Also since it’s summer holidays now, I’m trying not to let my brain fall asleep. Therefore, it’s my goal for the next month to post and comment on various areas of interest: including new gadgets, some stuff about gaming and of course science. Since this website won’t be strictly gaming any more, it probably doesn’t need an RSS feed on eSports Press but hopefully most of my readers will continue to enjoy the type of content i’ll be posting in the future.

Speaking of gaming, the last trip which I took was to DreamHack Summer in Jönköping a few weeks ago. It was fantastic to see all the old Quakers from over the years, as well as new friends too! Above you can see Videl (g0d’s latest addition) and I a little upset over the drinks situation at the LAN. We were just having a bit of fun ^^. It was a really nice idea that Telia had, where you could create your own “fan sign” for your favourite player at DreamHack.

QuakeCon is just around the corner and I wish I could go there also but sponsorship in Quake is pretty scarce right now, where even top players like Strenx and Spart1e have to seek out sponsorship (In case you missed it, they left fnatic). Thus, Quake is pretty dead in the sponsor department so I can’t make it to QuakeCon but certainly I’ll be watching and cheering from home, especially for the TDM players!

The images of the damage are pretty intense and I am so happy to read everyone in NZs updates on facebook about how they are all gathering together and doing their part to help; donating blood, water, food, clothes, money etc… I’m also so happy to see that AirNZ is offering cheap flights for immediate family of victims or victims themselves.

I know that many of my readers are probably thinking “WTF why is she writing about this, it’s not about gaming”. But I grew up in New Zealand and it is really where i’m “from”… so to see the country in a state of national emergency, I really want to try and do *SOMETHING*, even if it’s just making a post on a blog, encouraging people to donate.

Donations can be made to the Red Cross online or via the GrabOne website or fundraiseonline.co.nz, as the Red Cross site has been crashing. Here is another official site set up by the government in the global appeal for help: http://www.christchurchearthquakeappeal.govt.nz/

You can also help by going to NZ for holidays!

If you’re in NZ, here are some other ways you can help! (although i’m pretty sure that you already know these things <3)

You can view a quick preview of the upcomig games below:

To see who else ESL has recruited for commentating for the event:

For those of you who have been complaining about poor quality streams, ESL.tv will be broadcasting in HD, so make sure to get premium! Why didn’t they offer this when Joe went shirtless?! (haha )
If you can’t order premium, ESFI world are giving away 10 premium subscriptions! Click here for the details.

Hope to see you in Hannover! yey!!!

The holidays were filled with a lot of sleeping and eating. In the picture, i’m eating an amandel ring, it’s only sold at Christmas time here and it’s pastry filled with crushed almond. I’ve eaten 3 these holidays

December in the Netherlands is really awesome. We had a lot of snow that month and I was getting ready to go ice skating! Unfortunately, it didn’t stay cold long enough and everything melted before the ice was ready to skate on. They have something called Sinterklaas which led to eating a shitload of chocolate letter “L”s (and M’s too, but don’t tell Mike! heheh) and other yummy sweeties. I really wanted to celebrate it but I heard it’s mainly for children. Sad.

Because i’m becoming a fat bitch, this year I’ve started something new: hip hop dance class! Larissa and I go there once a week and we are totally lame right now. But it is a lot of fun and hopefully by the time I graduate, i’ll actually be able to bust a move. As far as gaming goes, I don’t really have the time for it. I’ll come on to play a little bit of Quake Live here and there, but I can’t maintain any kind of “skill”. I played Fallout New Vegas at the end of last year and it was really awesome, but it also took too much time and I never finished it.

The best thing about this year? Diablo 3 is coming!! I was just whining about not having enough time for gaming but dammit, i’m gonna make sure i’ve got time for this one. If I have to sit in the library every day to finish all my reading and homework, I will!! I LOVE YOU DIABLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO……..

As far as new years resolutions go, i’ve only got one: to actually take pictures of the stuff that I do (and to pull weird faces in them). That’s it. Happy 2011 everyone, I hope this year is amazing for you!!

