The World e-Sports Games Season III is well underway and seated in Seoul, the very heart of WEG, together with all the star players, journalist, WEG Admins etc. is mYm.Raptor-Gaming Lounge Contest Manager and shoutcaster  Philip "Quish" Hostkinges. 

Before we move any further let's take a closer look on Quish.

Name: Philip Hoskinges
Age: 23 years
Nick: Quish
Country: Denmark
City: Copenhagen
Team:  mYm.Raptor-Gaming
Function: Lounge Contest Manager and Shoutcaster

Quish is further more, along with KidArtica and Bunny, a part of the well-known WC3L shoutcast team. During the next 2 months he will be staying in Seoul, Korea, to cover the whole WEG event, which means a 2 month working vacation in South Korea.

While staying there he will be providing you with an exclusive diary from day 1, which means that you'll be able to get an impression of how things are running in the land of e-Sports when a League like WEG is fired up. Get statements, interviews, insights, you name it. 

 Quish's WEG Diary:

Day 1: The clock is 15:15 and I am heading for the plane which is to fly me to Frankfurt. I am beginning to realise that I’m going to Korea for the very first time in my life, and actually stay there for 2 whole months. At the arrival in airport of Frankfurt I see Jonas, the Counter Strike manager of MeetYourMakers. We quickly locate the Swedish players SK.ElakeDuck and fnatic.SaSe and sets of for some McD food.

Its like 3 hours before our plane for Seoul will take off and those hours were spending on checking out the huge airport of Frankfurt. Once inside the plane I feel ready to go and I can tell by that look of their faces that Elake and SaSe is exited. By pure luck we finds out that DIDI8 is also located inside the plane and after shifting chairs we are able to sit right next to the Bulgarian star. On the long journey we caught up with the Counter Strike team Noa and I start talking to KiXer, who are rather funny. We quickly decide to get drunk on the trip to Seoul.

Now the funny part is when one of the serving girls comes by and ask me whether I’m getting drunk or what? And to that I answer:” I can at least take 10 more if you got.” which she found quite amusing. Later on I see Duck reading a poker book, I ask him about it and he says that he want to be a pro poker gamer : ). We arrive in the airport of Seoul after nearly 12 hours of flying and my body is aching after being awake for more than 30 hours. Outside the airport was the entire WEG staff lined up accompanied by a video crew who is taking a lot of pictures. It took nearly a hour to reach to hotel from the airport, and most of us used it for a nice little power nap.

At the hotel I meet Vesslan who are to cast the Counter Strike and whom I am to share a room with. The two of us decides to take a rest, but already after 4 hours of sleep are we contacted by the WEG manager, Yuni, who wants us to join them in the lobby. Once there we found out that we are going out for dinner together with the whole WEG staff and all the other casters who will be present at WEG Season 3. We are taken to a very nice Korean restaurant where I meet the Counter Strike caster Jeff from the U.S. When the food is placed on the table I can only stare at it. I had absolutely no idea of how to eat it. Yuni quickly noticed my troubles and helped me out. Later came the founder of WEG, Paul, and at his arrival everybody raises and bowed. I was quite surprised by the way you respect your superior. We all went out for a little drink after dinner. That is their way of greeting a new friend and I must say that I am impressed, and I respect the way they do things down here. More from me to come soon, sto stay tuned.       
    
translated by NoHopeAtALL

Day 2: I woke up after almost 17 hours of sleep, but was still very tired. The day before, i had been up for almost 40 hours straight, so those 17 hours were really needed. Today was the day when we were going to open WEG Season 3 2005, and it was crazier than i had ever expected it to be. When Yuni tried to explain to me about the whole process, i tried to concentrate, but i was still very tired – so when we turned up in front of a 5 star hotel, my head suddenly started to clear. As we entered i saw a HUGE fountain in the middle of the hotel, and i could tell from the start, that this hotel is probably one of the finest places to ever have been used for an eSport event. As all the players and managers gathered, the party moved upstairs were we entered a great room packed full with people from the press, WEG banners and gamers from both CS and WC3 who were dressed up in the official WEG clothing. Beside from that i also saw allot of video crew, making recordings and interviews. Another place, a “fighting pic” was being made with Moon and xiaOt, who started off the event, and for this they needed makeup. Everybody found this very amusing as you could see that Moon was used to it, while xiaOt was not at all hehe.

