At the end of every year, I make an effort to make sure that I write down my thoughts as I reflect on how the year has gone for me, personally and all that. Don't expect any semblance of coherence whatsoever; maybe sit down with a cup of coffee and slowly sip it as you move through this terribly long blog.
So, as I listen to a good friend's stream in the background whilst they play garry's mod, WoW, various other games and imo rather likable music, I pen my thoughts and reflections on what 2016 has been for me. (I later ended up listening to my own music when his stream ended).
As far as memory serves, the year started off with (what a bloody end-of-year cliche blog; ikr?) the observation of fireworks over the River Thames, live on TV as I sat in a family friend's TV room down south in Ilford. Returning to Glasgow and to school a couple of days later, I started to put some effort into preparation for the LNAT (Law National Admissions Test) I was about to take on 12th Jan. The test went rather well and I later received my results in February, citing an above average score of 29/42 (the average was 23, and for perspective, King's College London requires an LNAT score of 27 for entry into their LLB course). Next, I "prepared" for the upcoming trials and persistently checked my inbox for emails from UCAS and the remaining 3 different universities that I had applied to, having received an offer from my 2nd-choice university just before Christmas. Honestly, if you're still reading at this point, thank you for putting up with this boring bullshit that aren't really thoughts but a record of what I had done this year, not quite what I wanted to produce.
Beginning of the Year
Anyway, let's get real here, right? 2016 was a momentous year for me, I think that's the appropriate way to describe it in retrospect. Based on how I chose to start off the blog, it's evident that I was applying for university, also a hint at my possible age, for what it's worth. I'm proud, amused, and partially ashamed (perhaps) that the best thing that happened to me this year, was to get involved in LiquidDota. I don't mean this purely as stepping up to become a member of staff for the wonderful team that manage the site but also as my choosing to try and get to know the community better, stepping out there and ultimately becoming another one of many shitposters in OOTGD. At this stage, I would like to quite promptly state my desire to stay out of the LR threads and avoid becoming a full shitposter like intotheheart. Anyway, this all started with my sighting of LD's recruitment post back in January/February (my memory is hazy). What prompted me to apply, was the lack of interest in studies as they proved rather easy for me, providing plenty of free time for myself. Hence, amidst my naive opinion on how good I must be at Dota and how I must be in the wrong MMR bracket, I decided to apply to be a writer. Almost 11 months later, I'm glad to say I did become a writer for our coverage articles in addition to the Community News section; but I also warmly recall a discussion with the other staff members who wrote the 2016 LiquidDota Awards just about a week ago about how peculiarly difficult it is to truly write to a good standard. I recall Emu rejecting me as a writer as well as what I had naively written in my application; he offered me a spot as a Community News Writer instead and I jumped on the opportunity as the Shanghai Major came around.
Natus Vincere
In addition to LiquidDota, with the belief that I may be rejected for either application and seeing no harm in applying, I had also applied to write for Na`Vi's English section on their website and I was also accepted into their team. I have to be honest, writing for them was a ridiculously stressful and time-consuming task. They required me to watch Na`Vi's games and take their matches in full packages. Eventually, I had stopped and resigned in April, before I had, apparently, done enough to receive any compensatory goods in the form of Na`Vi branded mice, mousepads, shirts, keyboards etc. What caused me to stop was a fullblown argument with my mother as I covered the Grand Finals of SL i-League Invitational S1 which, as I recall, was Na`Vi vs VG.Reborn. I had a fair bit of free time and agreed to prepare the match preview and full match recap, the full package as I referred to earlier. It was a Sunday afternoon and I had just covered the WB Final vs LGD the night before; I had been tasked with preparing dinner for myself and my mum that evening and my mum had been napping, so I quickly cooked dinner while accidentally burning the wire for the kettle, and, coming from an Asian family, committed a major cultural fault in not having dinner with her. All this resulted in the massive argument with my mother where she gave me an ultimatum to stop the work for Na`Vi. Consequently, I finished covering the Grand Finals with the help of their proofreader who had proven a really good friend, and quit writing for them. In hindsight, good riddance, it really took a lot of time and effort to produce what they desired and there was a drastic limit on material to write about, which was also being further limited as I was about to leave. And thus my time writing for Na`Vi came to an abrupt end. Still, massive shoutout to my friend Niko from Kazakhstan who kept me sane and assisted me in my final task.
