This is so awesome.

Adam Bobrow (the player in blue) times his loop perfectly in the middle of a series of defensive lobs against the smash of his opponent, throwing off his opponents offensive rhythm, and causing him to drive the ball into the net.

I generally don’t post stuff like this (i.e. content that isn’t mine, as I don’t want to have a tumblelog), but I couldn’t resist. As an avid lover of table tennis (who has since given up practices for a love for Tai Chi because they’re on conflicting nights), and as a player who frequently gets destroyed by opponents in the league, I understand exactly how good it feels to get a single point when it’s match point for the other guy. After all, it’s not a complete thrashing if you don’t have zero points. You can tell the ref isn’t impressed, but he doesn’t hand out a yellow card for misconduct.

I want to see someone do this after winning in push hands.

I’m walking through a Chinese Christian church. The wood is old but lacquered well. Decorations line the walls: a tree made of childrens’ handprints, posters about the Almighty with slogans in large print, calendars and schedules of upcoming events. We head downwards while a prayer meeting goes on upstairs. A young girl in Heelies skates alongside us in the hall.

We’re lead to a room with two table tennis tables, blue, relatively new. There isn’t much room to maneuver, but the lighting is great. Shou offers us some Jasmine tea. Players are warming up as more Chinese men come in one at a time. They play in sneakers without sneaker socks, or dress shirts, or those shirts with logos you get for free at a company. Their shorts are an awkward length between capris and sports trunks.

Dan introduces himself to everyone. I’m sitting down, trying to place the province of their accents. Tamarra picks up a children’s book and starts to read.

All their serves are illegal; they don’t throw the ball the regulation 6 inches straight up, which means they can put an unfair spin on the ball before it hits the paddle. A result of the insular society they have here, where they play the same people over and over again, never venturing outside their religious clique. They simply don’t know any better.

Dan gets paired up for a match. They both play conservatively when warming up, trying to hide their techniques while feeling each other out. “Some people, when you get it in their hit zone, never miss”. Dan’s opponent makes no mistakes for him to capitalize on, but a consistent defence wears him out. His opponent spends his energy winning the first game, smashing at every opportunity, and loses his momentum. Dan wins every game for the rest of the match.

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More than a crazy week, I managed to survive a crazy fortnight. Something went wrong almost every day, from getting my hair highlighted, to almost getting killed in a near-miss car accident, to finding out that my company was bought out. On top of this, I kept losing sleep, which only exponentiated the stress. Now is the process of picking myself up and dusting myself off.

I still feel over-stimulated, so I’ve been hermitizing. Staying away from people for a while. I’m limiting myself to one social interaction or extra-curricular activity per week. It would actually be nothing if I had the option, but I keep getting pulled into things because of their annual exclusivity, such as Thanksgiving dinner at Louise’s.

I’ve cut off the woman who gave birth to me. There’s a tremendous feeling of relief, after having done it. I’m grateful for all the support that people are showing me, as well as the fact that none of them have given me advice as if they know more about the situation or have more wisdom than I do.

I hold Pat’s opinion in highest regard because he’s the only one who understands from both a cultural and first-hand point-of-view. He was also the only one who told me, “Good for you”. This, from one of the most forgiving, caring people that I know, confirmed to me that I made the right decision.

John offered a unique perspective too, since losing his mother at a tender age. “You only get one”, he said, although he never chided or judged me about it, perhaps because of the number of times I’ve called him up in tears because of her.

Of the last five times I’ve tried to play table tennis, things didn’t work out once. It certainly made the last two weeks a lot more difficult to handle.

Table tennis is the only thing that helps me sleep well, not to mention the fact exercise releases endorphines that fight the exact depression I was going through. I’m taking it as a sign that I’m not meant to play at the moment, so I’m giving it up until next year.