After having walked around for 30 min greeting all the new staff, I decided to take a look around. I found myself walking into a BIG hall with allot of diningtables, fully covered with fine table clothes and cutlery. There was a big screen, and allot of lighting, and all the while allot of people were running around making everything ready so that people could get seated. Everything had been divided into different sections: CS gamers, press people, VIP, WEG staff etc.. each at their seperate table. As we finally sat down and got started, one of the most famous korean popsingers appeared on the stage, to sing for the opening cerimony, followed up by a well known female violin player who really impressed me. Afterwards it was time for speeches. Watching all this I started to realise how big a deal it is for me to be part of such a great organisation, and i got overwhelmed by happy feelings, wishing nothing but to do my very best to try and live up to their great work. On stage people were being introduced (including me) and cheered on by the crowd, and i found this very funny as you don’t normally see that kind of focus on shoutcasters. Afterwards, all the CS teams and WC3 players were called up on the great stage, were both Korean and Chinese press, aswell as tons of newspapers, took their pictures. When this was all finished, we had a nice 4 course meal (european style) which tasted very good, and even though I was starting to feel very tired, Yuni took us out for a last goodnight drink, with the promise that we would get some sleep afterwards. I must say that i had a bit of jetlag because of the timedifference, which is about 7-8 hours.

translated by TaZz

Following Days: The following days I had a lot of work and was present at many meeting in our office, which is located approximately 10 minutes away by car. It is quite difficult being a WEG staff member and at the same time delivering WEG news to the rest of Europe. The main reason for this is the huge time difference. When it’s around 24:00 here in Seoul it's like 16:00 in Europe and when I start on working 9:00-10:00 every morning it gets a bit taught due to lack of sleep.
This is the very first time that I work 24/7 with e-Sports in another country, and I learn a lot each day of how the Koreans promote e-Sports.

Later on, while I have a look around in our hotel, I meet Dark from team Noa and we talk about e-Sports, other Counter Strike teams and how WEG is like compared to other big tournaments. In the players practice room I see Kixer who plays aimamp versus Red, his team mate from Noa. Kixer is getting owned hardcore and starts yelling:” Jevla fitta” on Swedish and the other players starts laughing because he whines to often.
Later that night Jeff, me and some dudes decides that we have earned the right to go out and get so freaking drunk. We grab a taxi and head for down town Seoul where Jeff knows a place called Monkeybar 24. Once inside we got ourselves a drink called ”Brainhammer”. Now the Brainammer consist of many different kind of booze which they set on fire and then give you to drink. Gathering at the bar was 10 of us and they sat all our Brainhammers on fire at the same time, which means that the entire bar was on fire.
After a couple of Brainhammers we moved on another bar called Soju. There we played a beer game with a simple set of rules. 2 huge beer cans are put on a table along with 4 bottles of Soju and a whole lot of other shots. Now each player fills up his glass with beer and place an empty shot glass on top of it. Then you start filling up the shot glass with soju and the first one to make his shot glass hit the bottom is crowned loser and has to drink it all. Just for the record I lost six times and became rather drunk in under a hour :) 

At last it is Friday and I am to broadcast my very first WEG match and oh boy I have been waiting forward to this for more than 3 weeks. I am very nervous when we enter Coex which is an enormous centre where the Warcraft 3 and Starcraft scene is located. It is funny being in the arena after seeing VOD’s from the past WEG Seasons. At the arena I meet my fellow clan mate T.MH]Lucifer who is very happy to see me. We talk together for some minutes before he is heading of to get makeup on before his game.
Jeff and I seats ourselves in a box behind the game platform where other players are playing and people who has come to see the show are seated. When Moon entered the arena the entire crowd went absolutely crazy! It was like seeing a rock star at a concert. When the games are being played a lot of thoughts runs through my mind. I am broadcasting Live for a crowd much bigger than I usually do which is a whole new experience and it makes me happy. After the games are played Jeff and I got interviewed by the MBC Prime, Fighterforum and a couple of newspapers where I made my very first fighting picture :)            