Back to LiquidDota Staffing
Amidst the hectic stuff that went around during the Shanghai Major which I later came to understand and respect, we (trial staff) were mostly unattended and rather ignored by the two very busy admins. As Shanghai concluded and the Valve Roster Lock Period was realised, we were excitedly provided with a good deal of Community News to pump out. Suffice to say, I was often beaten out by the speed of both Bluemoon and Gamerhcp, the downsides of preparing for finals and using an 11-year old laptop, nonetheless better than a 4-year old netbook. Consequently, I started to feel dragged down by it and began to concede writing Community News to them as they were very much faster than I was. I became lazier in attempts to push out these brief pieces and began to focus a little more on my preparation for exams that would determine whether or not I entered university in 2016. Sure enough, I soon found myself getting worried I would ultimately be removed from staff and I decided that, in an attempt to salvage this, I would keep a watch out on Weibo and do translations of articles, player statements etc on Weibo while also jumping on any timely opportunity for me to write Community News.
In late May, at the height of my finals, I was approached by our much-loved moose to join tournament coverage and that was a real refresher for me. I agreed to take them on as soon as my exams were over which, sadly, lasted until the run-up to the Manila Major, impeding my ability to cover Manila in any way whatsoever. I had really mixed feelings about this as I wanted to relax, laze and chill out post-exams instead of covering tournaments but I also felt awfully frustrated that I couldn't commit to taking it up. Nevertheless, I made sure to get involved with the coverage for TI6, and I eventually submitted the preview for LGD and participated in the discussion and writing of our controversial Power Rank. As a Malaysian, I'm very glad to say that Fnatic far surpassed my expectations but also disappointed in that they showed how capable they were if they sought to have fun, the most important part of any game imo, while also not giving much care as to whether or not they lost. As always, the scene fell into a slumber post-TI save roster changes here and there, and, of course, I made sure to try and be on top of these and pump out articles etc.
Eventually, my efforts paid off as October reached its zenith and I was made a full staff member after contributing to the Boston Qualifier Preview. Since then, nothing much has really changed other than a few extra privileges and I've continued doing tournament coverage, easily the most enjoyable task for me. I'm also very proud to say that I had successfully convinced my fellow staff that WG.U were a better team than coL although it was really more of coL-hate than a real, justified opinion; this later became a justified opinion as WG.U conveniently 2-0'd coL in the First Round of the Playoffs at Boston. I have to say though, that this, doing stuff for LiquidDota, has certainly been the highlight of the year for me. I couldn't be more thankful that I had applied, been given the opportunity, and ultimately persevered despite my personal flaws. The staff of LiquidDota have given me some of the best times of my entire year, especially the flame that frequently goes around, even when directed at me (I'm sure I deserve it for saying something utterly ridiculous or errant).
With the conclusion of this section, massive shoutouts to Sn0_man, rabidch, and Yamato for editing my less-than-satisfactory work, Julmust for pushing us forward and being the really cool guy that he is, TheEmulator for the stuff he does behind the scenes while being very busy irl himself, ShiaoPi for the encouragement he provided as I feared I had yet to do enough to become a full staff member, Gamerhcp and Bluemoon for the fun conversations and discussions we often have, Nixer for the constant flame and awe-inspiring graphics, OmniEulogy for covering all our asses when we can't afford to take up more parts in the coverage articles, tehh4ck3r for being a great Tournament Coverage Lead amidst our tendency to flame him every chance we get, icystorage for being the chill guy that he is, eieio for the generally entertaining yet rather insightful discussions, TanGeng and uberxd for their insightful contributions to our discussions and the hard work that they put in each article, and ultimately, all the staff across TeamLiquid for being the wonderful team that they are, running what has become my favourite websites across the entire Internet.
IRL Stuff
So back to the IRL stuff, the mostly off-tangent stuff in the sort-of-not-really intro blurb. Connecting the dots, I'm glad to say that I was accepted into my first choice university, the University of Glasgow, to study Law & Philosophy and that my exams were a success with straight As. Over the summer, I had made plans to visit friends and family as well as do some rather "administrative" things back in Malaysia. Thus, on 15th June, I returned to Malaysia for a 6-week visit and my first game of Dota 2 in my own house in almost a year. During my stay in Malaysia, I promptly jumped at the opportunity to eat the food that I missed dreadfully, many of which any Malaysian and Singaporean should be familiar with. Anyway, I procured my Learner's Driving Licence (of little use as you will discover later) and I hung out with friends and family when time allowed for it but mostly, it really was just me sitting at home capitalising on the fact that I now had a functional computer with sufficiently good specs on which to play Dota 2 quite consistently.