In the meantime, I’ve taken up Tai Chi. Through the last while, I went back to the Tao Te Ching looking for answers, and it renewed my interest in Tai Chi, which I see as a physical manifestation of the theory. I was also able to clarify a few of the concepts with my uncles while they were here, so I’m reading things over with a fresh perspective.

Trolley’s Moving Out

Trolley’s moving out, and taking most of the living room with him. I’ve been pre-occupied with matching two-piece sectionals, clever hidden storage coffee tables, other things that are completely unnecessary in the hunter-gatherer sense of life. Pat’s taking me furniture shopping this Monday, from morning to night. I’ll be in debt soon, going into my line of credit off my house for the first time, but it’ll be oh so worth it.

Father’s Day Without a Dad

Father’s day came and went. I waited until the 3rd Sunday of June to see if my dad would call me first, but he never did, not since the divorce. Not ever actually. It was always my mom who called, and passed the phone to him. We’d make small talk for roughly 30–60 seconds, and he’d pass the phone back to mom. The last time I spoke to him was when I went back home in April. At least my mom called to make sure I was okay after she broke the news. Even she told me to call him, but I don’t feel like it. If anything, he owes me.

A New Paddle

Table tennis at the club ended, as the venue is shutting down until the fall. The only physical activity left for me is the occasional match with Pat at his new place. I bought a new penhold blade, a Mazunov OFF+, and two Sriver 2.1mm rubbers, marking the first time that I started using speed glue with a custom paddle. I’ve only had the chance to try them out a few times, but I can tell that the setup has been perfect for my offensive style. I was apprehensive of getting rubbers that were too thick (2.4mm) and fast, for fear that my footwork wouldn’t be able to keep up, but I’ll definitely consider it once these ones wear out.

Getting Slashdotted

I met one of my life’s goals when I was Slashdotted for my HomeStar Planetarium review. The visits for the first 12 hours nearly jumped to 15,000, but the server handled the load, albeit a little slowly. Something I can cross off my list.

I Quit

Another thing to cross off is quitting the weed. Not for John this time, but for myself. I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with marijuana. It’s not the same addiction as other drugs. Dr. Andrew Weil, who’s not a pot critic by any means, describes the problem perfectly in his 2004 book, From Chocolate to Morphine.

Marijuana dependence can be sneaky in its development. It doesn’t appear overnight like cigarette addiction…but rather builds up over a long time. The main danger of smoking marijuana is simply that it will get away from you, becoming more and more of a repetitive habit and less and less of a useful way of changing consciousness.

When I tried to quit before, I’d always tell myself “this is the last day”, but I’d say the same thing every day for months at a time. I’d always need an excuse to stop, but none of the excuses I could come up with would ever work. This time it’s official. I’ve learned all that I can from it, and lost all desire to get burned again. Darren tells me that he’s done too, and when he visits soon it’ll mark the first time that we’ve hung out sober in three years. I’m curious if we’ll have anything in common now.

New Business

There’s been an upturn of business. Through Pat, I got a small website contract for my personal company, and I recently joined a stock photography site to make some extra money off my pictures. I take my camera with me everywhere, and I don’t have to do anything for the royalties if other people purchase them anyway. All that’s left to do now is getting some model release forms signed from people of various parties that I’ve taken. I also bought a book about real estate investments in Canada, in hopes that I’ll soon be able to make my money work for me, instead of vice versa.

A Few Events

Aaron’s Canada Day barbecue is on Saturday. Darren’s coming the next weekend. I’m also supposed to see Shirley at some point, since I haven’t seen her in half a year. I gave her a call two weeks ago, in hopes that I could take her family out for some dim sum, but she hasn’t returned. I’m a little hurt. We barely get to see each other anyway, but it’s hard to blame a mother of three for being too busy.

Not that I have much time myself lately.

When I read the order of play to Norm, he laughed. The first grouping was against Hit-And-Miss, and being such an active member in the community, Norm knew them well. Against this team of three middle-aged, white metrosexuals and their buddy Chinese captain, we fared what can only be described as holocaustic. They wore tight-fitting shirts, stylish tearaway pants, and had the strength, and speed to match.

