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Posts: 160
Location: Italy
Liked others: 238
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Hello everybody,
I am here around since October, so maybe is somehow late for an introduction, still...
I am here, and this is the story of how I got involved with GO. 
I first learned of the very existence of the game of GO in the early 90ies by reading about it in the novel of Erik Van Lustbader "Jian".
The description of the game was very uncertain and in the 4th cover is made reference, in a confused and misleading way
btw, I do not think of a fault by the author, but rather of the translator who curate the Italian edition of a best seller easy-book having only a few, if any, sources of information
The translation in Italian is something like: "The answer lies in four pieces of jade that resembles the pieces of the ancient strategy game of Wei Qi".
I feel very old when I think back to those teenage times, in the first half of my life: the world was very different from now and, despite it already existed in an embryo stage, internet was still to come.
Finding players in Italy, moreover in my area, was really an impossible deed for me.
I missed a good chance during the University years: I were a commuter student and heard about a University Go club that organized weekly meetings, but for a penniless student without a car, like I were, those 20 km from my parent's home were a huge distance.
GO, as I knew it in that times, or as I only imagined, was the one represented in Van Lustbader's spy-stories and fascinated me for its being mysterious, exotic.
Some 5 years later, my friends gifted me of a small veneered Goban, together with a copy of Kawabata's "the Master of Go": I am quite sure that they tought it was a beginner book. 
I hardly ploughed through the pages of Kawabata trying to get a better grasp of the game in the nicely narrated events...
'till I read the comments about the loosing move of the match: a long detailed discussion about it convinced me that it was absolutely impossible to understand anything about Go without a master to teach me, or at least a real beginner book. 
As a consequence, my Goban stayed unused in its place in the closet for many many years. 
In the between, I graduated, started working, left my parent's home for another city and got married.
Life speed up and Go became only a casual research here and there in the web, mostly looking to the pictures of goban on ebay and learning that, in fact, english books for beginner existed. I also had my first set of Chinese stones casually discovered in a trinkets shop in Milan.
Around 2005 I also had my first playing Go software on my cell phone and sometimes I tried fast 9x9 games (without any understanding of the game).
In 2011, near 20 years after my first contact, I won back my chance of starting the incredible journey of GO.
I was in the between of a career change and I found a copy of "The Way of the Moving Horse" Learn to Play Go #2 by Janice Kim.
In the same time I casually discovered that there is a Go Club not so far from where I live and I started playing.
Much has changed from my first steps in the 90ies: the wide ranging curiosity is still here, also direct to the history and the stories of Go...
...and partial (lustful?  ) to expensive japanese sets.
Unfortunately, these last five years in my life have been filled with less Go than I would have intended.
As they say, life is a matter of priorities: most of my time is devoted to my growing family (that is the nice part) and to my job (that is the "not always as pleasing" part ...that pays the bills ).
The "Go result" is my end of scale DDKyu level not pairing well with my 40th birthday's self gifted japanese set
My infinite journey on the path of GO has just began
Galation
_________________
When you play Weiqi you are joining millions of people across four thousand years of time.
Jonathan Hop - So You Want to Play Go?
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