Greetings and Salutations fellow homosapiens,
I attended the World RPS tournment which was on the 22nd of October. I went by myself and my focus was strictly on competing to win. The venue was in Toronto at the Steam Whistle Brewery. It was a nice venue as I believe they make beer there as well. I had to wait in line in the rain for about 30 minutes and as soon as I got there, a long lineup started to form behind me.
Behind me was this group of French speaking youngins' who had black and white skeleton makeup on. I saw a lot of people dressed up in team uniforms. There were some normal people there as well not dressed up. At least half the people were dressed up. The age range seemed predominantly people in their early to mid 20s. There were older people there as well.
I pre-registered online so I was guaranteed a spot. There's only a certain number of people allowed to compete. I was number 418. They give all contestants a RPS pin and a RPS card game. Seriously why is a game like this in card format?
Anyways, there are 16 areas set up and I was set to participate in wave 4 of the preliminary rounds.
I started scoping out the scene to see what kind of throws people would throw out first. There was a group of guys dressed up in Blue Jay outfits and someone on their team was dressed in a wedding gown. I went over to my area and asked when wave 4 begins but they were on the second wave. I was getting bored because I wanted to play. When you register, they give you $5 in fun bucks and you use that to compete with others when participating in Street RPS. At first when I read about street rps online I thought it meant that people would actually be on the street competing but it meant that people are competing in the venue for fun. So if I challenge someone to street RPS, I'd put down my fun money and they as well and whoever wins best 3 of 3 keeps the money. In the end of the night, the top 4 compete for real money.
I was observing the street RPS and there was a team from Norway. Three of them were young and one of them was probably around 9. I'm not sure how old he was but when I started watching him compete in street rps, he seemed undefeated and I saw him compete several times and win. I thought the age requirement was 19.
A part of me didn't want to see this kid get beaten. But at some point this kid will lose a round. Who wants to see a kid learn this lesson at such a young age? And whoever beats him is probably going to feel some level of guilt because the money they take was money from a kid.
On the other hand, I wanted to see this kid lose. An RPS competition like this should be for adults. Have a separate event for kids! If a kid is always winning, he'll get arrogant. And why should a kid win just cause he's a kid. If he wants to play with the big boys, we shouldn't have to throw a game just cause we're playing with a kid.
Also a few people had videocameras and cameras and some guy got this girl to lift her top off while he cupped her boobs in front of a camera and video. I don't know if the guy knew this girl.
American slut I bet.
Seriously, no other girl was behaving like that. I don't have a problem with chicks flashing their boobs but it all depends on the context of the situation.
Attention grabbing American slut I say!
At one point I sat down and some guy chatted up with me. I get quite restless sometimes so I had to move around some more and then sat back down. I was sitting again near the washroom when some guy asked me if he could trust me to hold his beer as he went to the washroom since you can't take beer in there. I didn't have to think twice about my trustworthiness and I said yes. He said I could drink some if I wanted to but I'm a Guiness girl. Drinking regular beer is like drinking water for me. He seemed to be taking a long time and I just felt like leaving because I was getting restless again. He did come out and I walked around some more.
Eventually it was my time to compete. A wave consists of 8 people competing and only 2 get to make it to the second 2 of 128. So the maximum number of people allowed to compete in this competition was 512. My first round was against some guy and he said it was okay for me to throw rock. Now I'm not stupid but I read about this in the advanced tactics on the RPS site. The psychology of that is that you won't throw rock and that means it would be safe to throw scissors. But I threw rock anyways and he threw paper.
Cunt.
He ended up winning the first match but I wasn't going to let that bother me. I didn't want to lose in the preliminaries. What an embarrassment!
I ended up winning that match because I tapped into the RPS zone. Every cell in my body was focused on winning and not letting some pretty boy cunt get to me.
I had a second match and I also won that.
I was glad that I made it to the round of 128. There was some still lots of time until the next round. When I passed by the people I won, I felt humbled. I think if you win, you've got to keep yourself grounded and focused.
The number they assign us has a tag on it that says 'currently undefeated' and if you lose, they detach it from your number.
I saw many people after my round who didn't have the 'currently undefeated' on their number. I felt for them because I'm sure it sucks to get defeated so early. Those who get to go on to the next round gets a tag to hang around your neck. I attached my number onto my tag and was proudly wearing it as I was meandering about. I could see the envy in some people's eyes.
