A Game of Chess- a World in Miniature

 

Whenever I challenge someone or get an invitation from another person to play a game of chess I know that for a while I will detach myself from the immediate reality and plunge into an imaginary world of battles, intrigues, and unexpected situations. As long as the game of chess lasts my mind usually takes me into a journey full of thought, strategy, anticipation, and excitement. In those moments the chessboard and chess pieces are a world in miniature, a world in which I can control my destiny, but in order to reach my goal I have to play different roles and sometimes identify myself with each of the 16 pieces I control.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if the chessboard were a real-world and I would be no longer the chess player, but one of the pieces on the board. Just like in the real world, the higher my position, the bigger my chances of surviving when the game ends would be, but there are no guarantees that it would be a happy end; even if I were the queen I couldn't win the battle on my own.

To continue with this fascinating exercise of imagination I will try to place myself first in the position of a pawn. After all, half of the pieces of each team are pawns; in the game of chess they are poor, the many and the expendables, but yet their roles can sometimes be decisive. If I'm a pawn on a chessboard I won't have too many expectations from this life as it will be very hard to finish the game alive. I will be in the first line of defense, always ready to sacrifice myself for the king and country. That doesn't sound like a desirable position, in fact, it's quite a miserable existence, but even in these dark circumstances, there is a little hope for me. If I am the lucky one to reach the last line I can turn myself from a poor, hopeless servant into a mighty queen or maybe a proud and strong rook. All of a sudden the power will be in my hands, but how many pawns have this unique chance in the world of chess? Most of them die on the battlefield after a life of suffering, so if a draw is made before the game begins to establish my position on the board the last thing I want to be is a pawn.

Let's say that I'm a minor piece, either a bishop or a knight; it is quite a significant step forward compared to the unwanted position of a pawn, but there are plenty of risks involved and I have to enjoy living on the edge. If I'm a bishop my freedom of movement will be quite restricted, as I can only move diagonally, but it's sometimes enough to allow me to cause havoc into the opponent's defense. If I'm a knight I will be very playful, but also dangerous; I am the only one who can do the thing the queen can't which is jumping over pieces, and for this reason, I think I would deserve some respect. It will be definitely an exciting life, but not necessarily a long one; in most cases, I will be sacrificed before the rooks and sometimes even before the pawns. Whether I'm a bishop or a knight I am expendable too!

It's time to move on to the major pieces. Let's say that after the draw I am lucky enough to be a rook. Now that's a completely different story; I am powerful, I am hard as a rock, and when I move you better stay out of my way! And yet there are disadvantages even in my apparently solid position: I can only move in a straight line and I also need a lot of patience because I have to wait for the pawns, knights, and bishops to make room for me before I can finally leave my initial position. I a mighty and fearless warrior, but I am not invincible. I can be brought down even by knights and bishops if they work together in a clever way. Nevertheless, being the rook sounds quite good to me!

 And then there's, of course, the queen, and who wouldn't like to be one? Isn't it great to have absolute power over your kingdom, to decide who lives and who dies, to move into almost every direction you want? That's the kind of life most of us only dream about! There are plenty of reasons for which I would rather be the queen instead of the king, but there is a disadvantage in this highly desired position: even the queen has to sacrifice himself in a desperate attempt to save the king when things go bad! Queen? Yes, it would be great to be one, but I have to remember that nothing lasts forever, not even absolute power!

And then finally there's the king; he's the one which all the other pieces try to protect and they're all willing to die for him. However, I'm not sure I want to be one. It is true that I will live longer than all my subjects, but life doesn't look too exciting for me. My movements are restricted and I am always surrounded by guards; for most of the game, I can't leave my castle and when I am forced by circumstances to move out of my fortress into the open field I am usually extremely vulnerable. It means that most of my humble and devoted servants are no longer here to protect me. When my army wins the game I take credit for it, but we all know that in reality my loyal subjects, from the poor unfortunate pawns to my beloved and powerful queen, are the ones to deserve all the praise. I am nothing but a puppet, a lazy individual who lives a life full of pleasures, but I have basically no freedom. I am a prisoner in a luxury cage and if my team loses it all crumbles down and I disappear as well! Taking all these elements into consideration, I am not that eager to be a king!

As a conclusion of my little journey into a fantasy world which looks like a chessboard, I can say that being a king is not necessarily the best thing that can happen to you, but it's always preferable to being a pawn, and even if you're in a low position it is possible to make your life better and rise from rags to riches, just as in the case of a pawn which can turn into the queen, but that's probably very hard to accomplish and you also need some luck and often at least a little help from others to stop being a pawn and become important! Anyway, enough meditations, time to get back to the board and play another fascinating game of chess. Long live the king if his subjects defend him with the price of their lives!

Picture source- Pixabay free image  Chess Board

Fallen Trees- Victims of Heavy Rainfall

Going on a hike in a forest on a hot summer day, with temperatures rising to 30 degrees Celsius is an excellent opportunity to enjoy the cool air and the much-needed shadow of the trees while also doing physical activity, which otherwise would be hard to do at high temperatures during the daytime, so when I was invited to go on a hike to the top of a hill on a Sunday afternoon in July, I gladly accepted the invitation.

It should have been a rainy Sunday in my region, but fortunately, the weather forecast turned out not to be very accurate that time, but it had rained heavily the night before. As a matter of fact, I had been awoken by the deafening sound of thunder in the middle of the previous night; there had been a violent storm which had come after several days of extreme heat, a furious outburst of nature which seems to take revenge on humans who cause so much damage to the environment by subjecting them to all kinds of extreme weather conditions.

