EPTApparently there's a lot of you guys out there. I should have expected that since this community is like 99% Asian.
To be honest, I have no idea why badminton is such an Asian sport. Not only do Asian countries dominate, but it seems like every person that plays is somewhat "Asian." Freaky.
If you play badminton, are you Asian?
Every week on Saturday, I signed up for some badminton club training course at a not-so-local badminton club here in Toronto.
And every week so far, I've been beaten to death. It'd be fine, yes, were it not that these are kids I'm playing with. I am in Grade 12, graduating this year. The second oldest kid is in Grade 10. Everyone else is younger than Grade 9. It's humiliating. And each one of them can thrash me multiple times.
But that's not my goal. In the words of Day9, I'm playing to be a better gamer. And it's true. I have improved.
My one goal was accomplished this week: make it through warm ups. I don't know how that's even a goal, but last week, I collapsed halfway through. Warmups. WARMUPS. But this week, I just barely made it through.
Warms up consist of the standard things, arms down to legs. I was surprised more time wasn't spent on the calves and ankles, because I nearly sprained it a bit afterwards.
After high knees, kicking my ass (again) and some hopping diamond cross legged exercise, we did 6 laps. I am glad to say I did all 6, cough cough, some lazy peoples, even though I came in 2nd last. But I made it through without stopping, that's all that matters.
We're still doing high clears, which is nice. I still can't hit it, but it's easy enough for me. Coach keeps saying I slice too much. I know I do, but it's very difficult for me not to.
The coaches also said to keep the elbow bent at 90 degrees on the horizontal. I'm going to say, that is very very painful. I lost feeling in my arm that day.
We moved on to cross court high clears (yay), which strangely enough, I could do better than regular clears.
Then it was on to smashes. Nope, not the fun half court smashes, but net smashes. Where your partner throws a birdie at you and you're supposed to smash it. That didn't work out well at all. My partner couldn't throw for his life. But then again, neither could I.
After 20 or so minutes of failing, we ended off with suicides. Thank God it wasn't crazy hard suicides. I was on a similar swimming course one time, and they decided to do suicides. Swim the length, 10 push ups, swim back, 9 push ups, and so forth. Now THAT was painful.
All we did were lines. Sprint to first line, touch, sprint back, touch, sprint to second line, you get the idea. After I wasted all my energy getting first after 3 runs, they decide to say the top 3 get to leave early. I wasn't even close. Then they said the top 5 get to leave next. I was prepared to run, but nearly collapsed, and had to walk the rest. A disappointing day.
But I've learned so much, and it's so much more helpful to have real coaches that know what they're doing, it's not even funny. I hope some of these skills translate into the real badminton games I play in the future.
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After practice, I went to look for the darned Razer BlackWidow, since I can't get mechanical keyboards anywhere else, and I hate SteelSeries with a passion. Couldn't find one. In the middle of the store, my gut cramped or something and all I could feel was this enormous pain in my left side.
For the next 5 hours, I couldn't even stand up. The pain was unbearable. I couldn't even eat. And it got worse when I tried to rest.
And then poof, it was gone as suddenly as it came. Kind of annoys me, but also kind of scares me. That is pain I never want to experience again.
5 hours of being completely helpless, completely useless, all because of some pain in my side that I had no control over.
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This also in, CAKE, the band, released their first new album since 2004(?). Cake has a really unique sound. I have not heard anything like them. But the best part is they haven't been sucked into the group of bands that sound awesome in the beginning, but 5 years down the road, turn towards pop music.
And the weird thing is, I never really even liked Cake. I heard it a few times in one of the streams I frequented. Never liked it at first, but then it started sounding alright, and then it started sounding awesome. So I kept track for a while (6 months lol), and it turns out they have a new album.
So without any further ado, I present
CAKE's SHOWROOM of COMPASSION
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/CG0Bz.jpg)
+ Show Spoiler +
Sick of You
Long Time
I recommend Mustache Man, Bound Away and The Winter, but I can't find good Youtube videos of them. That isn't live I mean.
Not from this album, but look for Take It All Away, It's Coming Down, or many many more.
Cake is awesome!
Enjoy.
Or don't enjoy. Just spreading the message.
