Posts tagged with "table tennis"

Saturday Morning Ritual

I walked out this morn­ing in my linen pants and orange golf shirt in the 11°C weath­er. The sun was just over the hori­zon and a light fog was in the air, wash­ing every­thing in a thin orange haze. It was so refresh­ing to be cold again, to see my breath hang heavy in the air. Maybe I was just hyper from exhaus­tion, but it felt as if noth­ing could pos­si­bly be wrong on a day like this.

The sat­ur­day morn­ing rit­u­al is as fol­lows:

8:00 am — Wake up, get dressed, search change tin for $5.18 sand­wich mon­ey
8:15 am — Leave apart­ment for table ten­nis prac­tice, lis­ten to Billy Talent’s self titled debut album on the way there
9:00 am — Arrive at club, play for two hours, lose half of body weight in sweat
11:00 am — Curse how fast the time went by, leave club, lis­ten to Thrice’s Artist in the Ambulance album on the way back
11:30 am — Arrive at Centre, pur­chase roast beef sand­wich at Michelle’s Baguette. If answer­ing “please” to every top­ping sug­ges­tion, the per­son will go in the back and get the fresh­est let­tuce leaves
12:00 pm — Arrive home, put on bor­ing tele­vi­sion to fill silence but not dis­tract too much from the sand­wich, savour mul­ti-lay­ered taste of roast beef on fresh­ly baked pop­py seed bread with let­tuce, toma­toes, cucum­bers, and mayo, thank the gods of lemon iced tea
12:15 pm — Shower
12:25 pm — Go back to sleep

The Difference of 2mm

I tried play­ing Pat with a 38mm ball today, and had a hard time keep­ing it on the table. The ITTF only sup­ports the use of the 40mm now, which is the only size the club uses, so I was­n’t used to the light­ness of the 38. Basically I had to play con­ser­v­a­tive­ly the entire time, which is fair­ly frus­trat­ing when the best part of my game is smash­ing and counter-dri­ving. After an hour, sweat start­ed to sting my eyes, and I had a hard time keep­ing track of the ball. On a good note, my back­hand loop is get­ting much bet­ter, even though fatigue has a heavy affect on the con­sis­ten­cy.

Champlain

I’m now a mem­ber of the best table ten­nis club in Canada. The facil­i­ties are amaz­ing, with excel­lent light­ing, top notch tables, com­pe­ti­tion qual­i­ty balls, and tons of room. The U‑21 Canadian nation­al team trains there, and I’m cur­rent­ly in a group of recre­ation­al play­ers, such as the nation­al team coach­es, umpires, and past com­peti­tors. The light­ing is so good that I can play for three hours and not have tired eyes. I can actu­al­ly effec­tive­ly counter-dri­ve now with the amount of space avail­able for maneu­ver­abil­i­ty, which is gen­er­al­ly the best part of my game as long as I can move far away enough from the table. After prac­tices I’m left rav­en­ous­ly hun­gry, and gen­er­al­ly sore all over.

The New Stiga Prestige WRB

My Stiga Prestige WRB pad­dle arrived, and I had the first chance to use it today. The rub­bers are the 2.0mm Triumph series, and the grip is con­cave. The thing about the WRB sys­tem is that the han­dle is hol­lowed out so that the cen­tre of grav­i­ty of the pad­dle shifts clos­er to the top, giv­ing it more pow­er but less weight at the same time, which makes it a great offen­sive but adapt­able pad­dle.

Actually try­ing it out today was amaz­ing though. I had way bet­ter con­trol of the ball than before, and the light weight real­ly helped in speed ral­ly sit­u­a­tions. The han­dle gives great feel, since each hit strik­ing­ly rever­ber­ates through the entire hol­lowed part, and the rub­bers are fuck­ing great in speed. Oddly enough, spin is the weak­est part of my game, but the rub­bers have a good spin rat­ing too, so I’ve been work­ing on my under­spin for defense sit­u­a­tions.

Retail Therapy, Halloween Costumes, Etc.

Another exhaust­ing day. It feels good to be tired again, to feel like my eyes are made of lead when I lie down. Most of the sum­mer was stay­ing at home, bare­ly mov­ing, feel­ing rest­less.

Aaron and I went to the Unicentre to do some table ten­nis, and some cocky prick was mouthing off (rather loud­ly) to his friends about how he so eas­i­ly beat them all twice. When Aaron heard enough he sug­gest­ed a part­ner swap, just so I’d shut him up. I man­aged to beat the guy 21–3 (pre-2001 ITTF rules) and he prompt­ly had to go.

I cracked and bought F‑Zero GX and sea­sons one and two of Mr. Show on DVD. I must be crazy depressed.

A Halloween par­ty is loom­ing on the hori­zon, and Aaron and I are look­ing for cos­tume ideas. If we can find enough good uni­forms, we’ll be going as Super Troopers, hope­ful­ly with the both of us along with Trolley, Wheaties, and Nick. Other ideas were going as Bob and David, or as a white guy and a Chinese guy.

Speaking of Super Troopers, while Nick was swap­ping his burn­er at Future Shop with Stacey, Aaron and I went around the store pulling off the repeater, see­ing how long we could go before the sales­men fig­ured it out or got pissed off. We end­ed up being the ones pissed off though, astound­ed by how igno­rant the sales­men were and even­tu­al­ly we’d both ditch the same sales­man with looks of dis­be­lief on our faces, one after the oth­er.