Not in Our Stars

Tournament isn't the hospitality you receive. Tournament isn't the various honours you win at your various sports. Tournament isn't the lickings and batterings most of you will get from your various opponents. Tournament is exactly what you make it yourself. Personally I've been to six Tourneys and have nearly always been billeted in men's hostels or hostelries (from preference). Therefore I've had to make my own fun. I can assure everyone that it isn't very difficult to do this whether it's your first Tourney or your last, Obviously one keeps reasonably fit until one's specal sport or event takes place. But this doesn't mean you must become a hermit or retire to a cell (the local cops will do this for you later). It's far more soothing to high-strung nerves to mix with people and lead a reasonably normal life than to sit introspectively brooding before your event. But I don't anticipate many will need this advice.

Going to Tournament is similar in principle to making a trip abroad. You'll receive certain hospitality, but how you enjoy the trip really depends on your own attitude and mental resources. Tournament brings new friends with new outlooks and new views. Very often these views may clash radically with your own. People from Christchurch may have an entirely different outlook from those in Auckland on certain subjects.

Speaking from a purely selfish view-point it is only by adapting oneself where necessary to the view-point of other people that one can hope to make either a monetary or a personal success of life later on. The man who is tolerant, a good mixer (not necessarily of cocktails) will usually earn far bigger money and have a far happier time later in life than one who is merely a brilliant technician. And Tourney is a very important opportunity to learn (a la Dale Carnegie) how to win friends and influence people.