Post-TI7 Travel Blog
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| I'll try to post more frequently >< |
Sat 8/5/17
I've traveled to Boston on my own this past winter and Seattle for last year's International, so this trip wasn't really much of a biggie. A buddy picked me up around 2 and dropped me off at RIC without any problems. Got there with around an hour to spare after breezing through the TSA checkpoint. Later on I realized that I forgot my mousepad in one of the scanner bins...RIP.
PHL seemed pretty chill. I think that was my first time flying through there that I could remember. It felt good to be back in Philly even for just a little bit. I think slept most of the way to SEA. Oh ya, I gotta really lucky too and got window seats both flights...go figure.
Luckily nothing got lost during the transfer over from PHL. With luggage in hand, I wandered around the parking garage for a little bit til' I finally found the Uber pick up area. Maybe I was still a bit tired after my long plane nap, but apparently I put my drop of location as the International District. Whoops. After I realized my screw-up I called for another ride and made my way to Matt's place.
Sun 8/6/17
The eve of the International. Matt and I went to pick up his roll-call tickets and checked out the arena set-up. It was pretty similar to last year's aside from a few differences like color scheme and the goodie-bag pickup area. I looked around at the team flags waving around in front of the Arena and was sad to not see Fnatic's pennant, but I still had Cloud 9 to cheer for.
My airport cheesesteak and beef jerkey from last night had worn off and I was ready to grab some real food. I remembered the Japanese market-place from last year that I went to with my family was pretty good, so we decided to eat there. Lunch for me was some takoyaki and a Viet sandwhich. A bit later I decided to do some gift shopping at the Kinokuniya Bookstore nextdoor. I was tempted to get a bunch more artbooks, but since I was getting souveniers I limited myself to just one. 
Once we got back to Matt's I rested up a bit. About an hour later Yongmin-hyung messged me and told me that I could come pick up the tickets he'd gotten me at the player hotel. I thought about Ubering over, but decided to save a few dollars and just walk. It was around a 15-20 minute walk over through downtown Seattle to get to the hotel. I waited around in the lobby for a little til' he came down. Originally, I asked if he could maybe bring a Fnatic t-shirt or jersey for me to wear at the event, but he surprised me with 3 Fnatic shirts and a jersey. With all the stuff he gave me I felt like I shoulda got him more than the little key-chain thing from bookstore (T T). We chatted for a little bit then I left to head back to Matt's.
Ferg arrived around 6 ish? I started to get a bit hungty, so we made plans to go get some Korean food a few blocks away. Place was pretty solid. I went for the safe option of galbi, so there wasn't much room for error. Aftwards, I decided to explore around the pier a little and walk off the meal. The view of the Seattle Sound was something that I'd missed from last year. It was well worth the walk.
Mon 8/7/17
Just a few hours earlier I was playing Dota, wow it was finally time to watch some in person. There was a bit of a line outside when we got there, but not too long of a wait. It would be different this year not sitting in the suites, but I didn't mind the general admissions seating. The biggest pain about GA seating is finding and keeping good seats. However, since there were a few of us it was quite easy to get up between games to use the bathroom and grab food. Opening ceremoney was OK this year. Felt a bit bummed cuz there was not GabeN to say, "Welcome to the International!".
It was unfortunate that both western teams got knocked down to the losers brackett so early on day 1. China seemed in shape and ready to fight in comparison to EG and Liquid. I was relieved to see Secret and DC make it through day one, but I didn't really forsee DC making it much farther. Too bad OG didn't lose vs Infamous, that would've been a dream scenario. The most dissapointing thing that day was to see C9 go out on day 1. All my shirts that I had brought now only belonged to elimnated teams.
Day 1 ended up being so long that we didn't actually have to time grab any dinner. Ah well, it was a day filled with lots of good Dota so I didn't mind missing out on a meal.
