest of my life alone without ever having an intimate partner. This provoked me into making a post on Facebook on the 9th of December about the reasons why I believed that I would never find a girlfriend. This post said:

I have now come to the conclusion that the real reason why I don't (and maybe never) have a girlfriend are for the following reasons.

1). I am not simply not a normal human being (2).

2). I'm a deep thinking intellect which put most women off.

3). I hate loud places.

4). I never really know what to say to anyone.

5). I can find working with other people emotionally draining.

 When my mother learnt about this post, for some strange reason, my mother got really upset by this and even told me to take the post down, however, I am still struggling to understand how this would upset her, especially as I would have thought that she would know all of this from my childhood. All of this lead to a rather unfortunate row via voice and text messages. In the end I had to block her. 

It's pretty sad that my mother wants to censor my genuine thoughts and opinions about life in order to protect her own pride. I didn't say anything about her and all I ever did in the post was be honest about why I felt that I couldn't find love. On a positive note however, I did get some sympathy from some of my Facebook friends. 

Goals for 2021

Finally I do have some big resolutions for 2021.

1). To become and official online English teacher.

2). Learn Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch and Japanese as well as continue to study Portuguese.

3). To become an accountant.

4). Return to a meditation routine.

5). Learn to love my autism and not feel bad about it.

Let's hope it's a better year for all of us.

The End

Completed on Tuesday 9th February 2021

(1).Some good news: At the time of writing, I have now had 3 lessons via Skype with a wonderful teacher whose details I found on a digital copy of the January 2021 edition of 'Leros'.

(2) Of course I am aware that 'normal' is pretty subjective but I know for a fact that I have never fitted the concept of 'normal' in the perspective of society. to learn more about how I feel about loneliness, check out my blog series 'The myth of normal'.