Thursday 27 August 2009

Excuse me ....

...while I take a break.

Today's the day that I leave for Kuala Lumpur to visit the Malaysia Chess Festival. Every year, I have a long-standing invitation to the Malaysia Chess Festival but I pay for it through my chess articles in the lovely tournament booklet. And this year, it'll include some of my photos of the Dato Arthur Tan Chess Centre at the Wilayah Complex.

Anyway, the Malaysia Chess Festival started last Saturday with the sixth IGB Arthur Tan Malaysia open chess tournament and the AmBank chess challenge, and will continue with the ASTRO Merdeka rapid chess open tournament. In KL, I'll be watching the tail-end of the Malaysia open and the start of the Merdeka rapid chess, plus accepting some invitations for makan-makan from friends and old colleagues.

So I'll be off-line for a few days with no Internet access at the CitiTel MidValley....not because there's no access there but because I'm not going to lug along my Apple MacBook. Nevertheless, I shall be leaving my readers with a few pre-blogged posts to fill in my absence. I hope nobody will be the wiser for it.....(but fat chance, indeed).

Oh yes, a most appropriate four-line verse taken from the Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam, Persian poet and philisopher, that best describes my activities in the next few days:

'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.
-- Stanza XLIX, Rubaiyat, Omar Khaiyyam --
(Edward Fitzgerald translation)


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