Except for the Chinese guy. He had a bit of a pot belly, a bit of a scruff, and a very feared, well-balanced, pen-holders grip. And he spoke great English.

It was a pleasure to lose to such nice guys.

I asked them about the next team we were up against, and they told us that they trashed the two little guys at the last league meet. Little guys? Kids. But I can already tell that both have improved since last month, the capain told me.

No challenge for four fit men in their thirties plus one Chinese guy (40 give or take 10 years). A little more difficult for me and my teammates, Norm, a calmly passionate Chinese guy in his 50’s, and Andrzej, a Polish man who picked up table tennis this year after a 40 year break, both of whom are better than I am.

I never would have believed that an 11-year-old and his seven-year-old brother could be so intimidating, a very FRENCH Olivier and Laurent. As captain, I had the decision to make as to who was playing first.

In table tennis, as with chess, the strongest player on the team is usually signed to the first match so that the matches may end before the weaker players have to play. Captain 1 signs the play sheet for the order of play for his team, and hands the sheet folded in half to Captain 2 so he can’t see, and use such information to his advantage by pairing up opponent styles against their weaknesses. Out of five matches, there are two singles at the start, a doubles in the middle, and two more singles at the end between the first singles opponents reversed, for best out of five matches.

Confused yet?

Before I signed the play sheet, Norm let me in on a little secret; when Olivier was 10 last year, Norm beat him in the league. Gambling that this would still hold true, and our opponents would follow form, I put Norm first, me second, and Andrew with Norm as doubles. That way Norm had the best chance at beating the older brother, I would have a chance at beating the younger brother, they would win doubles, and that would be it.

Unfortunately, they decided to play the younger brother, Laurent, first. He could only see about a foot over the table, and I could tell his movements were strained from the height disadvantage. He spoke no English, except for the phrase “Backhand?” during warm-ups, and “One mo!” when he was at 10 points. Sometimes he would mimic the table tennis pros with little grunts of satisfaction when he got a point. Eventually, he lost to Norm graciously (for a seven-year-old).

Then I was up against the Olivier, the older brother. Believing that a pair of descended testicles to be my only advantage, I played with a lump in my throat, and he returned like a machine, surprising me at every point. I could never keep him off balance, or run him around the table. He just kept landing the ball on my side.

I lost. Then we lost at doubles, a tremendous upset. My mind was out, and I was forced to play the younger brother next. I lost again, although I won one set after Norm told me to serve to the far side of his stance (they had a time-out and easily adjusted for the next set). By that time, we lost three out of five matches, and they were determined to be the winning team, but Olivier asked to play Norm for the final match anyway. When Oliver won, he walked over and shook Norm’s hand, a look of proud accomplishment on his face.

And this is what Norm loves the most. To see those younger players grow up and improve and become national team players.

• After his spring break trip to Mexico, John made a quick visit for the weekend, for a job interview downtown. If he finds an internship here for the summer, I will jump for joy.
• There’s a major deadline at work in two days. I’ve been working on this project for three months, and I think I’ll just make it (with some heavy overtime involved).
• Visits declined by 2/3 while I was on Hiatus.
• Due to time constraints, I’ve cut my table tennis practice attendance to once a week, and have been getting my ass appropriately handed to me in the league.
• Even though I’ve mostly been shooting with my thrifty fifty prime, my previous two dream lenses have been replaced by the recently announced 17–55mm f/2.8 IS coming out in May. Hopefully the reviews will be very good.
• Been listening to my playlists lately, instead of albums. Must be my emotions coming back to me.

After a ten month hiatus, I’m back into my regular table tennis routine again. I started out extremely rusty, feeling as if I was learning how to play again, but now I’m almost at the level that I ended with. It feels like it’s advantageous to take a step back from playing so that I can forget all my bad habits while remembering all the theory, because I can tell exactly what I need to change to improve now. I wish I could say the same for my golf game when I get out on the courses every spring.

