So day one of G-1 League is over and the games were honestly pretty good. I mean who would have expected the unbeatable iG to be down 0-2 on the opening day anyway.
Me and dopeshow started the day receiving no breakfast from the hotel, although it was clearly stated on our booking form that we'd have breakfast. Got a little consolation 20 minutes later when Liquid told us they won't be getting breakfast either. So we walked to this random food store and got some rice balls for breakfast. Fact of the day, Bulba is actually a vegetarian and has been living off fruits for the past couple of days. Missing out on all the awesome bacon Sam.
We took a cab ride to JiangWan stadium since we don't really know where it is and by the time we arrived, there were already like 600-700 people lining up in front of the stadium waiting to get in. This is my first time in China so I'm experiencing this for the first time but when Loda arrived, holy crap everyone just went nuts. "LODA LODA LODA!". It feels kinda great to get all this attention walking next to him, although I know the guys were screaming "GTFO SHORTY".
Loda also told us he got mobbed by a bunch of guys when he went up to the spectator seats. They weren't aggressive or anything but there was a decent fraction of the 1.2 billion people here. It's also crazy that how big fans they are of Loda, and nobody else really. I saw Liquid pull off some spectacular moves against Alliance today and honestly, not even a single soul cheered for them. I swear I could hear crickets (not the commentators, they were awesome). If Loda opened a shop here asking people to donate him money, he'd probably become a millionaire. Legit.
G-1 organizers allocated us to a media room which was very clean but unsafe since anybody could walk in. Due to that, we hid all our bags and expensive, expensive equipment somewhere in the room and went out to get some photos. I believe the games started late but everybody was still pretty hyped up about the event. Did you see those drum performance girls, they were cool.
All was well with the tournament and the LGD squad was looking extremely strong and well prepared for the event. I overheard their conversation about drafts (they honestly thought I did not understand Chinese) and they said, "LETS DRAFT THE SAME DRAFT WE HAD AGAINST TONGFU". The words are all in caps lock because they were honestly screaming in the media room with only me inside it. Not sure why they had to scream though. Whatever floats their boat really, since they were the strongest today.
I heard from some friends that iG had some big internal problems and I noticed Ferrari was sitting either alone or with the LGD guys. He was quite close to Xiao8 I noticed. I'm pretty sure they won't be so dumb as to change their roster before The International 3, but I imagine that if it doesn't work out well, they MAY POSSIBLY have a roster change. No source for this but yeah, ChuaN was extremely pissed the last time I saw him.
In any case, although the event might be good for the fans and whatnot, it certainly wasn't for me. Firstly, the MASSIVE Internet issues in China was a super problem. I mean when I arrived here, I expected the whole country to have Internet issues already but it was probably not the best idea for G-1 to share the 2mbps Internet with 60 people. In the middle of the day, it got to the point where we were all disconnected from it and there was no way of going back online.
Therefore, I walked back to the hotel room (approx. 20 minutes walk) to upload approximately 20 pictures and walked all the way back to the event area. It was kinda retarded but it had to be done. Since then, the games were just underway and due to angling issues and us not being allowed to go on stage, pictures were very hard to take, but we still managed to get some decent ones. There were a lot of cameras set up, blocking the only possible spot we could take photos from.
As for interviews, apparently all teams will only accept interviews after the event. According to Xiao8, this is to make sure they don't leak any hint in strats till the end of the tournament. Can't really blame them for that really. I auto-assumed iG would not want an interview either.
G-1 League will start even earlier tomorrow, 9am. There was a 4 hour delay today with just four games, so I'm really looking forward to coming back to the hotel at 12am.
On unrelated news, I just realized that in China, you can literally smoke anywhere. It doesn't matter if you are in a hotel room or a hotel lobby or a stadium packed with 1,500 people with bad air conditioning. That's awesome and disturbing at the same time.
Stay tuned for my next blog post as I continue reporting on Loda getting harrassed.