Fast forward a little bit, my mum had secured me a brief two-week attachment at her old uni-mate's law firm so I could get a little bit of experience prior to university and it was a very, very interesting time indeed. I experienced the rush of people getting to work in the morning and going home in the evening, all via public transport; working from 8.30am - 5.30pm Monday-Friday for two weeks, I learned a lot, particularly about Malaysian Probate and Trust Law. While it may not seem like anything much to many people, it meant a lot to me that I was given the opportunity to look into the litigation and case preparation for a particular case that I have recently learned, sadly, will be going to the High Court this very week. The reality is that, given the chance, you never want any cases to go to court. It is a very costly and stressful process that really takes its toll on everyone, from the court clerk to the judge, to the lawyers and to the parties.
Anyway, I was given the green light to purchase a new laptop as I was likely going to university and, with the help of my siblings, I convince my less-than-tech-savvy parents that my laptop choice was a good one, a mid-range Dell Gaming Laptop which was more than capable of running Dota 2 and thus my summer visit home (I have lived in Glasgow with only my mum since July 2015; my two older siblings and my dad still live in Malaysia) came to an end and I had the misfortune of taking a red eye long-haul flight back to Amsterdam and then on to Glasgow.
Fast forward a couple of weeks and I was back south in Ilford, visiting the same family friend but really my primary purpose of going south was to visit my sick, tetraplegic godfather in Southend-on-Sea who had recently had a fall. I had learned a great many things about the people in my life over the last 2 years as my mum, who is very good at withholding information in general, felt that I was old enough to be told things. The relevance in this lies in my increased respect for my godfather who is a physicist, formerly in the employment of the British Ministry of Defence. At 75 as a tetraplegic, he was rather frail and more or less bedridden. Despite being physically limited in almost every conceivable way, he remains a person with a very sharp and brilliant mind, capable of discussing various ideas from a wide range of different topics, no doubt the product of his being a bookworm with over 3000 different books throughout his large Edwardian house. All said and done, he is in relatively good health at the moment and I certainly plan to visit him every summer so long as he lives.
As September came around, I began university and met some all-around really interesting person but, as an East Asian person who keeps to himself and apparently has a very cold demeanour (I was told by a few friends of this) studying Scots' Law, a mostly white-dominated course (literally only 3 East Asians in the entire course, the other two likely exchange students from China or something of the sort), I had my difficulty making friends, particularly due to very different interests. On the philosophy side of things, however, I had a really good time, making a few new friends with whom I could comfortably discuss and argue about different philosophical ideas and, perhaps most importantly, shit on Descartes for his terrible philosophical arguments that we had to write essays about. Overall, I still failed to really make any new friends and ultimately decided to remain in my safe bubble (not a very good choice, some would wager, I'm sure). Perhaps the most interesting part for me in university life was my decision to take up Kendo. It was only about 4 weeks before my first blisters appeared as a result of the footwork the martial art entailed. Suffice to say, I haven't got very much to talk about in this department because I am ultimately new and not quite knowledgeable in it but it gave me things to do and another avenue for making friends.
Referring back to driving, I am, at this point in time, still incapable of driving more than maybe 20 meters as I never really had the opportunity nor time to take driving lessons except with my elder sister and my mum for a duration totalling no more than 2 hours. Thus, my learner's licence remains of little use as it also applies only in Malaysia.
IRL Stuff: Christmas Flight Home
Here, I will detail my most recent and rather interesting (at least to me) experiences and I'll try to make it brief enough despite an entire section dedicated to it. Having returned from Malaysia at the end of July, I was rather keen to return in spite of worse Internet, ridiculously warm temperatures, heavy pollution, and great deals of stress when travelling. Just as well, Emirates were doing a deal for early bookings and I promptly made a booking to return to Malaysia on 4th December, right as soon as my classes ended. Thinking nothing much of it, my mum had agreed and the >£400 fare was paid. A week later, I realised the gravity of my naive mistake as there were semester exams in December after classes ended but no timetable had been released and I couldn't determine the soonest possible date to change my flight to. I will point out now that the key thing for my return wasn't really to spend Christmas with friends and family, I'm simply not such a pure, innocent kid. No, my primary purpose was to attend Comic Fiesta 2016, one of the two largest anime/comic cons in all of SEA, which was held 17-18 December this year. Those who know me should be well acquainted with the fact that I am, to use the colloquial, relatively demeaning Internet term, a weeb. I had missed out on the previous year's Comic Fiesta due to my being in Glasgow for school etc at the time. Evidently, the key date was to be back by the night of 16th December.
