"During the Winter break of 2001, I got my first computer. I was finally able to remember the unforgettable excitement within me at that time today. Unfortunately, I started to despair after a few days. At that time I had already been playing Starcraft for two years. My standard wasn't too good and I was far away from being a World Champion. However, I had participated in many competitions within Henan Province. I also went to numerous PC cafes so I have a decent understanding of computer specifications and requirements.

I can still remember very clearly my very first personal computer. 500 Mhz, 32 MB of RAM, integrated graphics card (on the motherboard), 20 GB of harddisk space! Actually my requirements aren't very high. I will be satisfied as long as the computer is good enough to run Starcraft. But I still went through a lot of frustration and pain when using this computer. Whenever I got involved in a battle with more than 100 population, my computer will start lagging hard.

After asking my father, I realised that this computer was bought by my father from an acquaintance in the hospital. It was bought for 2000 dollars. "Oh, at least having a computer is better than nothing. But he had the cheek to sell it to me for 2000 dollars." I told my father, "It certainly wasn't value for money. That computer costed so much, yet its performance was horrible. The next time you buy a computer, please tell me in advance. I will buy it myself." My father laughed helplessly.

I felt a sense of enlightment after thinking about this incident. My father laughed also because of his frustration. My family has a limited household budget and this 2000 dollars used to buy a computer for me did not come easy. My father was only trying to give me a surprise. It's a pity that I was unable to realise this back then. There's a saying "For certain things, only those who are closest to you will lie to you."

Do you know why I like to rush with Protoss in Starcraft? I guess there are two main reasons:

1) Each time I go to the PC cafe, I will spend all of my money so I want to maximise the number of games I can play.
2) My computer will lag everytime I hit 100 population. To take care of this, I have to rush to force a decisive battle as soon as possible. As soon as I exceed 100 population, my computer will lag so hard that I will lose right away.

I don't really remember the nighttime programmes that year. But after I got the computer, I love to check the schedule of all the different programmes and inform my parents in advance. This made me feel like a prophet. Time spent at home is always wonderful. I have a huge group of brothers to accompany me.

One of my cousin preferred to join me in playing Starcraft together and discuss tactics. His understanding of the game was at the same level as mine. My other cousin often dragged me along to stay out overnight. But he could only watch me play. It could not be helped. Each time we pooled our money together, we could only afford to get a single computer.

My brother, Li Junfeng, was always bullied by me since we were young. Ever since we had the computer, I would only let him play when I did not feel like playing (I'm such a bad guy...). There were many others who grew up with me and went to the same school as me. There was also a cat, a computer, and a group of brothers. The winter break of 2001 was spent on games and passed very quickly.

Source: Sky's Blog