Monday, January 18, 2010

Monday Blues Blogging ...


Taking a break during work, what GiLoCatur is gonna do? Checking the blog ... Checking on what? GiLoCatur's eyes were glancing at the visitors info provided by widgeo.net. The visitors of GiLoCatur's blog are basically from which locations? Most of them are from Malaysia. Out of the 65 visitors showed by it, GiLoCatur is interested to know the four following locations - Pathhead, Basingstoke, Urbana and Lausanne. The last one sounds familiar.



So, GiLoCatur started researching and "googling" (what a powerful search engine, information on fingertips or mouse clicks). Let's start with Lausanne. Lausanne is situated in the shores of Lake Geneva, Switzerland. The headquarters of International Olympic Committee is located here. (Click here to find out more) No wonder it seems familiar. It is in a beautiful country. So, someone from the city has visited this blog. Who is he or she? A Malaysian? or else ... But one thing GiLoCatur is sure is he or she is a chess fan. So is there any link between Lausanne and chess?


The answer is surely yes. What are they?

It organizes Young Masters Chess tournaments where players like Alexandra Kosteniuk takes part. If you don't know who is she, find it out. A chess fan should know about her especially the girls. This year edition will be held from 17th to 20th September. For the Malaysians who can afford to participate in the tournament and visit the beautiful city, please do so. Check out the details of the tournament like who to contact in its official website here.

The 1998 World Chess Championship between Karpov and Anand was held there. (For further details, click here)




Then Pathhole and Basingstoke. The former is in Scotland while the latter is in England. Maybe the visitors from these two village and town are the Malaysians staying there. GiLoCatur is hoping if the visitors read this entry, they can provide some info and comment. As travelling or "M"engembara is one of GiLoCatur's hobbies, having to know about such places from someone there is enough. GiLoCatur loves to travel to small villages and towns besides the popular spots to see the real life and beautiful scenery. Check out about Pathhead, here, and Basingstoke, here.


The last one is Urbana. Where the heck is this place? Actually, Urbana is a small city in Illinois, USA. It has about 40,000 population. One thing that GiLoCatur likes about villages, towns, and cities in the United States is that they have information about their population. The info is shown in a signboard that is put up and can be seen when you are entering them. Besides that, in their public libraries they have the records and information almost for each resident. In Malaysia, we do not have this sort of record and information that is easily accessed. This sort of culture of having easily accessible information and records need to be alive and in place. Facts and figures should be available to all. If you are interested to explore further about it, go to this link.


Here, GiLoCatur also wants to share about chess clubs overseas. We should learn how to promote and encourage chess clubs to grow in this country. The more chess clubs in this country, the better chess would develop and grow. In that case, it would be closer for Malaysia to have her first GrandMaster (GM).

GiLoCatur welcomes any chess club in Malaysia to share their activities and information in this blog. Foreign chess clubs are also welcome to share experience, knowledge and activities. Who knows, we can have chess friendlies. In the meantime, GiLoCatur will try to promote 17ChessClub and Persatuan Catur Sabak Bernam (PCSB). So, stay tune and always comeback!


The Harvad Chess Club

The Dallas Chess Club


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