I have returned to my home from Singapore two days ago and now I am back to my ordinary and mediocre life again. Last week, I was sent to there for doing voluntary report work for WCG2007 Asian Championship. This visit was the first time of going to the south east asia country. It is said that unlike other SE asia region countries, Singapore is known as one of the cleanest countries in the world. Indeed, it is true. While walking down the street, it was hardly spotted that cigarette butts or any rubbishes are dumped on the street. Though Singapore is located only 100 km north of equator, the whether was fairly fine with moving around city in the day time. It’s partly because all buildings turn on air-conditioner 24/7 even all taxis either. Everything seemed to be perfect to live only if you are not a smoker. Even in the outside restaurant, some areas are assigned as smoking restricted place and not to mention a cigarette is very expensive to buy. Prices of food and clothes are apparently 30% cheaper than Seoul. One of memorable things I could make is having talks and being friends with a waitress of pub where I and two of my colleagues visited twice. We could dig some information of her and what we could figure is she is the same age of me, a her boy friend is now studying in U.K and she is not a singaporean but from Beijing. It was more fun of going to the largest club in Singapore in Friday night. In free day, we went to Orchard street from start to end of this street numerous of shopping malls and department stores have lined up.


Anyway, after free tour day passed, during the whole remaining days I was held in Suntech City where WCG2007 Asian championship had taken place for fulfilling given duties as being a voluntary reporter. Suntech City is situated in the main area of Singapore. At the first time when arrived there, I was little bit shocked about the scale of Suntech City. Suntech City has really large 5 buildings which stand in a circle.
The venue of WCG is 6th floor of Convention Hall of Suntech City. The more ascending to upper level on the escalator the more laud speaker bounce I could hear. Finally, when I arrived there I could feel some kind of fever of esports that they have got. Apparently, for them, ESports has already become a part of culture for young Singaporean people. Audiences chanted and shouted to whom they rooted for.
WCG2007 Asian Championship is the similar event with Samsung European Championship which is held in EU in every year and organized by WCG. It has 5 official games and yet only noticeable game for people here in ESREALITY is Warcraft iii. For Warcraft iii korea player, Sungdeok “SoJu” Lee who is the winner of this year’s ESWC Warcraft iii was selected. Of course, there’s no one we could find who were able to beat him among the attendances. He could easily win and has brought prize money $1,000(How small it is!!) to his home. I am not sure whether this is true, but in his group stage matches he even played other races like orc, human and night elf.
Once entering the venue the first thing you could see is event booths. Most event booths were from large companies like Samsung, EA and Singtel which is singapore's the lagest tele company. But there was one small mouse pad company booth was set near the EA booth. That was "Barracuda". Fortunately, I had a chance to interview with president of Barracuda and he has got an idea of expanding his business into world wide. The reason I could have a chance to talk to him is very funny. In barracuda booth there was a computer running Quake4 and audiences were allowed to play. Nobody knew how to play quake 4 so this computer was always available. I played for a while and moving around map. All of sudden one guy asked me to play a game so I did. That guy was the owner of Barracuda singapore's leading mouse pad company for professional gamers. He knows one of my friend working in WCG that connection made us easily to be close each other.

Now it is so obvious that WCG has been lost its fame and popularity that it had before among people in here over wrong selections of games. Yet, being a national based gaming competition this is the only event providing something like we can feel in real sports matches. You might think somewhat weird when prominent players did choose WCG as the best competition ever when they are asked to do so. Because there has always been something special you can feel, once you participate in this event as a player, a media press or whatever. Hopefully, this event, I mean WCG, could last long and I wish we could have at least one fast faced FPS game in next year's WCG.

Orchard ST.


Warcraft iii Final match SoJu vs Kowi(from New Zealand)


Singapore's celebrity JJ Lin plays DotA


JJ Lin performs on the stage


costume play event


all contenders of constume play event on the stage