[Member Intro] Greetings from Canada!

BenBergen

Regular
Joined
Nov 17, 2015
Messages
107
Location
Canada!
WCA ID
2015BERG10
Hi everyone! My name's Ben, I'm 15 years old and, (as you may have already guessed), I'm Canadian.

Until two and a half months ago, solving the Rubik's Cube had always been somewhat of a life goal for myself. I consider myself a fairly smart guy, so it only seemed reasonable that I should be able to complete a puzzle that popular culture has labeled as a measure of intelligence. Despite this, for the longest time I couldn't grasp how one could solve a puzzle where every move you make seemingly destroys the progress you've already made. I would think to myself "one day I'm gonna sit down and spend the day learning how to solve one of these thing." The task always seemed overly daunting though

Fast forward to the beginning of September. I'm sitting at the kitchen table; with my crappy original Rubik's cube and iPad in hand, I had newfound motivation to learn to solve the cube. I managed to stumble across the Rubik's website tutorial. Although their instructions seem incredibly noobish in retrospect, seeing them was what really started to make things click for me. Following their instructions, I was able to solve my first cube in a few hours. A couple of days later and I was able to solve it without looking at the algorithms. I was hooked. I haven't looked back since then.

Currently I average about 35 seconds and my PB single is 25. I use CFOP with full PLL and 2 look OLL (the majority of which I learned from Badmephisto's site.) The past few weeks I've spent revamping my F2L, learning how to insert different cases from any angle with minimal cube rotations, and drilling these cases into my mind so I can (eventually) do them without thinking. I figure this will make looking ahead a lot easier, when the time comes to pursue that. Next step is probably working on my cross because I'm not very confident with that yet.

Right now my main is the Moyu Aolong V2. I find its on the slower side, but it's also incredibly controllable which I like. Before that I used the Rubik's speed cube (because that's the only one you can buy not online in Canada.). It's a half-decent speed cube but it's really noisy and the edges pop like its nobody's business. I managed to get around to ordering a moyu pretty quickly afterwards. Since things take about 7478277 years to ship from China though, I was stuck with the Rubik's speed cube until the end of October.

I plan on attending my first competition in Toronto in a couple of weeks. Four of my friends at school are also into speed cubing, so we're planning on going together. One of them has been speed cubing for a few years already so he's sub-20. The other three only started after I did though. Right now they're all just over a minute and are engaged in an epic battle to see who will be the first to reach sub-minute. anyway, really looking forward to the comp, I've heard they're a lot of fun.

Well, that's me in a nutshell (ok maybe that was a bit longer than a nutshell). I look forward to talking to some new people and learning stuff on this forum!

Ben Bergen
 
Hey Ben! If you think shipping from China takes too long, try ordering from stores in North America.


same and same question

Haha yeah, I figured that out after I ordered my Moyu. Two weeks after making the order I was getting annoyed at how long it was taking. I decided to order a FangShi from the Cubicle so I wouldn't have to wait so long for a new cube. The packages ended up arriving on the exact same day. I agree though, buying from stores in North America is better. I'm probably going to get all my stuff from the Cubicle now.
 
I live in Waterloo. It sucks that the only cubing competitions in Ontario are in Toronto. That's a pretty long drive for anyone in Ottawa who wants to go to one.
There are actually a few comps that have been held in waterloo, including Canadian Open(National Comp) this year was in waterloo. Also last year there was the battle or waterloo comp held there. Hopefully there will be more in waterloo in the future as well, as the community there is growing.
 
Waterloo has occasional comps, the University of Waterloo is a pretty good place to have a competition, and I don't think that they could have The Canadian Open at the YMCA in Toronto, it's not big enough.
 
There are actually a few comps that have been held in waterloo, including Canadian Open(National Comp) this year was in waterloo. Also last year there was the battle or waterloo comp held there. Hopefully there will be more in waterloo in the future as well, as the community there is growing.

Yeah, I've heard about competitions here in the past. It would love it if there was another competition in Waterloo sometime soon. Hopefully Battle of Waterloo can make a comeback!
 
Welcome to the forums! If you're ever interested in BLD, talk to me!

Thanks! Blind is definitely something I want to learn eventually. Gotta focus on doing the cube with my eyes open first though. I'll talk to you when I decide to try it out.
 
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