I just played the best three hours of table tennis in my life. Pat and I headed to the games room on campus, and had three matches to the best of 19, a total of 43 games. Every single muscle in my body is completely exhausted. The worst are the soles of my feet, which are more sore than when I stood for five hours at the Strung Out concert.

We’d been planning to play for more than three months now, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it for a while. All week, I had been trying to develop some strategy to beat him, but couldn’t come up with a single idea since he plays with a strong backhand with a pen-grip. I decided to simply play more aggressively than him, and figure out his weakness on the fly. In the end, I just ran him around a lot, putting the ball on alternating corners or at an angle he didn’t expect. I can serve consistently now, and have gotten much better at controlling how long or short they are.

Almost none of his previous strategies worked on me. His quick serves to my right don’t do much anymore because I’ve been successful in balancing out my position at the table. His downspins don’t work anymore because the people at the club really make me work on my chops and my pushes. His rally hits to my left don’t work anymore because I’ve been improving my backhand for the last two weeks. My short game has become as good as his. The only thing he could do was serve a downspin to my left to force a weak return, which is something he figured out rather quickly.

I ended up winning all the matches, 10–5, 10–3, 10–5, but both of us agreed that they were the finest we’ve ever played. It was three hours of pure intensity, not only physically but mentally as well. Concentrating on the serve, the strategy, trying to figure out a weakness, adapting to an opponents, keeping track of the ball, I was ready to collapse when I got home.

Emotional. Oh so emotional. Maybe it was the pint, maybe it was the atmosphere, maybe it was the presence of others, maybe it was the second-hand compliment, maybe it was the raw night sky, maybe it was the Moon Mix pumping in my ears.

I just know that I’m happy.

And loving every minute of it.

I’m generally not a superstitious person but I have this one superstition when I’m listening to my iPod. I always have my songs on random, and if two songs ever play in a row that were meant to be played in a row (i.e. in order on an album or if the second song develops the motifs from the first) then I think I’ll have a good day.

I think it started when I used to play ladder matches in WC3 with Jacky. She always listened to music when she was playing, so she had her 8000 songs queued up. If Sigur Rós ever came up, she would know that we’d win. I don’t think she was ever wrong.

There’s a riddle that goes:

Two chimney sweepers are working in a chimney when one loses his footing and causes both to fall into the fireplace. One ends up with a black, sooty face, while the other is lucky and stays clean. Both look at each other in astonishment after the surprising fall. The one with the clean face goes to the bathroom to wash his face, while the other continues working with his darkened complexion. Logically explain the actions of the two sweepers.

The answer is simple. The one with the dirty face sees the one with the clean face, and assumes that his face is clean as well. The one with the clean face looks at the one with the dirty face, assumes the opposite, and washes up.

And even though I know the answer to the riddle, sometimes I forget that such confusion exists. For example, if I had a car, I’d be giving people rides to Tremblent. And since I’d be going there myself, I wouldn’t ask people for gas money. Other people, however, see the car ride as part of the cost of going there, and will plan on splitting the cost of gas when organizing the trip. Both ideals are fine, but I prefer to not ask people for money if I’m not going out of my way to do something.

And, being the ignorant idiot that I am, I will sometimes forget that others are not like me, that others assume that gas money will be split. Perhaps it can be said that I’m as much at fault as others who assume the opposite, but that doesn’t really matter to me. The best solution, in such cases, is that an understanding be reached when things are planned.

An example like this, which has been taken from personal experience, can be related so many other things in life. That just means that I need to work harder at being considerate of how others think.

Because some would rather be angry than understanding.

Happiness is a backhand place, a forehand smash, then a forehand kill.

My overall table tennis game has finally been improving, mostly from playing against some provincial team players and studying how they move. For the first two months I got back from Hong Kong I had no feeling for the ball. I’ve been trying to balance myself out more, working on my backhand, which was my weakness, without sacrificing too much of my forehand, which was my strength. I was best at counter-driving, but that’s cause I used to play a running forehand game, which was extremely risky. The problem, I discovered, was that I was almost never in the ready stance, a bad habit I picked up when drilling. Now that I’ve achieved a much better balance, I’ve become less aggressive but more versatile.