My bout with gastroenteritis left me with a smaller appetite and emaciated frame. The sudden weight loss — bringing my weight precariously close to 100 lbs. — has been rather noticeable; my sweaters are baggy, my rings slip off my fingers, and I’ve lost two notches on my belt. Most people struggle to lose weight, I struggle to gain it and stay above 120. Table tennis is one of the best things I can do to fix this. After every session, I’m ravenously hungry, and this usually continues through to the day after.

Table tennis is also one of the only sports that I enjoy enough to not have to drag my ass out every time, which is definitely an advantage when the venue is an hour away. Unfortunately, my schedule on Tuesdays and Thursdays now consists of:

1. waking up at six thirty in the morning
2. going to work for eight and a half hours
3. coming home and sleeping for half an hour
4. eating a dinner which I’ve prepared earlier in the week (with no time to cook)
5. travelling to the gym
6. playing for two hours
7. travelling home
8. showering and falling asleep by midnight

There are no breaks in between, which means that I have to watch the clock during almost everything that I do. It’s a complete rush from start to finish. The upside is that when I’m at the gym, working on better short-ball control, or trying to achieve a backhand smash, I can forget everything else, which is something that doesn’t happen for me easily.

So apparently, I’m not the only table tennis dork. For September, about 250 of 483 total referring search strings were about Biba Golic in some form or another, such as “biba golic nude pics”, “biba table tennis pictures”, or “biba killerspin”. This means that more than half of the search strings, sprinkled liberally with other random strings like “gay windmill photo”, “mexicans are stupid”, and “i hate john walsh americas most wanted asshole” (I’m assuming a reference to my John Walsh show post), are Biba related.

I think I’m supposed to be comforted by the fact that I’m not the only one who’s aroused by ball-smashing woman, but for some reason, I’m not.

Thursday, I went over to Pat’s for a long-planned table tennis marathon. Before we started, he cooked us dinner; rib-eye steak grilled on the barbecue, a fresh vegetable stir-fry, and bruschetta as an appetizer. The steak was marinating all day in a garlic and oil sauce, and the bruschetta spread was made using extra virgin olive oil and basil that he grew himself. It’s great to have a friend whose passion is cooking and eating.

We ended up playing for about an hour and a half, because we ended up speaking for so long and I had to work the next day. Every game was close, and every best-out-of-five match went to the fifth game, with a deuce for match point during three of the five matches. He was leading by one the entire time, but I adjusted my timing and took less risks, and ended up winning the final match 12–10.

It was frustrating to be playing in his basement because I’m used to a much bigger area with much better lighting. The ball was hard to keep track of, and I didn’t have the same flooring to maneuver on, so it felt like my legs were glued to the ground. My toes started getting raw and painful about half way through, due to the fact that I usually play with my weight shifted off the heel, but I was able to ignore it, concentrate on playing, and follow through with a narrow win. I realized that the distance I stand away from the table is proportional to the distance of the table to the wall. Unfortunately, this means that my timing is all screwed up depending on the location that I play. I need to work on being consistent in all playing conditions.

I don’t enjoy watching the Olympics. The coverage we get (exclusively from the CBC), is shoddy. There’s no pre-planned time schedule for matches or events, so I never know what’s going to be on when I have time to watch. There was also absolutely no coverage of table tennis, which has already ended, most of the medals going to China. Why is this? I suspect because Canada basically had no chance of placing in the top three, so why would the CBC want to show them? Well, more likely not even in the top five. Even Google gave table tennis props with one of their daily banners, and with 28 Olympic sports but only 16 days, 12 of those sports aren’t going to have banners.

There are also so many politics involved, with disqualifications, doping, judging, etc., that everything just seems tainted. There’s also all the frustrating media coverage in the mix, such as Perdita Felicien’s hurdle dissapointment splattered on the front page of most papers while Ann Muenzer’s golden achievement gets a sports section blurb. And with sports that don’t need to be in the Olympics (why have synchronized diving AND diving AND synchronized swimming?), there’s not much to keep my interest.