The examination timetable was only released on 7th November and, with mixed feelings, I acknowledged that my last exam would be 15th December, finishing at 2.30pm. After much discussion and persuasion, my parents agreed to pay the fees for changing the flight and the fare difference at the time of booking, allowing me to ultimately pay a ridiculous over £1000 for my flight back. You'd think that would be it but unfortunately not. See, my family are mostly based in UK and Malaysia and, if you know anything much about Malaysia, you would understand why we would always bring food from UK to Malaysia, given the chance. However, there is no need to understand here, but simply to know that we always bring food from UK to Malaysia. As a result of my fare change, I took an Economy Flex Plus flight, allowing me an additional 5kg of baggage allowance in addition to Emirates' generous 30kg allowance. Considering my mother's age and overall physical ability, I strongly insisted that I take more of the luggage, especially since I had additional baggage allowance.
It was an ultimately bad decision. My mother and I were flying separately, she had booked to fly on 14th December while I booked to fly on 15th December, both night flights. All said and done, I was 9kg overweight as the counter staff insisted I weigh my hand luggage which was 6kg over allowance and my check-in luggage 3kg over allowance; just as well, my mother had an additional 5kg left in her allowance. Since it was winter and I was wearing my winter coat and had a hoodie for when I transited in Dubai, I miraculously managed to transfer 3kg worth of items into my coat and clothes and I was sweating profusely but I ultimately had to pay for 6kg of overweight luggage at £42/kilo. Though some might argue she was just following company policy and doing her job etc, the counter lady was indeed rather nasty about it but she did charge me for only 3 kilos, so that added £126 to my overall airfare. Nonetheless, I was forced to check in my hand luggage, not something anyone should be comfortable about.
But there we go, my utterly ridiculous and extravagant flight home.
Wider LiquidDota/TL.net Community and Dota 2
A much anticipated part perhaps? After all, the website is called LiquidDota and is primarily driven by a common interest in the game that is Dota 2 and, to some extent, DotA (the mod map in Warcraft III). To begin, I would like to add a few reminders: I applied to write for LiquidDota because I thought I knew a lot and I was better than I appeared to be and would thus have plenty to offer, I didn't have a great deal of opportunity to play for the better part of the year due to the lack of a computer with sufficiently good specs to run Dota 2 and be able to play it with more than about 5 fps.
Let me just say this: what a bloody stupid, conceited, naive idiot I have been.
Joining the LiquidDota community has been a very humbling experience and I could not possibly be more thankful for that. I'd also like to make a shoutout to people out there like A-god (Azarkon in case you really need the pointers) and Laertes who had made the mistakes I might've made before I chose to take the chance to do so. Anyway, in retrospect, 2016 has been the year of my greatest improvement albeit not with tangible things like a significant increase in MMR or whatever. No, at this point, I remain more convinced that I am now capable of playing at a higher level than my MMR may dictate, and this conviction comes with "supporting evidence" behind it. This year, I learned to read the map better, understand enemy positioning better, better warding practices, better gameplay, better everything overall really. And for all this, I really have to thank those who play LiquidDota Inhouses, particularly Bluemoon who first pulled me in as well as the disaster stack (bless you guys really) and significantly more skilled people who put up with my seemingly dumb questions and were willing to enlighten me and share their opinions with me like Stancel, Twin, Emu, and Sn0_Man. Each of these people have all taught me new and different things about Dota in one way or another, directly or indirectly. I also learned to pay more attention when watching pro players stream, replays, competitive games, and just about anything to do with spectating this bloody godforsaken game.
Onto the wider community, encouraged by intotheheart and Bluemoon's inspiring remarks, I stepped into a whole new aspect on this site, shitposting in OOTGD. I had only wondered if I should at first but decided to do so around the end of November after all their inspiration. In OOTGD, I genuinely feel like I'm part of a community, spread out across the world, freely discussing various topics and being afforded both the greatest of shitposts (shoutout to HJT and Qbek ) and the most properly thought-out discussions I have read in a long while.
