Carlos Torre Repetto XX

The International Chess Tournament Carlos Torre Repetto in Memoriam started last week. Today was the first day for my son’s age group. He played his first and second rounds. He won the first one and lost the second.

Tomorrow he plays rounds three and four with five and six being on Friday.James and Ivanchuk

Last year’s overall winner, Vassily Ivanchuk, also started his tournament today. Many of the top players are participating in two types of tournaments this week. The first, which started last Saturday, is a standard tournament. Each player plays a set number of rounds and the person with the most points after the end of the week is the winner. The second tournament is called a Wimbledon style tournament. I am not sure of all the rules, but it seems like it is a single or double elimination type event.

It is fun to be around all these Grand Masters, many of whom I do not know anything about, but I am still in awe of their abilities.

This year there is a new service that the tournament is providing. While the big boys play on stage there is a group of people analyzing their games. They are transmitting the analysis through a closed radio transmission. You can listen in while the games are being played. I will try to grab some audio from one of those tomorrow and stick it on the blog. It will most likely be in Spanish, but for a few moments it would be interesting to hear.

UPDATE: I just read that Ivanchuk knocked out Bruzón. They are the two who fought head to head in the championship game last year with Ivanchuk winning. It is too bad they faced each other so early this year. Bruzón was the winner two years ago when Ivanchuk was not able to attend.

No two parents are alike

Last night we discovered the differences in our kids also play out in the parents.

We are an “old fashioned” kind of couple and don’t normally sleep in the same bed. Mostly it is because we don’t even own a bed. We sleep in separate hammocks. But, when it gets cold, my wife likes to steal our son’s double bed and snuggle beneath the covers. Hammocks are great for keeping you cool, but when the temps start getting cold (65 or below) they tend to require a lot of work to stay covered and warm.

This last weekend is when the bed got dragged into our room. We have been in it 4 nights now. One night was perfect, one night was hot, the next night was perfect, then there was last night.

I was laying there sleeping somewhat fitfully. My wife got up for some reason. I was thinking that it sure would have been nice if she grabbed a quilt and tossed it on us. I was a bit chilly. She was gone for a couple of minutes. When she came back in I just knew she was going to toss a quilt on me. Instead she turned on the fan! 

She started muttering something about mosquitoes. I got the full story today. She was hot and tossed the covers off, then she was attacked by mosquitoes. She put the covers on and started sweating. The fan was to help try to blow the mosquitoes away.

I don’t know what she told those mosquitoes, but they had not bothered me all night up to that point. They enjoyed sucking the life out of my arms the rest of the night.

Though she is the cold natured one normally, things were turned around last night. It must have something to do with the upcoming solstice.

Review: Tortured For His Faith

This book is quite old now, but Haralan Popov’s account of his imprisonment in Tortured for His Faith is very eye opening even today. I first read this book when I was in high school. I remember reading it during the height of the cold war and thinking that the types of torture that Popov endured could happen to me if communism spread through the world. But, after several years of that not happening, we tend to forget what many Christians had to endure. The sad reality is that this is not just a story of what has happened in the past, but what is happening today in many countries. There are many persecuted Christians in our day and age who are enduring the same types of torture Popov endured 50 years ago.

Popov’s account starts with his arrest and initial interrogation. He was brought up on charges of spying for the US against his communist homeland of Bulgaria. He was not a spy, but simply a pastor of a church. This was the communist attempt at purging Christian teaching from their people. They felt that they could not make churches and Christianity illegal without causing an uprising. Therefore, they imprisoned the pastors under charges of treason. After months of torture they were forced to sign documents saying that they were spies.Tortured for his faith

It is almost unbelievable the things that these pastors endured. At one point he stood for 2 solid weeks while being interrogated. They were given just enough food to sustain life, but not much more than that. In the story he talks of being thrilled to find a blade of grass to eat. People even risked their lives to find weeds and rodents to eat. He did not go into detail, but he described the taste of rats. I can’t imagine that they had any way to cook them. I don’t dare think about how they ate the creatures.

During the interrogation phase of his 14 years of torture, the government could not afford to kill any of the religious prisoners. The pastors would have been seen as martyrs and the communists could not allow that to happen. But once the sentence was levied and the men had “signed” their confessions they were just as likely to be killed as allowed to live.

The political prisoners such as the Christians, were treated as much more of a threat to society and the government than the violent murderers. They were treated much more harshly than the violent prisoners as well.

The book is only 150 pages and is a pretty easy read. It was originally published in 1970, less than a decade after his release. He gives an account of what he was doing for the persecuted believers up to that point.

Though Popov died in 1988 his ministry is still functioning today and is called Door of Hope International.

Tortured for His Faith, Haralan Popov, 1970 (updated most recently in 1980), Zondervan, 146 pages.

No two children are alike

Our kids are as different as night and day. While they obviously come from the same set of parents, they have personalities that are as diverse as their parents.

Our bathtubThis morning our daughter wanted to take a bath. I had just jumped out of the shower and she ran into the bathroom ready to jump in the tub. Since we don’t have a real tub, she uses a large plastic packing box as her bathtub (see attached photo). Because it is not a real tub, it has to be manually emptied after her bath each day. She was too impatient to wait for her tub to be emptied and refilled this morning. She just jumped right into the cold water. It took her 3 attempts to get all the way into the tub and comfortable with the water temp, but she did it and had her bath.

On the other extreme was our son this morning. He was walking around with a jacket on because it was too cold. It was 75 degrees this morning. Certainly not cold enough for a jacket. He wore it for a few hours until he got warmed up.

Crazy kids.

Our daughter takes after me and our son takes after my wife.