Friday, February 19, 2010

A Dream Come True

Everyone has their own dreams, and I do too. I have different dreams for different aspects of my life, and as for chess, one of my dreams is to own a giant chess set one day. I dreamed of taking the set and placing it in the middle of the mall or in a park for kids to enjoy the game of chess with 100x more fun! It's also really big, so getting people to notice that chess actually "exists" in Canada wouldn't be a problem!

Guess what? This dream came true already! A generous person has donated a giant chess set to our program after listening to me talk about my dreams. It was a huge surprise for me too - I never expected it to come true so early in my life! I want to take this opportunity to thank this person for supporting chess in Canada, for giving me hope and most importantly, making one of my dreams come true. Once spring comes, I will try to make arrangements with some shopping malls to place the giant chess set there, and just promote chess in general! I also plan to host a 2010 Grand Chess in the Library Tournament at the North York Central Library (they have a huge room!) sometime this summer and place the giant chess set there. I'll post details regarding this tournament once everything is finalized. WOW, this is really exciting!!

I absolutely LOVE the set!!! =D

Recently, we've also received a few other donations:

from Bob Armstrong - 1 box full of chess magazines
from Wilf Ferner - 3 used analog chess clocks
from the same person who donated the giant chess set above (as well as 100 chess sets to get our program started) - some endgame books + 3 used analog chess clocks *This person contributed the most to our program so far!*

I represent my team to thank you all for caring about "what chess in Canada will look like in 25 years" as well as supporting our program. I know that many people are watching us and with each touching donation that we received, I get more and more motivated.

With every event/situation in the society, there are supporters and there must be people who go against it. Perhaps to some people (I hope not), my teammates and I are still considered "a bunch of teenagers that aren't trustworthy", and they are suspicious of us using the donated items for personal purposes. Of course, everyone has the right to doubt others, but honestly, I would feel heartbroken if someone says that to me. I can swear that I would never use the donated items for anything else other than our program or the promotion of chess in general. Everything that has been donated so far will be use in a proper way for the benefit of others. I add this paragraph to my blog post today because I actually did hear someone doubting the uses of the donated items. Honestly, I have put countless hours and efforts into this program, I don't get payed for this (neither does anyone else in my team), so why on earth would I waste so much of my time just for the sake of using the donated items myself? I had one and only one intention when I started the program and I hope that everyone will always remember it- to promote chess in Canada.

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