Beyond OOTGD, I ventured into the TL.net UK Politics Discussion and Anime Discussion threads. The former was a mistake as soon as the EU Referendum came through. I had had a fair bit of fun and some relatively thought-provoking discussions in the UK Politics discussion thread and I'm thankful for that but I certainly feel that I didn't do my part to try convincing some of the people there as to why I would personally have voted Remain and why they should have too. Of course, it's all over and post-Referendum there were hundreds of new posts in the thread each day and I could no longer keep up with it, so I promptly unsubscribed from the thread and decided never to venture into that thread again if I could help it. In the case of the latter, I rather enjoyed the discussions that went on in the Anime Discussion thread. There were reasoned opinions and of course I disagreed with some of those but people were imo quite welcoming and open. However, due to how much more time I put into Dota 2, having procured a new, capable laptop as well as the time and effort I had to put into uni, LiquidDota, shitposting etc, I gradually found myself with reduced time for watching anime which eventually came to a bit of a stop. As a result, I stopped keeping up with the thread and only visit it from time to time without posting at all. Nevertheless, I remain convinced that it was an enjoyable thread to participate in and one that I would like to return to in the future. However, I did, of course, choose to study Law & Philosophy, a ridiculously time-consuming course what with all the cases, papers, and books that need reading.
Wider Internet in General
This year I opted to expand my horizons and made my efforts to try and get to know some people online a little better for what it was worth.I grew to familiarise myself with perhaps my favourite YouTuber, Hereson (check him out), and support and promote him. He does arrangements, orchestrations, mixing, mastering, and instrumentals of mostly anime songs and soundtracks, all of which are imo really incredible and pleasing to my ears. He's also a very fun guy and I regularly interact with him on Twitter. I also got to know some of his other fans and related YouTubers and they too have been very fun to interact with, especially when he streams.
Outside of YouTube, equipped with a new computer, I decided to stream. Yes, streaming on a laptop sounds like an utterly disastrous idea but I can positively say that my laptop was powerful enough though streaming is less feasible now what with the serious performance issues that came with the 7.00 patch. Nonetheless, I hope and plan to stream various other games besides Dota 2, in addition to what little streaming I've done of the fault series by ALICE IN DISSONANCE and To the Moon. To those who watch my stream, even if simply dropping by quite briefly, you have my gratitude.
Beyond all this, I decided to acquaint myself with the musings of r/dota2, having never really ventured into reddit before. It was a most entertaining and enlightening experience but ultimately it has become a source of entertainment and slightly more obscure news for me. Said obscure news, of course, often blows up to the front page so it isn't entirely obscure after all but it is to me. I was also brought into the EU Dota 2 Discord server, courtesy of Gamerhcp and I got to know some good people there who have become pretty good friends to me. The place is mostly kinda a shitfest thought, brimming with shitposts and sometimes ridiculous opinions but otherwise a fun server that normally results in the bulk of the unread messages I have on Discord. Through this server, I was also brought into The Ladder: A European Dota 2 Inhouse ladder run by a 6k MMR Welsh guy with a somewhat amusing accent and an interest in teaching lower-skilled players as well as really odd builds, Polshy. The Ladder introduced me to various players, mostly more skilled than I am but humourous all the same, providing yet another fun Internet community to be a part of. As far as I know, I ended in 3rd, or at least Top 5 on the ladder in November which was a very gratifying experience and I also learned a lot about Dota 2 from these players outside of LiquidDota.
Western Politics, A Retrospective
Skip this part if you wish, indeed I will understand if you choose to do so, politics is, after all, a rather dirty business but it is something that has a fairly significant impact on my life and something I tend to think about and opine on a lot. Even in this case, I've decided simply to provide my reflections on only the two biggest Western political events: Brexit and an incoming Trump Presidency. Consequently, I am, to some extent, avoiding any politics in the Eastern hemisphere, particularly my own politically malfunctioning (or is it?) country, Malaysia. I will do my best to keep this as brief as possible.
