Published on 2024-03-15 13:29 by Sam Wu

Rishi Shah

I went to high school in Bakersfield, California. They’re not particularly known for their educational prowess. It’s a big farming community, a big oil community. I tried to keep myself busy. I was a big chess player. When I was younger, there was a pretty strong chess community. But by the time I got to high school it kind of tapered off. There weren’t many many people left.

One summer, I didn’t really have too much to do, so I tried making a curriculum to teach chess, with a book with structure and things. I taught it for a summer at the Boys and Girls Club. In my junior year, I actually expanded a bit. By the time we got to senior yea, there was a pretty good group of students who were interested.

So we were registering for tournaments and needing to buy boards and it got expensive. So I was trying to get money from people but it was hard. People don’t really want to donate. So I started taking prom photos and formal photos, and we bought chess boards and registered people for chess tournaments using those.

It’s actually pretty funny. When I first started taking photos, I didn’t know where to start, so I rented this camera gear from this guy that I found online. A little bit suspicious, but it was great camera equipment, right? So I was going to take some photos at this formal, but when I got there they wanted to check all my stuff to make sure I wasn’t taking anything in. They went through the backpack with all the cameras I rented and they found this bag of pills.

I was terrified. Maybe it was drugs or something. I was like, “That’s not mine, it was the guy.” I was freaked. They brought the cops over and started investigating. They ground it up and drug-tested it and it turned out it was just Motrin. So thank God.

Written by Sam Wu