Translated by NoHopeAtALL

The next day: I woke up around 15:00 and shortly after we were about to set sail for Coex and for more broadcasting. Jeff and I packed our stuff and walked towards the Lobby. Once there I saw Lucifer and we had a little chat. He was very disappointed because he lost his first match against Sweet. I told him that it was a very close game and that he played very good, but anyway he kept on saying no! I played bad and I want to practice more now. Once arriving at Coex we sat up our stuff and afterward I got the opportunity to check out the centre. The centre is HUGE with a lot of different shops. You can get anything you want in there that’s for sure.
I saw a place were girls under 12 years could enter and try put on make-up and stuff, and a pizza bar where only women were allowed to buy food. I found that rather hilarious, but Yuni told me that it has something to do with the way it is made and the stuff they put in it.

When I returned I saw Lucifer standing together with Bera, Sweet and some other dudes. I hurried over to say hello to Bera but it was quite clear that he is not used to speak English, so I tried on my gosu Korean to say hello but failed badly which gave them a good laugh.
When we were done with the Warcraft 3 games Jeff and I walked over the CS scene, which is located about 15 minutes from Coex by car. When we entered we saw Paul and some orga’s working on the sound and setup. I decided to find the Danish Counter Strike team Asylum. It was nice talking the Danish language again for a change, and to hear some Danish humour.

When I returned to my hotel I turned on the TV and looked the channels through until I found a Starcraft channel! I’m very fond of the game and found it very funny to see it on TV.

Translated by NoHopeAtALL

The next day: Another working day is upon me. At 9:30 I was on my way to the office with Jeff. On our way down to the taxi, we met up with Malte. As we entered the taxi Jeff handed the taxi driver a card stating where we had to go, as we couldn’t pronounce the name ourselves. Funny thing was though, that the taxi driver didn’t know where it was, so he had to stop another taxi, in the middle of the street, to ask where it was. Luckily he reset the counter so we didn’t have to pay anything for the journey until that point, which was about 4000 WON (4 $). We agreed amongst ourselves, to give him a tip in the end. But when we arrived at our destination, and Jeff gave him 10000 WON, he wouldn’t accept it. But even though he got a little angry, we forced him to take it. As I got out of the taxi I saw the driver jumping up and down in his seat from joy over the 10 $, like a child who had just gotten the present he wanted for Christmas, it was very funny especially considering the guy was somewhere around 50.

After a very long day at the office and allot of sandwiches, Paul, our boss, told us that he wanted to take us out for dinner again. When we arrived at a very fine Korean dining place, you could see that Paul was a well-known man here, as everybody bowed and greeted him, to show their respect. When the waiter arrived, Paul exclaimed that he was in the mood for drinking, so damn me if he didn’t order some Soju. This made Yuni look a bit awkward on him. Under our lovely dinner, Paul starts to explain me about the eSport in Korea, and how it came to live. As you probably all know, it was because of Starcraft, which is still one of the most played computer games in the world (mostly Korea/China). He also told that it was him who 7 years ago got Starcraft on TV, and build up allot of the TV-Leagues. He also told about the time when Slayer_Boxer came up to him, and said that he wanted to be a progamer, and with the help from Paul, his dream was realised. They are still very good friends today, amongst allot of other known Starcraft and WC3 gamers, who Paul has gotten close to. Beside from that Paul also told about the time, when he became the first shoutcaster in Korea for eSport games, a thing that really caught my interest, as I am a shoutcaster myself. He explains about how to be “on the air” and what it would say to be the person who is broadcasting and have to give people the best show, and an idea of wha’ts going on inside the games. Shoutcasters in Korea are very famous, and it has to be told here, that the best Starcraft Caster in Korea, earns more than Slayer_Boxer did on the 5 year where he had signed contract, put together (4.8 Million $). I found that pretty exaggerated, but on some level it does make sense, since Starcraft really is that popular over here.