I played three matches yesterday against three different people and won all three. It felt pretty good, especially since I had never played one of them before (he was a Canadian-born English teacher, working in China). He also started playing about a year before me, and was taught in what’s considered the table tennis country of the world. Knowing that he was using an anti-spin rubber gave me an advantage though; I didn’t have to worry about his spin, and since I focus on speed and placement, his rubber became pointless. I also have less respect for people who use the anti-spin rubbers, because they generally rely on the paddle to do the work for them, instead of properly learning how to counter spin. My habitual nervousness when facing a new opponent wasn’t there.

I also won against one of the people I use to have great difficulty beating. He had a new paddle, with small ball-bearings imbedded along the rim. When one shakes it, the paddle sounds like a baby rattle. Apparently, it’s supposed to prevent reverberation, but I don’t understand the point. I count on feeling reverberation through my handle to give me feedback on where I’m hitting.

I also beat one of my long time opponents, although it’s more of an empty victory because I’ve learned his tricks and styles, so I know how to counter them. I won based on vitallity overcoming his experience, not skill overcoming skill. It was interesting to find out that his paddle has a hollow handle with a weight attached to a screw assembly in it. The weight can be shifted up and down through the handle to change the centre of gravity of the blade.

Still, it’s good to know that I’m improving. I can learn at the table now, in the middle of a match instead of afterwards.

Aaron has his thing for the snowboarding girls, the ones with the pigtails on the mountain who support the Canadian gear companies like West 49, Nick has his for longboarding girls, Jeff for the hockey girls, and Trolley for the…girls. I think the whole idea is hilarious, and chuckle to myself when I read about people like Alexandra Kosteniuk, the attractive Russian girl who became Grandmaster at the age of 13, in the papers. I always imagine chess dorks swooning over some spectacular move she makes that’s beyond my comprehension.

Then I saw Biba Golic face someone in the 2003 Killerspin competition, and realized that I’m just a table tennis dork. It’s not so much the fact that she’s a professional table tennis player, but the fact that she plays aggressively, almost unconservatively. It’s like Jonathan and his thing for drummer girls who play with an aggro-ape stance, instead of the dainty, elbows-raised posture that so many female drummers seem to have. There’s something about a girl who plays like a guy, whether it’s table tennis, drums, or even games. This is going on the updated list soon.

Table tennis dorks. I wonder if I’m the first.

A weekend of relaxation and intoxication.

The first time that I’ve known Pat to be Jen-less, he calls me up, wants to hang out. Fucking cool. We go for the breakfast special at a Greek Souvlaki house, he takes the sausage, I take the bacon. After, we head to the table tennis club (something I hoped he’d do for a while now) for a few matches. He beats me 5–1, and I find out that he’s running on three hours of sleep. He goes home to run some errands, I go home to sleep. He comes back here to meet up with me and Trolley, after cooking some burgers on his grill and putting together fixings, corn-on-the-cob, and pasta salad. We eat, watch some Harvey Birdman, play games for eight hours. Part and crash.

Today, wake up with my cat stretched out on my pillow. Trolley and I head to the table tennis club, play for an hour, head downtown to buy a few albums. The weather being so nice, we go to the Highlander with their distracting uniforms, and sit down for a pint on the patio. Clink. Come back, and I get to organize while listening to my new Modest Mouse album.

Don’t want to lose this feeling.

I ended up losing all my matches yesterday. Out of 18 games, I won three. Two matches should have been easy wins, and one was tied at 2 games, 12 points. I get too nervous when I’m playing new people. I’m not quite used to the entire idea of competing, especially for rank, especially with other people depending on me. My teammates told me that it was noticeably affecting my performance because it seemed as if my shoulders were stiff and I was trying too hard. I’ll be accustomed to everything eventually.