As you can imagine our success in Wuhan left us with a lot of memorable moments relating to the competition and the stadium however it’s the events and stories that people haven’t heard that I would like to share with you. Travelling with such an ‘adventurous’ bunch there are a lot of entertaining stories and I have chosen the ones that spring to mind whenever the Pan Asia Championship is mentioned.

The Night Before
The Underground players are spread across the continent so in order for us to all be on an early morning flight departing from Sydney a large majority of us spent the night at a cheap motel in Sydney. With 4 players per room and 2 rooms there wasn’t much time for sleep, especially with an all night endurance Xbox tournament happening in one of the rooms. Anyway it was getting late and we dispersed into 2 separate groups, one to continue the Xbox endurance competition along with enough cheering to drown out a CGS crowd and the other to the room next door for some TV and much needed sleep. I was lucky enough to be in the ‘sleeping room’ with Eileen and Morpo and Eileen quickly drifted off to sleep while Morpo and I watched the worst TV show in history. All of a sudden there was some movement in the bottom bunk and we were first introduced to the fierce, burning rage that is a tired and annoyed Eileen. After some mumbled insults followed by some grunting and groaning and a touch of yelling Morpo and I decided that it was time to turn the TV off and attempt to get some sleep ourselves. With the TV off the winner of every DOA round and Forza lap from next door was making enough noise to raise the dead. However the dead weren’t the ones to be feared, once again I heard some mumbling and insults flying from the lower bunk however this time it was followed by some footsteps, a door slamming and an angry knock. I shot a look at Morpo and we both felt sorry for the players next door neither of us wanted to be in their shoes. Well Eileen managed to get the perfect mix of sarcasm and rage in the words that were spoken and she reduced to whole Counter-Strike team to a bunch of crying puppies. Everyone learnt that the fastest way to certain death was to become between Eileen and sleep.

Road Rage
We arrived in Wuhan and jumped off the plane and onto a bus at around midnight. For those of you that haven’t experienced the traffic in Wuhan I’ll break down a few things for you; Stopping at red lights is optional, every inch of highway is a pedestrian crossing and if your vehicle is bigger you can pretty much do what you like including cutting off 10 lanes of traffic to make a u-turn. So we are all sitting on the bus crying about the smog and looking around like kids in a candy shop. Our driver decides to cut off about the 10th car since we left the airport and all of a sudden the car is back in front of us. We came to a section of road that was only wide enough for a single vehicle and all of a sudden the car we cut off slams on the brakes and comes to a complete stop in front blocking the road, the driver proceeded to get out of the car and death stare the bus. After about 5 minutes of starring and mouthed insults that none of us even understood the enraged driver decided that he was sick of being the amusement of 10 laughing Aussies and decided to continue his journey.

The Match
At the end of each day when everyone retired to their room for some sleep a few of us would meet up in some rooms and practice on the Xbox or go over strategy for the next match. Most nights we had the company of a certain CGS admin named Ash, well suffice to say that after a number of nights a rivalry had formed between Ash and myself in DOA. Now we both understand DOA and we both know what to do and when to do it, we are just very bad at the implementation, we probably formed this rivalry because we were two of the worst players in the room. Now is a good time to explain one of the bruises on my forehead, it was during one of these nights that Tegs decided to pass the controller with a nice underhand lob while calling to me; I looked up just in time to cop a controller to the face. On the third day of competition I had to stay behind at the stadium for some TV stuff, everyone had left except for the staff and Ash and myself finally got to play a DOA match on the stadium stage with all the big screens! After a close match with CGS rules and random characters I managed to come out on top 5-4 in what must have been the worst DOA game in the world to watch.

All You Can Eat
I’m not sure how many times I attempted to explain to my players that the food in China isn’t the same as what western countries call ‘Chinese Takeaway’, but in the end it never sunk in. Probably the best example of this was the traditional dinner organized by CGS on the second night with a menu that included camel, eel, frog, pig trotters and all sorts of weird and wonderful dishes. Being unaccustomed to the way this food was presented led to many of the players not being able to look at the food more or less attempt to eat it. Now topguN, Berzerk and myself have a great meal, we tried everything and washed it down with some tasty local beer, however the remainder of the team was counting down the minutes to when they could leave the restaurant and make their way to Mc Donalds. The most entertaining part was that every time the waitresses came out with a new dish everyone’s eyes lit up and they reached for their chopsticks only to end in dismay when they saw the contents of the dish. I must make special mention of Cam here as he did manage to stomach a fish eye after spending 10 minutes extracting it from the head with chopsticks.

Painful Celebration
We had a very successful tournament and as everyone knows Aussies love to celebrate a win in a very vocal and physical manner. We are an extremely loud and emotional team, especially the Counter-Strike division and after each match it is common for a number of them to lose their voice. On the first day of competition Counter-Strike was the last game in both our matches and we were behind by a point or two going into each Counter-Strike game. The second of these matches was against the Wuhan Dragon and the team was especially loud, when the match finally drew to a close I was unfortunate enough to be standing directly next to topguN. TopguN jumped up yelling and screaming and he grabbed me by the side of the head, now I was expecting a cheer but instead he gave me the biggest and most unexpected celebratory head but I have ever seen. I went from cheering and seeing everyone yelling to seeing stars and attempting to stay on me feet.

Rice Wine
Aussie’s have to celebrate, it’s in our genes and after the competition in Wuhan we all met up at the hotel bar for a few quite ones and to congratulate each other on advancing to the world finals. Well our numbers soon swelled from 11 to about 30 as other players and staff decided to join us. An unnamed man returned from an official dinner and decided that we needed to experience the goodness that was rice wine. After purchasing a few bottles and distributing them to the crowd it soon became apparent that some people were in for a long night and after awhile we split into smaller groups. I was unlucky enough to end up at a karaoke bar with Berzerk and Eileen and a number of others. Now if Eileen’s rage was a frightening experience it didn’t even come close to how scary her singing was. After sitting there for a few minutes I began to wish I had managed to drink more than one shot of the rice wine. So I returned home sporting 2 facial bruises, a headache from the karaoke and a new found fear of Eileen.