After a very nice dinner, we decided to get a bit more out of the great evening, since we didn’t have to work the next day. We went to a cosy little place, where we could get some really nice European drinks, and since Jeff and Paul had started talking together about broadcasting, I launched a conversation with Malte, since i hadn’t had any real chance to talk that much with him. We talked about the European tournaments that exist, and about the difference between WEG and allot of other tours, which we both found a very interesting subject. That resulted in a couple of good and long talks. To those of you who do not know who Malte is, he is the guy in charge of the European part of the WEG Qualification. When we finally got home, I was very tired, but before I went to bed I took a moment to take a look out over Seoul. There was still rush hour even though it was 3 o clock in the night. I think it’s pretty wild with a city containing over 7 mill citizens and over 20 hours of rush hour every day. I was once in New York but this is a bit wilder than that.

Translated by TaZz

Friday: 2 weeks have now gone by since I arrived in Korea. Today I wanted to spend some more time with Lucifer since I hadn’t had much time before. So I paid him a visit in his room where he was praccing against EVE. We sat around a bit having a joyful chat while I recorded him playing. After he finished playing, he let me know how bad I am at eating with chopsticks, so I asked him if he could help me out with that little problem. He agreed to help me out, so he took out a couple of chopsticks, and put 6 coins on the table. Then one after another he picked up the coins, with his chopsticks, span them around in the air and caught them again, while I was sitting dumbstruck thinking “eh? How the hell am I supposed to learn that” So I asked him to teach me something a bit simpler. The next thing he did was then to take up a bowl of rice, and pick up the rice corns 1 by 1, and once again I was sitting with a dumb expression on my face, while Lucifer was laughing at me. Then I had to try it out… and lets just say it didn’t exactly go well, I tried my best, but apparently it wasn’t good enough, and after a while we were both laughing. It was nice to see Lucifer again and talk a bit with him, since it has been over a year since I last saw him at the WC3L finals in Germany.

Since it’s Friday it meant that it was once again time for broadcasting, but when I arrived at Coex a big surprise awaited me, SUSI was there! I hurried over to say hey to him, as I was very pleased to see him again, and we got to chat for about 10 min before I had to go set up my computer, and look trough the time schedule. I gave him my video camera so he could go around and record a bit from the WC3 Arena. Later I also bumped into 4k.Fov. When we were finished with the matches, we waited outside of the Coex for our shuttle bus, which would drive us back to the hotel, together with all the other wc3 gamers. I teased Lucifer a bit by telling him he had to start working out some more, and he replied by saying that he usually did many pushups and he could do it right there if needed. Of course he had to act a little macho since his girlfriend was also there, so he said that if I did it, he would do it as well. And after allot of discussion about who would go first, I called him a chicken, and he got down and started doing pushups with the comment “no way! Im pro” So I had to get down on all 4 as well and do it right next to him in the middle of Seoul outside of the Coex.

Translated by TaZz

Next day: I started hanging out allot with Bdub, a gamer from the American team Turmoil, and we get along very well since we are also the same age (23), and all in all have allot in common. Today when he was telling me about USA, I saw that he had allot of movies on his computer, and asked if he couldn’t send them to me, since I was pretty bored by the Korean TV, not being able to understand any of it. He then send me season 4 and 5 of Smallville, a famous American TV Series about superman in his young days. When I got home to the hotel, I jumped around trying to find somebody who I could go out and eat dinner with. After 5 min I got a hold of Duck and SaSe and we then went out and a got a nice Korean BBQ. It is very cheap here, 1 meal only cost 7-10 $ pr. man. And you get allot! And it tastes excellent. As I mentioned earlier, they prepare the food in front of you. You got all these small dishes in front of you, which you can eat from, and of course allot of rice, after 2 weeks all this still tastes superb!

