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'.

 Mistakes my Brazilian friends make when speaking in English.  (Versão Inglês)

Hello

There are many challenges when learning a new language. in the last year, I have learnt Brazilian Portuguese with great interest. When I listen to my Brazilian friends speak English, sometimes I hear many mistakes in pronunciation and grammar.

1). “Hello Hee-chard”

When I was working for a charity shop. My bosses who we both Brazilians made some small errors when saying my name. My boss always said "Hello Hee-chard" and my other boss said "Ree-chard".

Actually, 'Richard' is a little difficult for people who don't have English as their first language. The first problem is the 'R 'sound in English. to say the letter R in English, you need to have a little pull of the tongue and a little vibration in your throat.

The second problem is the 'A' in 'Richard' this letter is not pronounced in the normal way but actually with a special sound in English called the 'schwa'. It is not an easy thing to teach but simply, you will almost always hear in the end of words ending in 'er' but there are many other words that have a schwa. The schwa is the most common sound in the English language so its very important to remember this sound.

2). “Make a coffee for you”.

This sentence is a little strange for native speakers. Normally, we say "Make yourself a coffee" Literally: Se faz om cafe". English has many reflexive verbs that is represented by the words "Myself", (me mesmo) "Yourself" (voce mesmo) Himself (ele mesma) "Herself" (ela mesmo) and Oneself" (si mesmo). For example. "I love myself" (Eu me amo.) "Lose yourself" (Perder-se) e "He hurt himself" (Ile se doer)

If you are making a cup of coffee for another person, you can say: "I will make a cup of coffee for you". (Eu vou fazer um xicara de cafe por voce.)

3). I speaky you.

Brazilians always make a vowel sound of "e/y" at the end of English words with a consonant. Consonants need to be learnt individually. For example: The word "catch" sounds like "catchy" and "beach" can sound like "b*tchy". (a really impolite word) therefore, pronunciation of consonants is really need to be learnt correctly.

 

Erros que meus amigos cometem quando falam em Inglês.

Introdução.

• Olá!

• Existem muitos desafios quando aprendemos uma língua nova. No ano passado, eu estive aprendendo português brasileiro com bastante interessante. Quando eu escuto meus amigos brasileiros falando inglês, às vezes escuto muitos erros de pronúncia e gramática.

1). “Hello Hee-chard”

Quando (eu) trabalhava numa loja de caridade, meus chefes, que eram brasileiros, falavam meu nome errado. Um (chefe) sempre dizia “Hello Hee-chard” (Hiːʃtӕd),

 e a outra (chefe falava “Ree-chard” Na verdade, ‘Richard’ é um pouco difícil para as pessoas que não têm o inglês como língua materna. O primeiro problema é o som do ‘R’ em inglês Para dizer uma letra ‘R’ em inglês, você precisa puxar um pouco a língua e ter um pouco de vibração em sua garganta 

O segundo problema é o ‘A’ em ‘Richard’. Essa letra não é pronunciada da forma normal, mas sim com um som especial chamado ‘schwa’ (Ə) Isso não é uma coisa fácil ensinar, mas você vai quase sempre ouví-lo em as palavras terminando em ‘er’, e há muitas outras palavras com um schwa. Esta não termina em ‘er’, por exemplo: a primeira vogal de ‘potato’ tem o som de "schwa" O schwa é a vogal mais comum no inglês, então é muito importante lembrar dessa vogal.

2). “Make a coffee for you”.

Literalmente: “Se faz um café”

Essa frase é um pouco estranha para falantes nativos. Normalmente, nós dizemos “Make yourself a coffee”; 

Inglês tem muitos verbos reflexivos representados pelas palavras “Myself”, (eu mesmo) “Yourself”, (você mesmo) Himself (ele mesmo) “Herself” (ela mesma) e “Oneself” (si mesmo).Por exemplo: “I love myself” (Eu me amo.) “Lose yourself” (Perder-se) e “He hurt himself” (Ele machucou-se)

Se você quer fazer uma xícara de café para uma outra pessoa, você pode dizer: “I will make a cup of coffee for you” (Eu vou fazer um xícara de café para você.

3). “I speaky you”

 Os brasileiros sempre fazem um vogal de “e/y” quando falando em um término de palavras em inglês com uma letra consoante. Os consoantes precisam ficar aprendiam sozinho. Por exemplo, a palavra “catch” soa como “catchy” e “beach” soa como “beachy” ou mesmo, “b*tchy” (a palavra realmente deseducada) então, os prenúncios de consonantes realmente precisam ficar aprendiam corretamente.

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My retirement from Chess.

My retirement from Chess.

It is with deep regret that as of today, I officially announce my retirement form over-the-board Chess after 15 eventful years. I believe that Chess can empower people in so many ways. For me, it gave me the opportunity to prove to the world that I can achieve things independently. It has also given me the opportunity to make new friends and meet inspiring people. The game of Chess has really made me the person that I am today.

My achievements within the game includes winning the Wernick Cup, 2 Ellary Williams Memorial Trophies, The Stoneleigh Trophy, The CCF Division 1 title and a CCF Super league title.

I would like to thank everybody within the Surrey Chess fraternity who have contributed in some way to my journey in Chess. I especially want to thank everybody at South Norwood Chess Club for their immense support towards me and my chess goals , Coulsdon Chess Fellowship (CCF) for their great hospitality and organisation of tournaments and all the other venues with in the Surrey County Chess Association who have warmly welcomed me before team matches.

 

AS things stand, my goal in life is to one day become an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher as I am currently helping certain people with the English language while I am also learning foreign languages.

 

Despite this decision, my passion for chess will never completely die. I will continue to play online and continue to run my Facebook group.

 

Finally, I wish everybody the best of luck with your continuing journeys through the great game of Chess.

 

Miss you all.

 

Richard Davis.