pining for the ballgame

it's always my fervent wish to have more time to watch major league baseball. with a super loaded schedule and a background sound of the premiership on the telly, few glimpses of greg maddux would loosen some tight nerve endings from the rigors of an over-hyped profession. here's the maddux exegesis. it's for the baseball fan in all of us. he might be up for transfer anew, either with the dodgers or the phillies. it's doesn't really matter which team he's playing or he's retired and a revered pitching coach somewhere, as he's a constant subject in my google box.

high school in my slow lane

if there's one thing that fast times at ridgemont high has taught me, is that i didn't mind being mousy in high school or the last twenty years in that respect. i may be too prudish for my own good but taking caution is always the way to go. the fast-paced western world adolescence of linda barrett and stacy hamilton would be out of place in my uptight world. the few crushes were passing fancies. the rapport partner was merely a mirage or preferred the quiet ingenue from the next town. the flirtations were one-sided or mere products of a deluded imagination. most dudes go for the kelly taylors -- the pretty vacuous ones, or someone with certain magic i try in vain to pinpoint. a bookish brain is not necessarily more substantial. i'm not saying that just because i'm still lousy in algebra.

one's high school experience could make or break a fragile spirit. in the years before cable, digital dishes, worldwide web and even a tiny little thing such as a landline in our house -- i sought refuge in my crappy paperbacks and the newspapers, where i first grappled the appeal of sports, editorials, politics and history. it was bad enough you were trying to form lifelong friendships and deal with ghastly angsts, add to that the impact of an acute rejection from the teenage dude who in the decades to come would lead one to conclude, thank goodness he let me slip by.

i would have loved to sport a shorter hair. my big 80's 'do was so aagh. i had articulated a few highly-humiliating speeches during elections and elocutions. the leaky quadrangle was witness to all my vocal impediments and i wasn't even singing. but at least my potentials weren't exactly loser material. high school coquetries despite the promise and allure on the CW channel are simply too fluffy to guarantee forever. i think the same way with college, with the subdued one's corrections of my article in mind. i've learned from that, you creep.

but with all due respect to the flimsiness of young love, fairy tales always make me smile.

writing on the hoof

the week has been kind of blurry. i'm still wishing for more summer moments and spectacles as the days are getting shorter. while others linger in a bevy of chats, gossips and innuendos, i relish the web readings and catching up with the inside mutterings of tito alfie. i enjoy the endeavors that is bringing forth the smiles and laughter. but i'm terribly exhausted from all the brisk walking around the workplace stuff. the sufferings are not yet over. there would be more inflictions that would irrevocably grate my insides. i just hope for less laments and incantations that befell the likes of us who have to wade through the rough in order to make a living.

with the less free time, my domestic dwellings are literally cluttered and i broke another piece of plate with the constant clumsiness. the apparent topsy-turviness are virtually everywhere. i'm not usually the messy type but there is such thing called marriage and i try my best fawning stepford wife impression to no avail as i can't roast pork nor chicken. to be a debra barone of the household is not that pathetic. though i covet the adorable tykes.

i'm heaving a sigh. the trip to the british museum was a great highlight of my two weeks. no philippine corner in that archaic structural building, we are not the buddhist grandeur that is thailand or burma and clicking flashes were allowed, unlike the stint at the ashmolean in oxford from way back.

tidings

there are a lot of hidden gems in a sardonic wit. normally i don't like sarcasms but when it's uttered by gregory house, it suddenly becomes acceptable and delivered in blackadder ways, it becomes downright funny. i've just been playing a lot of house episodes the past weeks then back again. i have items to be dispatched and phone calls to make with e-mails to write but here i am hibernating, lying around with the clicker in my grasp. there goes the secret of the bingo wings and the increasing amount of body fats. i cannot even read the books from the bedside table or update this blog to soften the blows of emotional turmoils.

life is surely not fair.

tennis names

i got paid to indulge so many times. i wrote about pete sampras twice and it touched on some exhaustive research and irrational zeal. a year later, deeply ignited by the false hope of the henman magic, i posted negative though objective views in a tiny portion of the worldwide web and in the hard copy published within one evolved sphere of asia.

the 2002 us open was sampras' last professional match. henman retired last year, leaving memories of henmania and henman hill behind. i may not see andy murray play that often but the Scot got better chances than the bloke from oxfordshire in winning a slam.

i'm weird when it comes to tennis serves and groundstrokes, i know my way around the big serves and  big forehands, backhand slices and forehand volleys just by staring. those who can't do, can talk. to be honest, an ace is a free point. a wonderful accouterment to possess in one's tennis game. couple that with stylish serve and volley and fabulous groundstrokes, underrated one-handed backhand and the best second serve in history, enviable running forehand, slam-dunking overhead smashes, you get a sampras. his kind of game was not enough to win the french as clay favors counter-punchers.

stefan edberg had the serve and volley but not the serve but he was able to procure six slams. boris becker -- big serve and giant strides to the net to serve and volley, six slams. andre agassi -- average serve, punishing return of serve, two-handed backhand, groundstrokes to match the best in history plus a rockstar image that is the delight of advertisers --- eight slams. federer has no weaknesses, the serve, though difficult to read, may not be as huge as the williams sisters, but the Swiss all-court presence is overpowering and his great liquid whip of a forehand is a surefire winner. rafael nadal is the master of clay specifically the french open, the biggest clay court event there is. the spanish mastery of the topspin and the ambidextrous quality of his game surely made my day by beating federer at wimbledon. the best wimbledon final ever, their supporters can claim whatever they want. there's still the us open to look forward to and that event in melbourne in january until it comes full circle yet again.

a summer to catch

tuesday was the hottest day of the year. it was too hot that it was almost too scary. but i do the cursing when the autumn air starts to make its presence known. i'm not one for the falling leaves of fall nor the icy atmosphere of winter. even spring brings the chill.

i know it's too boring to talk about the weather. but you don't get that feeling in europe. the sunset in my semi-rural nook in the far east is constantly at five pm, not past seven. with the 21st of june, the longest day of any year, long gone, the countdown to longer nights begin and the smile on my face and all the cheers thereof would slowly fade.

there's no football during the summer. the premiership players might already be back in training but the wimbledon mania permeates the air. i have colleagues talk of tennis and wimbledon with such amazing fervor and then shower the other tournaments of the calendar year with nary a thought, in all likelihood mixing up their ancics and blakes and stay relatively quiet when the names from recent past crop into the picture. as i searched in vain for my friend joy's snail mail from years ago where she scribbled that tennis and golf being for toffs, i now have to plod under the drizzle and be utimately grateful that there's still light outside.