When the evening approached, Malte, Jeff and myself agreed to smoke some hooka (waterpipe) and watch a couple of movies, since Malte had to leave soon. So we smoked hooka, and Jeff had allot of different tobaccos to chose from, which was pretty nice! Well since I was very tired because we had a long day, I quickly fell asleep while the others were watching Star Wars – Attack of the clones. But after a while Jeff and Malte started to get bored, so they thought it funny to play a practical joke on me, while I was in my innocent child sleep. So as I was in a heavy sleep, as I always am, they put a cigarette in my mouth, and started laughing out loud. Then Jeff got the idea to light the cigarette, and the next time I took a breath, Malte lit up the cigarette, which got me awake and I started coughing like hell. Waking up I asked “Eh? What the fuck is going on” and Jeff yelled “LOOK IT’S THE ROOKIES IN THE MOVIE” and they both laughed their asses off, I was to tired to understand anything so I just fell asleep again.

The next day I met Providence from team Play.it, this cheered me up a bit, as we are familiar. Since DIDI8 and Boo had been knocked out, we all went out and got a good dinner, where we talked about eSports, and took some nice pictures. Brian also told us a bit more about the Korea where he comes from. Since DIDI wasn’t to happy about eating with sticks, Brian laughed at him and called the waiter, who got a couple of forks for DIDI an Boo.

Translated by TaZz

Week 3: I paid duck a quick visit to see how he was doing.  When I got to his room, the Swedish fag was sleeping, so I kept ringing on his door. On a side note, when someone is ringing on the door, you can only see who it is via a video cam, and the ringing tone is very annoying hehe. When I finally got him up I could see he looked totally busted, and as I entered his room it looked even worse. So I flamed him and told him that he should clean his room since his mother ain’t working there, and he flamed back at me calling me a no manner newb :D. So laughing we took a trip down to the 7/11 and got a bit of food. After we had gone shopping, Duck wanted to get some more sleep, so we both went back to our apartments. As I got home and was sitting in front of my computer to check up on msn and IRC, a cleaning lady enters my room, and when she saw that I was still wearing shoos, she went berserk: NO SHOOS IN ROOM NO NO MUST NO HAVE BAD BAD. I took them off immediately, and then tried to explain that I juust got home, but I quickly disband explaining as she didn’t understand a thing I was saying. She then took my shoos and went into the bathroom to clean them, and once again she got a fit when I took on slippers and was on my way out again to get some cigarettes: NO SLIPPERS OUTSIDE ONLY INSIDE IN ROOM NO VERY BAD NO USE OUTISIDE ONLY INSIDE. But since she was cleaning my shoos I didn’t know what to do, and I was having a hard time trying not to laugh, so in the end she was just so furious that she left the room without giving us clean towels.

Today we got the opportunity to go to a Game-convention, 45 min away from our hotel in bus, so that was something I couldn’t refuse. There we would get the chance to hear about Korean/Chinese eSport, and how it got to the level that is on today. In the bus I was sitting next to Ken who’s become a good friend. He also works for WEG as CS admin, and player manager. He had brought his laptop, so we spend the time watching frag movies and starcraft shows. When we arrived at the G-Show, there were flags of all the represented countries, and I got a little proud seeing the Danish flag, amongst allot of others, all the way over here. As we entered we had to be signed up and get an entry card since we wanted to spend the whole day there. Jennifer then told Jeff, Johan (Vesslan) and myself, that the conference about eSport would start in 5 min, so we hurried up to get some seats. But as we got to the room only 8 people were present and the conference had already started. We got ourselves some headphones where you could hear the whole speech translated into perfect English. It took 5 long hours, and in that time we heard about: MBC, IGE, Chinese eSports and about how Starcraft got so big here, and how they have a certain structure around their eSport games, and want to make it even better in the future. Afterwards David and I took a look at the fun part of the G-Show: the live show with the many sexy ladies :D They also had allot of crazy game shows, and you could really tell that they had made a big deal out of this game-convention. It was huge and there was so many things that you could try out. But we only had 30 min until our bus would be leaving, so we didn’t have time to try it all out, but I did get allot of recordings of nice girls and the place in general hehe, also a couple of fun pictures :)

Translated by TaZz

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