Posts in category "Daily Life"

A Few Movies...

School of Rock was very well done and very enjoy­able.

Lost in Translation was great. Everything about the film was suc­cess­ful, but I espe­cial­ly enjoyed the sub­tle­ness. The direc­tion was per­fect, in how under­played and min­i­mal­is­tic it made every­thing seem. I was­n’t tru­ly impressed though until I found out that Sophia Coppola wrote the script as well. Bill Murray was made for the part, but every­one else was sat­is­fac­to­ry. The entire movie felt to me like a sim­ple glimpse into the chance inter­ac­tion of two peo­ple, and it began as gen­tly as it end­ed. The audi­ence is left as an observ­er, which made every­thing all the more believ­able to me. I inter­pret­ed the sto­ry as the inter­ac­tion of two peo­ple, who are at two com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent points in their lives. As a result, their com­mu­ni­ca­tion becomes jum­bled. Lost in trans­la­tion. They dis­cuss the same things, but they’re not quite say­ing the same things. The res­o­lu­tion came from the end, when both peo­ple rec­og­nized the rela­tion­ship they had, and it was as far as it should have gone. Anything else would have seemed ridicu­lous. I think it was an over­rat­ed movie, but def­i­nite­ly one that deserves a healthy, gen­er­ous amount of praise.

As for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind…

I’m at a loss for words. The entire expe­ri­ence was almost com­plete­ly inef­fa­ble. I laughed. I cried. I got goose­bumps. I melt­ed. A com­plete mas­ter­piece, and the one of the most poignant films I’ve ever seen, although I’m par­tial­ly biased due to my cur­rent cir­cum­stances. Where the Gondry/Kaufman duo failed in Human Nature due to an unsup­port­ive script and result­ing super­flu­ous direct­ing, this film has com­plete­ly suc­ceed­ed. A movie I will be buy­ing. A movie I will be watch­ing over and over again. A movie that would have changed my life had I not already come to the same con­clu­sion a few months ear­li­er.

Bus Buddy

Met some­one on the bus back who has some odd coin­ci­dences with me. Both of us are Scorpios, and read­ing books writ­ten by authors who won Nobel Prizes in Literature with­in two years of each oth­er. The per­son who start­ed at her work around the same time I start­ed at my work end­ed up being the per­son I replaced at my cur­rent job. Our fathers also both went through their midlife crises in the last two years. Both bought Japanese motor­cy­cles, then bought Porches. Both were Boxters and sil­ver.

The Pat Benchmark

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.

A Balanced Game

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.