Greetings from the land of the morning calm! This week's updates (October 30th-November 5th) by GGA editor Jane Pinckard (that's me) and from co-editor/assistant/bag-carrier Justin Hall will be logged in from Daejeon, South Korea - "city of innovative traffic" and host to the 2nd ever World Cyber Games.

Well, it may be the land of morning calm - with the quality of what the people here call "coffee" it's hard to be anything but practicaly catatonic - but there was also an eerie desertedness to the Expo Park, a gigantic leftover relic from the 1993 World Expo and now, as the Lonely Planet guidebook notes, a great setting for a B-grade horror flick. And truly, watching the trickle of people against the background of empty ferris wheels and closed-up giant dome buildings, you did feel a sort of depressed hilarity about the whole thing.

Well, I did. But that could have been due to the afore-mentioned lack of coffee.

To make the atmosphere even more surreal, there was a constant stream of Bavarian oohmpa-oohmpa folk music being piped into mysterious hidden speakers throughout the park. If I were the paranoid type I'd have thought we were being brainwashed. For what purpose, I don't know. Sinister, I am sure.

It's probably because the event is so new that it seemed rather disorganized. We walked into the park Tuesday night and asked for a press pass. Now, try doing this at E3 - you get the third degree! But here they were very nice. They asked for a business card - which I didn't have, but Justin gave them his - and then that was it. They pointed us in the direction of the Press room and let us go on our merry way.

Sweet!

I must say though that I hope this event succeeds. That's not only because I like games and so on, but because the people staffing and organizing the games are very sweet and hard working and I hope their efforts pay off. And I hope it happens again next year!

All right, we're off to go watch two of the world's best Quake III Arena players in action. More reportage to follow!