Tour De Shadaloo Day 1

*FLASHBACK*

It's the 16th of May around 3pm. Ricky has just been crowned Perth APAC champion.

We knew we couldn't just let a lone soldier tackle the east coast so the band of brothers Taka, Derrick, Ricky, Andrew and myself came together to form what would be Tour De Shadaloo's first squad unit to infiltrate the east coast.

The five of us all got together at the Perth Domestic airport at around 12am for our flight.

It was all going well until I tried to get to sleep. I stupidly did not buy a neck pillow, and had a very hard time trying to sleep. As soon as I tried to lie my head down on the tray in front of me, the women in front of me would convulse wildly and wake me up. When I tried to lie back in my own seat, fellow squad member Derrick would rock my seat. I call shenanigans.

After a nice cramped and sleepless 4.5 hour flight, we touched down in Sydney. Taka immediately whipped out his 'baby'; a brand new camcorder he bought purposely for the trip just the day before. Taka starts video logging until we get to the arrival gates. Taka is told in stern fashion to delete whatever he just recorded. Taka is salty at airport security.

Just as we walk outside, Taka starts vlogging again. There also happens to be a bit of a CSI going on as two police officers are questioning a rather suspect looking couple. What happens? You guessed it.

Police: What are you doing?! DELETE PLZ K THX BAI
Taka: Diu lei lo mo...
Police: Hmmm?
Taka: That means 'Sorry I'll do that right away' :)

Okay, I may be paraphrasing there. Nevertheless, we have a first laugh of the trip. We also manage to get swindled by the airport taxi driver who took us for a 'ride'. At least we saw the Audi building. We were deposited on George Street and settled into our base for the weekend.

Nothing fancy at all... but most importantly cheap cheap cheap. There was also a random dude who's a long term backpacker there that stayed in the same dorm. Hope we didn't disturb you too much mate! We were checked in, which meant it was time to meetup with Yang, who would turn out to take really good care of us 'stick out like sore thumb' out of towners. But there's so many pretty buildings!

Tram? What's that...?

Pretty building #1

Pretty building #2

Sometimes you want to go... where everybody knows your name!

Note that at this point, I have had no sleep in the past 36 hours.

By about 2:30pm, things start to get a little bit more exciting... in half an hour, our private session with some dude from Japan named 'Daigo Umehara' would start. I'd like to thank anyone and everyone who was involved in organising this private session with Daigo for us interstate people. You have no idea how much we appreciated it!

We're waiting inside GGS chatting to fellow ozhadou members and whatnot, also playing some casuals on the SF4 machines (I was free due to lack of sleep... profound sadness). Everytime anyone pops out from the stairway, we all look, but are only greeted with disappointment when we see it wasn't Daigo. Then, at about 3:45pm... Daigo's immaculately permed hair pokes up from the stairway. People are clapping his arrival.

Me posing with some Japanese dude.

Being the superstar in our community he is, we are all bugging him for his autograph and for photos. Needless to say, the guy is a humble champion. Not once did I see him refuse a photo or signature. In the words of Chris Hu: 'I RESPEK DAT.'

Chris Hu: I RESPEK DAT.

Not long after, a couple of Xbox's are setup and the private session is ready to go. The first challenger? Our very own Derrick a.k.a. derrace. He put up a good fight I must say, but Daigo being Daigo took it. Next up was another fellow soldier Andrew a.k.a. Valkyran. He showed us his claw skillz were no match for Umehara's beastliness and got taken down swiftly. Would also just like to say to whoever shouted out something along the lines of 'You're shit!' while Andrew was playing... we don't approve of stuff like that.

Roundhouse button got as broken as SF4 Sagat.

Then to make it a hat-trick of Perth scalps for Daigo, up stepped yours truly, Jase a.k.a. MrChowda. Was I nervous? Hell yeah! It's freakin' Daigo! The match starts and Daigo immediately starts chuckin' the hadous. I absorb a few and react to his next badly spaced hadou for a perfect jump in. What happens? DENIED. THE ROUNDHOUSE BUTTON WAS BROKEN. First blood could have gone to me, but the roundhouse button was broken. Andrew shares my disdain as he was suspect of said roundhouse button all along. To be honest, it threw me off my game and I got schooled from there on in. Plus tiredness... a poor excuse I know.

Me before my last set with Daigo. I reached absolute perfection... (That means getting P'd boys and girls)

What can I say about going up against Daigo? Well, you watch the youtube clips and think, damnnnnn he's a good player. But to play against him as he dissects your gameplan? And punishes you hard for practically any button you press? It's simultaneously beautiful yet horribly demoralising. Gotta love them juxtapositions. Whilst I'm sure many will just watch the videos and think man, why do these guys suck so much, I'm telling all of you now... you have no idea what's it's like to be there in person.

Did we benefit from the experience? Overall we got 6 games each against Daigo. And the unequivocal response in unison was... YES. Although Taka did ask Daigo after his first game.

Taka: What advice can you give me?
Daigo: It's only two games. I don't know.

A man of many words.

After our private session, we had some hotpot nearby and Ric managed to order some foul tasting ribs. Good job Ric! We went back to GGS which was now packed because the local NSW players were queuing up like lambs to the slaughter to have a go at Daigo. We instead decided to head over to Shane's a.k.a. Gamogo's place to get some casuals in. At this point I was really running on fumes. I fell asleep in the taxi on the way. I played one casual match against Shane's Akuma and I needed vaseline after the raping that occurred. Smartly, I lied down on Shane's nice floor rug and proceeded to K.O. myself while Shane's cat licked my face.

The guys woke me up when it was time to go, and we thanked Shane for graciously taking us in and headed back to the backpackers hostel. It was then that we discovered we had a mole within the ranks. Ric fell asleep before the rest of us and proceeded to demonstrate why a nickname of The Sleep Deprivator 5000 would be pretty apt. Ric, you have the most ridonkulous snoring ever. Seriously.

I only got 2 hours shut-eye that night and thanked my lucky stars I got some rest at Shane's place. I also found out however that my phone's internet capabilities are pretty good! And so ended our first day. The next day would be serious business... tournament time.