I unfortunately got defeated in the second round by Burlington pussy. He was throwing slowly and you have to be in sync when throwing and I was used to throwing faster. That may have been a factor in throwing me off. When he competed again in this round, I wanted to see him win but he didn't. If someone beats you, you at least want to see them go on to win. I didn't stay very long afterwards as it was late and I was getting tired.
I felt a bit disappointed because I did want to win. I wanted to make it to the round of 32. Maybe I will attend this again but I think I'd like to go with someone.
I enjoyed myself though. I was smiling on my way home.
In other news...
It looks like the gods of finance are throwing some good fortune my way. My parents got some significant inheritance money in Italy and they wanted to give some money for me and my brother. I have a couple of business and investment debts and they gave me money to pay off a loan I had. At first I felt weird that I got money from my parents. I want to take care of myself and do things on my own, I don't want free money for no reason. But since it was an inheritance, which was money from my late grandmother, she'd probably want me to have some and the money was used productively and not frivolously. I'm a rugged individualist. I don't like relying on people much.
But it was a huge relief and so now I'm not stressing over money as much.
I also got notified on Tuesday that I have a new job. Someone I knew from high school works there and we have a mutual friend in common, who told me about how they need people to work there. It's call centre customer service basically, which was something I wanted to move into as I've been doing factory/warehouse work for so long that I wanted an office position.
It's going to be weird for me to work in an office environment. The temp agency had me at an office last week, which is not something they normally do and it felt weird. I'm used to wearing tattered clothes and swearing. Now I actually have to wear nice clothes and be polite.
Office people are a completely different breed of people then factory people. Factory people, while some are ignorant and stupid, have an honestness to them. They might be fucked up and dysfunctional but they don't pretend to be something they are not. Most office people seem to put on this polite facade and that drives me batty sometimes. I hate working in factories/warehouses but at least people seemed interesting sometimes.
I'd just like to say not all factory people are stupid. Many are normal and intelligent people who prefer working with their hands and doing physical work.
I start my training on November 16 for 4 weeks. I'm not really nervous. I'm not sure what to expect. I hope I like it but I really don't know what to expect.
In Anthroposophical news...
I finished reading Towards Social Renewal a few days ago and am reading Social Issues. I want to read Goethe's World View but am deciding if I want to reread these social issue books that I read last year. There's 4 in total (including Social Issues but not TSR) I think this concept of the social order and society are quite necessary to think about because I am 26 and I have been thinking quite sometime about society and the individual and how societies should be structured. And how society needs to be structured in order for individuals to be free to unfold their own inner impulses.
TSR was much easier for me to read this time around. There were a few things I really just didn't get. Like how he talks about creating wages.
I've encountered many people who didn't agree with our capitalistic society, however, capitalism benefits people in certain ways and can be destructive as well. TSR addresses this and points out how the way certain things in society and economics are not clearly understood creates problems.
It's like a 2 edged sword but people seem to focus on the negative. TSR is a call to change our thinking and to develop correct observations and clear thinking on what is really going on in the social organism.
I was in an online study group where they were reading TSR. I wasn't heavily active but one question I thought was relevant to ask was "can we imagine a society without capitalism?". It was something like that, I don't remember exactly but the point was to develop some positive feelings towards capitalism. People don't seem to realize that everything they have is a result of people working together. The ideal of capitalism, as far as I understand is about economic brotherhood. It's about individuals working together to create services and products for others and in turn we all become 'better off' economically. Problems are arising because certain things that are mixing together should be separate.
The ideal of politics is about rights. It's essense is to protect people.
These two realms and the realm of culture, arts and education should all be separate and governed autonomously. The economic realm should not be setting the agenda of education. The educators should be setting the agenda and the economic realm should not be perverting and influencing areas other then the economic realm. This is partly why capitalism is creating problems in society.
Ideals and ideas are real. Ideals are something to be striven for. They may never be attained but that is not the purpose of ideals.
Ideals live in people and that is a fact about humans.
People may turn cynical and scoff at this but this is reality.
Ideals provide a way of doing things, a methodology if you will. But they are not designed to be fulfilled because life is dynamic and not static.
I wish I can talk more about Steiner's social concepts, however, I think in time I will be able to grasp them more clearly.
What I have discussed is just the mere morsels of what I understand. There certainly is more for me to grasp so please accept what limited knowledge I have provided.
There were 2 people who came to the study group, who left for the States in 2003 and also were in BC. They are an elderly couple and will be returning to Brantford as they have family there.
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