Tues 8/8/17
With my favorite teams out of TI I guess I sorta lost some motivation to watch after Day 1. From my perspective I honestly just wanted to to play some games. LGD.FY rolled through TNC and VP held their ground vs LGD. Afterwards it was Liquid vs Secret, but I didn't really care enough to watch. Instead, I decided to go check out the Redbull LAN Center near the arena.
I ended up playing some ridiculous solo queue game there where fed a bunch but ended up winning because of our rapier Clinkz. Weird game. Some Pinoy guys beside me asked me after my game finished if I wante to play some LAN games with them and I gladly accepted to cool off from the craziness of my solo queue game. Before that day I'd never played a full 5v5 game of Dota on LAN before and it was defnitely worthwhile to experience the yelling and the BM of LAN Pinoy Doto. We ended up losing because everyone was just clowning around, but I had fun regardless.
EG vs Empire was the next series of the day, though I still didn't really care enough to watch. Instead, I decided to wait outside the red carpet area to give Heen-hyung his keychain that I got him. I didn't really know when they'd exit the arena so I think I waited at least like an hour before Liquid finally popped out to leave. Heen and I had met at last year's afterparty, but I never properly introduced myself then because I was all shy and awkward. My patience payed off as Liquid finally emerged and I was able to give him his gift and have a quick chat before he took off.
Wed 8/9/17
Before going to the arena I managed to sneak a few party queue pubs in that morning. The lower brackett games went as I expected, but not how I wanted. TNC and DC both got pretty man-handled by OG and LGD. With DC out there were no more Koreans left to cheer for other than Heen-hyung. At the very least I just didn't want OG to win TI...they'd already won enough Valve majors.
After the Newbee series I went back to the Redbull Center for some LAN that I'd signed up for. This would be my first LAN tournament so I was excited to see if I could win anything. Our team was made up of 6k's and 5k's + a 1k, who I wanted to sub out for at least a 4k, but my friend was against it. We ended up rolling through the first game vs some 2k stack. During the 2nd round is where we ran into some trouble. With a 1k player it was essentially 4v5 and I cornered us with a pretty bad draft and we ended up getting eliminated. I was mad at myself and a bit at my friend for not letting us find a standin, but more at myself for the bad draft. I didn't really care for the cash prize, I just really wanted to win. The rest of the night I was pretty sad and listened to my emo playlist and imagined how dissapointed the TI players were post-elimination in comparison to my small LAN loss.Thur 8/10/17
That day I went to the arena for the first series of the day, Liquid vs Empire. It was pretty one sided both draft and play wise. The next series, OG vs LGD, I didn't really care for much. I had a decent hunch based off of OG's groupstage performance that LGD would come out on top. Rather than stay for the series, I went back to Matt's place to play some solo queue games and attempted to snipe some 7k average games. I aactually was able to snipe Kuku and Raven from TNC (Kuku our TA) so I was pretty happy that I was able to squeeze into a high average game. I feel like I learn the most from these 7k average games so I try to get into as many as possible.
Honestly I ended up not caring about the last real series of the day, Liquid vs VP. I'm pretty sure I slept through most of the games of that series. After I woke up I played a few more pubs before the allstar game. I actually missed the first few minutes of the All-star game because my game ended later than I thought. Apparently, the arena was out of free shirts by the time I got back, but ah well it was just the All-star game. It really wasn't that exciting in all honesty.
After the match finished me, Matt, n' Ferg decided to grab some Japanese food at nearby place. Earlier in the day I was having sushi cravings, so I was in the mood for some Japanese food. I was also glad that Ferg was finally able to feel well enough to hang out with us after feeling sick most of the week. We still arrived there kinda late around 10, but fortunately they didn't turn us away. This was the first real meal since I'd had since probably around Monday when we went out to get some Korean food. It took me a bit to decide on something to order, and eventually I decided to get some combo roll plus some tonkatsu ramen. My sushi craving was defnitely satisfied.