+ Show Spoiler +
Brexit
If you have indeed kept on reading up to this point, you will know that I am pro-Remain and thus my views may not necessarily align with yours, much as I try to keep an open mind. I was rather shocked yet not quite shocked as, 8 hours ahead in terms of timezones, I watched the results of the referendum come in on the news during broad daylight in Malaysia. As the final results were announced, I found myself angry and salty about the result but there was this nagging voice at the back of my head that it wasn't entirely surprising, after all, anything is possible. For the few weeks and perhaps months post-referendum, I found myself constantly angry and looking for excuses for the final decision that was Brexit. I became what some now call Remoaners, moaning about the result, blaming the old, conservative people, the young pro-Remain but anti-establishment people, Labour for their lack of real campaigning to the working classes, Gove and Johnson for strongly advocating Brexit, Farage for people believing in his rhetorical and nonsensical statements. But in hindsight, it doesn't matter, being angry doesn't help at all and ultimately I hardly mattered. After all, Scotland, my main sphere of influence, voted significantly in favour of Remain anyway. I held and still hold hope for the R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union case currently undergoing judgment in the Supreme Court that at least Parliament may get a say and a vote in how Brexit will pan out. At this juncture, I express my disappointment in Theresa May who won the Conservative Party Leadership in October because, as someone who was apparently a Remainer, she has, in my view, thus far failed to do anything for the 48% that voted to remain in the European Union. Quite recently, she made a rhetorical political speech that she was doing all she can and that she would continue to do so for the 48%. However, I remain entirely unconvinced as she has, so far, advocated for a hard Brexit, thought some may argue that the EU aren't offering alternatives either. At this point, during the new year, I still maintain that Remain is the right choice, but I have come to terms with the result of the referendum and I do carry some belief that, in the long term, Brexit may yet be a good decision but I am convinced, nevertheless, that in the short term, it has been a monumental disaster. Since 24 June, the Sterling Pound has yet to rise above the value of $1.37 each, inflation has been evident, foreign relations have worsened, and we are still being told the same thing, "Brexit means Brexit and we're going to make a success of it".
Incoming Trump Presidency
As with Brexit, I was strongly against the idea of a Trump presidency. As a leftist, Trump was, of course, an utter disaster in my opinion. The morning of 9th November was a rather interesting one for me as American friends expressed their utter shock but I had gone to bed the night before somehow expecting the very high possibility of a Trump election and alas it was to be proven true. I wasn't even surprised at his victory that morning, which was a very odd feeling as it severely conflicted with my personal political views. Having a 9am lecture that day, I went out to the train station and it was buzzing with discussion about it, especially along the lines of "After Brexit, I didn't think it was possible that they too would vote in such a way". In retrospect, with all the things that came up later, after the election, I find it less and less surprising that Trump won. It was, after all, ultimately, in my view, about choosing the lesser of two evils which was Clinton. In the aftermath of the election, after the chaos of the first few days, I found myself thinking and hoping hard that Trump wouldn't turn out as bad as he seemed he would during the election campaign. However, I don't personally feel any conviction that Russian hacking resulted in his election, likely an unpopular opinion. Nevertheless, I hold on to that hope that Trump will actually turn out doing some really good stuff for America and perhaps the wider global community though it seems unlikely.
Sub-conclusion
Overall, I've come to terms with both of these political decisions and I sincerely believe now that social media or, in fact, media in general, has become too powerful and influential. The belief that I carry about these two decisions is that information was not properly and sufficiently circulated and, even then, I believe that many, like me, must've ignored contrasting opinions or, had they perhaps given such an article a shot, read it with a prejudiced attitude and a preconceived intention to reject the opinion. And thus concludes this section.
Final Thoughts and Conclusion
At this point, I've spent a few hours on this and, truthfully, I'd like to write one more section, one that I believe a good number of people would gladly dodge anyway. However, I find myself quite tired, particularly amidst the jetlag as I just returned from my Christmas Visit to Malaysia yesterday. I wanted to do this blog anyway and I have no regrets about writing it. If I feel like it, I may write a future blog about that final, remaining section. Nevertheless, if you're still reading at this point, thank you, this will only go on a little longer.
I think all of the above do cover my thoughts and reflections of the year in general, without going into way too much detail though I understand some have been particularly detailed, perhaps more so than many may like. There are several other things I would've loved to discuss but as mentioned, I'm very tired at this point and it's late at night in a timezone 8 hours behind the one I've been in for the last 2 weeks and I do not desire to drag this any longer for anyone. The year has provided many surprises for me in addition to a great deal of joy and new horizons. It is with this that I wish everyone a Happy New Year though I suspect it may not necessarily be a happy one when we once again reach the end of the year approximately 11 months and 29 days later. Once again, a very special shoutout to all the staff on LiquidDota and the disaster stack.