Surprised by reception

I spent five hours this afternoon at the annual USM team chess tournament. The first of two days. I was scheduled to play only on the first day, so I will be absent from the tournament tomorrow. I won't mention much about the three games I played except to say, for the record, that I won two easy games and drew the third one rather quickly.

But the nicest part of the afternoon was when a host of other players - I lost count after a while - who came up to me and enquired why I had stopped writing the chess column for The Star newspaper. They were both chess friends as well as chess players who were unknown to me.

Needless to say, I was rather overwhelmed by their concern over the end of the chess column but as I explained to them, the decision was not mine to make. I will write if the newspaper wants me to, and I will stop if the newspaper does not want the column anymore. But I did tell them that it was an editorial decision by the newspaper, not mine.

So I shall repeat here what I wrote on facebook earlier today: Thanks, everybody!