Fri 8/11/17
Mmm...I still didn't really care much for the games that day other than Liquid vs LGD. IG's loss made me a bit sad that we wouldn't get to see Burning couldn't snag an aegis this year. The Liquid vs LGD series was a pretty big outdraft scenario. It was fun to see LGD get Huskar'd, but I still felt a bit bad that they got Huskar'd. We made sure to stay after the last series to catch the new hero reveal trailer and I was a tad surprised to see that next mjaor update Dota would be getting not one, but two new heroes.
After the game a friend from discord wanted to take me out to dinner someplace. I threw out a few suggestions for seafood and he ended up choosing Aqua by El Gaucho. The place was way fancier than anywhere I'd ever been to in recent memory. The resturaunt had a nice waterfront view of the Seattle Souind on top of the nice atmopshere. I felt prettty underdressed for the occassion and probably was, but nobody appeared to really care. For my apetizer I ordered some Johnnie Walker crab soup and Chilean sea bass for my entree. I tried to order something worth less than the entree that he orderd because I already felt bad having someone pay for that expensive of a meal. After dinner I thanked him again for the food and we went our seperate ways.
Sat 8/12/17
For finals I really dind't care who won. Kpii was Febby's friend so I'd be happy if he won and on the other hand Heen was Liquid's coach so either way it didnt really matter to me. I really wish it could've gone to a full Bo5, but Liquid proved that the were the best in 3 relatively quick games. Seeing Kuro win TI7 made me happy that all his years of hard work finally payed off and was pretty inspiring.
We had some time to kill until the afterparty and so I decided to play a few pubs before we left. I guess that was a mistake because I ende dup losing 100 MMR ( T T ). My games also made us a little late, but it was only by like 40 minutes.
Unlike last year I stayed for pretty much the whole duration of the afterparty. Since I'm still not 21 I was unable to drink anything, but that didn't really matter to me. I brought my laptop again this year just in case I got bored and it came in handy later. I found Heen, QO, and ADTR and chatted with them a little and said hi to Dubu, Forev, and Sunbhie. Throughout the party I mainly talked to a Korean hyung that I met who came to Seattle himself to watch TI. I tried me best to talk to him in Korean, but felt bad because I couldn't really go any deeper than a casual conversation or had to resort to Kor-english for some sentences.
As the crowd began to thin out I settled down and plopped out my laptop to play some Smash Bros. I talked with another discord friend and EE a little about roster stuff and general dota stuff for a decent amount of time and got some more info on potential upcoming rosters. Afterwards, I actually ended up playing vs Luminous and lost to his Shiek. After my loss I let Lumi and MSS duke it out for a little. Soon the venue closed and I was asked to pack-up my stuff. It was a new experience to talk to a buncha people I hadn't met before and felt a bit adulty, but I guess I'd count it as one of those transitional adult experiences. I definitely felt much less awkward than last year's afterparty where I just asked for autographs. The only regret I had that night was not trying anything from the hotdog cart before I left :(
Sun 8/13/17
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| TI loot |
We Uber'd back to Matt's place and I left for a bit to drop off a few things I got to EE at the player hotel. I waited for like an hour but I guess he and Helen weren't coming back anytime soon so I dropped the stuff off at the front desk. I wanted to chat with him a little more, but I already got to talk to him at the afterparty the night before, so I wasn't very dissapointed. Before I left for the airport I played a few more pub games to satisfy my post TI cravings and I don't believe I forgot anything at Matt's. Around 9 I called an Uber to the airport and was homebound.
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| \Til next TI~ |
Closing Thoughts
Since this was my 2nd TI I guess it didn't feel as exciting as the last. Last year I also had more teams to root for deeper into the main event so that probably helped. My biggest takeaway from this trip was that this year's TI motivated me as a player to try to qualify for a LAN and best case scenario eventually attend TI8 as a player. I'll see what this next semester holds for me as a player and hopefully taking this semester off won't be a waste.
Road to 7k MMR, NA leadeboard, and TI8 ^^
---Brandon
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