But it is not only humans who have to suffer from nature's fury, as I could see during my forest hike. I was still close to the foot of the hill when I came across a spectacular, but also frightening view, which you can see in the photo above, of several bent trees forming a natural roof over the road as the contact with the trees from the other side of the road prevented them from falling to the ground. As I continued my hike up on the road I saw several fallen trees, some of the old and massive, with their roots, simply snatched from the ground, but luckily and rather surprisingly none of them had blocked the road, they were in the ravines, right in the middle of the forest.

 It was sad to see those trees knocked down, even if it wasn't man's hand, but nature's anger that finished them off, but it's an unpleasant sight I should be more used to. As humans, in their ever-growing hunger for profits, destroy the environment in an accelerated pace, they also have to suffer the consequences of their reckless acts, and violent, thunderous rainfalls are probably going to get more and more frequent in the region where I live, so I expect to see more and more and fallen trees, along with massive floods, and other devastating effects of heavy storms and other extreme weather phenomena, in the upcoming years. There is no other choice but to get used to these changes because it's obvious to me that our planet won't heal very soon, on the contrary, it will grow sicker and sicker and its suffering will only make our lives worse.

Photos from My Visits to Neamt Citadel

I visited the Neamt Citadel, an imposing medieval fortress with a rich and troubled history, twice, in 2013 and 2017. I wrote about my impressions about it in this article published in Expertscolumn:

Romanian Landmarks: The Neamt Citadel

However, since I could only published one image on EC, I decided to post more snapshots from my two visits to Neamt Citadel here in order to show a more complete picture of this remarkable historical treasure, so here they are:

My Latest Expertscolumn Articles

My experience with article writing sites has been truly disappointing during the past few years. One by one the sites I started writing for either couldn't pay anymore or simply switched off the lights completely. Fortunately, there is one exception- the good old Expertscolumn, the site to which I returned after those failed adventures. EC has paid me between late 2011 and the spring of 2013, then went through a dark period from which it recovered several months later, and even if earnings are far from spectacular, it's still here after all these years and it's paying, as far as I know. Therefore I will focus on EC from now on and I will keep an evidence of the new articles I post on the several blogs I have created under the Expertscolumn umbrella, and, just like with the previous sites I used to write for, I will update this list with my latest posts whenever it's necessary, so here they are:

1. Kings Are Worthless without Pawns
2. Earth Hour 2017
3. Expertscolumn- The Awoken Giant
4. 5 Reasons Why I Love the "Vikings" Series
5. Top 15 Metal Albums of 2016
6. Book Review: The Plague by Camus
7. Living by the Water
8. An Exercise of Imagination
9. Doomsday Clock Is Getting Closer
10. Ancient Citadel Sightseeing
11. Impressions After an Earthquake
12. We Can All Find Magic
13.The Circus Has Come to My Town 
14.What If We All Lived in a Supercontinent?
15.We Must Not Allow Fear to Rule Our Lives
16.April Snow- My Early Morning Shock 
17.The Spirit of the Mountains Lives Within My Soul
18.The Unwanted Passenger
19.Thoughts on the Lion's Obelisk
20.How Much Water Should We Drink in a Day?
21.Mountain Roads
22.A Sanctuary of Flowers
23.Falling Trees

Quizbook- the first Quiz Site Which Paid Me

If you're passionate about testing your general knowledge and also want to do it for more than just pure excitement, you can try Quizbook. This is the first quiz site which paid me. So far I received two payments worth a total of $20, as the payout threshold used to be set at $10 until recently. You can find out more about my experience with Quizbook from this article I posted on Blogjob:

Quizbook- the Site Which Rewards General Knowledge

I have to mention that after I posted this article there were some changes made in the official rules, changes that are not necessarily for the better. The good thing lies in the fact that the payment threshold has been reduced to $5, but unfortunately from now on free members can only play a maximum of 10 quizzes a day, so earnings will be very slow for them. However, it is possible to upgrade by using your Quizbook balance, and that's exactly what I'm going to day when I reach $7 again(the minimum amount for which you can upgrade to premium for a month, which allows to play a maximum of 25 quizzes per day instead of 10).

Anyway, even with its downsides Quizbook is, as far as I know, the only site which pays you to answer general knowledge questions, so why not give it a try? This General knowledge quiz can't make you rich yet, but it can allow me to make some pocket money and spend part of your online time in an entertaining and relatively rewarding manner!

Back in Business- MyLot Is Paying Again!

 The first site I used to express myself and make a little bit of money from my posts was myLot. From late 2010 to the spring of 2013 this amazing site was part of my life almost daily, but unfortunately its earning program was discontinued in May 2013 and I completely lost my interest in it, just like so many other people who used it to communicate and share their thoughts with others in an entertaining and quite lucrative way.

However, in August 2015 the miracle happened: myLot is paying again! This completely unexpected comeback represented a very pleasant surprise for me in these rather bleak times in the world of writing online. Even if posting on myLot won't make me rich, the excitement of being able to communicate with people from all over the world and being rewarded for my replies and comments on this vast reborn forum is as big as it was when I first joined myLot.

The rules of the new myLot are quite simple: you get paid for your replies and comments to other users' posts and you can start your own discussions. Each post you make is rewarded through an algorithm which is only known by myLot administration. When you reach at least $10 you will be paid through Paypal the next month. Basically the payment system is the same as it was before.

So, if you the idea of discussing on various topics with people from all the corners of the world and earning from your posts sounds good to you, don't hesitate to join myLot, simply the world's best discussion site. You can find me here if you want to be my friend on myLot:
My Profile on myLot

Rheinfall- a Wonder of Nature

Rheinfall is a waterfall situated close to the Swiss town of Schaffhausen; it is undoubtedly one of the natural wonders of Europe, as you can see from the pictures I took there a few years ago.
You can read more about my trip to Rheinfall in this article I've published on PERSONAPAPER:

Rheinfall=- a Breathtaking Sight