What are your new years resolutions? Comment below or tweet them to @HelloLiefje

One day, he let his mother watch the 100th episode and from that, she decided to write an article about it.

As I listened to Sean, and as I watched my son game, it was always clear to me that the label of gamer was highly deficient. These kids are students of life. They are practicing life in a highly evolved and fast-paced world. Real life moves too slow mostly because of the ridiculous beliefs that the adults in their life call rules and reality. Sean described the skill set of a pro gamer as having the “mind of a chess master and the dexterity of a musician.” Now where can they learn that in school—maybe practicing their cursive writing, a completely obsolete skill, or learning the beginning and ending dates of some ridiculous war that people had no business fighting anyway. Most modern education is about memorizing and passing tests. It is about creating conformists that blindly obey authority figures. Sean jokes that it is a world of “all A’s for everyone.” But the gaming world is real and fair. You don’t win because your mother has connections. You don’t lose because a judge made some biased decision. You don’t get respect because you are older or have an advanced degree. You get respect because you won. And, you won because you deserved to win.

The whole article is totally awesome. Click here to read it now!

The contestants need to create a video reenactment of the most memorable gaming scene in their life. They need to think about what is the most memorable gaming scene they have witnessed and reenact it on video. This challenge has two parts. Part one is the creation and publication of the reenactment and part two is a seperate blog explaining their choice and methods used.

I did Diablo:

To read how I made this masterpiece awful clip, click here.

The reason this battle started was because once upon a time I wrote a blog about “Hairy German girls”. This blog of course had to do with the funny fact that in Germany they sell womens deodorant with razor blades, which led me to the obvious conclusion that German girls must be hairy. Of course since this is the internet, the main keywords that brought people to Hello Liefje were people searching for “hairy german girls” or “hairy women”.

Today I would like to triumphantly say that the trend has been broken!

Hairy women have been knocked off their throne by people who also hate Heros of Newerth!! Wooohoo!! There are more gamers than people with hairy women fetishes now reading my website. Congratulations!

But the internet always delivers and of course the 2nd most common search term was Jonah Falcon, the man with the worlds largest penis. But the first one is non-sexual, so that’s a win for me!

New Zealand went undefeated in their group and that was a result that nobody expected. Nobody even expected New Zealand to be able to score a goal! They went above and beyond, firstly by scoring a goal their very first WC game, then tying with the defending world champions the next game!

Furthermore, something which I must add:
Group F results
1st: Paraguay (5 points)
2nd: Slovakia (4 points)
3rd: New Zealand (3 points)
4th: Italy (2 points)

…I’m just sayin’.

New Zealand, the small nation down under with around 4 million people, 25 professional football players (in comparison with a country like Italy with something like 3000 professional footballers) went undefeated in the World Cup 2010. WELL DONE!!!!

Now that NZ is out I will be cheering for the Netherlands. Hup Holland hup!!!

So just to write something a little more personal since I haven’t in a while, i’ll just tell you a little bit about moving. Everyone basically wonders why we moved since we were working very hard at a company in Germany which was in the eSports industry. Unfortunately the company and us decided to go in separate directions and while we both loved Germany Köln, it was too difficult to get work without being fluent in German. So we went to the Netherlands for me to study and PURRI to work.

Moving was a lot of work as usual but now PURRI and I feel comfortable in our new home. We had a lot of help from a local Quake player (drk), it’s really nice how through gaming we’ve been able to get to know people from all over the world. Our flat is almost complete now, we had to do a lot of work like installing new floors, sterilization of the bathroom and painting over the imaginary shotgun stains (just joking).

It’s perfect timing just before the world cup. Things look really festive with orange flags everywhere. It’s a little bit of an assault on the eyes as soon as you enter any supermarket I always like to remind PURRI that NZ are qualified but not Sweden, hehe. But of course we must cheer for Holland. With all the promotions going on, it’s almost impossible that you don’t have a little bit of orange somewhere from something

So far it’s been a lot of fun and I look forward to spending the summer here! This is a dog sniping from a 3rd floor window: