shuttlecock

one of my favorite things to do on the badminton court, second only to playing badminton, is straightening the feathers on used birdies. i have this tendency to like to polish up worn and scuffed things, and these shuttles perfectly feed this pleasure of mine.

and i was thinking today.. what kind of person came up with the design of the shuttlecock? i wonder who thought, "hey, let's take a cork and attach some feathers to it and whack it around!"

AWESOME.

i think the shuttlecock in badminton is one of the most unique ball/projectile objects in all of sports. wouldn't you agree?

<3 badminton

sore, but all right

it's an interesting feeling after a day of badminton, when only the right side of my body is sore, from my foot to my thigh to my side to my shoulder to my arm.

:]

stuff i like, part 3

[songs for christmas! 2 of 4]
so here's the deal, i've picked four songs in anticipation of christmas, and i'm going to have a new one up in each blog entry that i post, the four weeks before christmas. ideally one post a weekend. 3 of the 4 songs are by artists that you know or have at least heard of, but i'm almost certain that you won't have heard any of the songs before. so they'll be foreign but in a familiar kind of way.
this week's song is: santa baby, by mase, snoop dogg, puff daddy, and various artists. push play!


heehee, this song made me lol when i first heard it.



i like physics.

our high school curriculum has freshman year as biology, sophomore year as chemistry, and junior year as physics. (senior year is whatevs you wanna do.)

i didn't like bio. too much memorization. i didn't find mitosis to be that interesting, and by that interesting, i mean, at all.

i didn't like chemistry. AND I STILL DON'T. BUT I HAD TO TAKE IT AND IT WAS HORRIBLE. the problems aren't too bad, but the EXCEPTIONS are what i hate. there are still a good number of things to memorize and those are just annoying.

when i took physics, it just MADE SENSE. i think, since growing up, i've always had this interest in how the world and nature works, and a lot of it clicked conceptually right away in the classroom. chickens dropping off of cliffs, bullets embedding in blocks of wood going around loop-de-loops, all that MECHANICS stuff.

don't get it mixed up, though, i only like physics mechanics. electricity & magnetism, nuh-uh! even sound and light and thermodynamics and stuff like that is bordering on annoying because i can't really SEE the concepts of what's going on.

why do i like physics? because it gives you a set of formulas that govern how things work, and you use those formulas in creative and mind-stretching ways to figure out the solutions to problems. there's no needing to remember that cadmium randomly has a +2 charge that doesn't fit in with the rest of its group of elements or any nonsense like that.

although, i do admit, chemistry has the coolest equipment. beakers, flasks, thermometers, wooden molecular sets, and the such.



i like badminton.

discounting times i played badminton in the backyard during my younger childhood, my first experience with badminton was the end of high school, senior year. we played in gym, and holy crap, from the instant i picked up the racquet and started whacking around birdies with johnny, it felt like me and badminton were meant to be.

even though i still liked tennis very much, i started liking badminton more and more as i kept playing, either in gym, or in my backyard with james' ghetto net. you should see the two dirt patches worn into my backyard because of our badminton "court".

the main problem with my tennis game was inconsistency. i just was not able to develop groundstrokes that were consistent and good, and it was pretty discouraging, though i still really enjoyed playing tennis for fun. however, with badminton, consistency was never a big problem, which was a huge relief for me, transitioning from my days of tennis.

one big thing i like about badminton is the SPEED.

i don't like running far distances, but on the flip side, i REALLY enjoy sprinting short distances. there was some of that in tennis, but in badminton, it's all about quick starting and stopping to get to and from every spot on the court. there's also the speed required mentally, to quickly analyze all the factors of the situation and know (some would say "feel") the right shot to hit. to adapt to your opponent and change strategies on the fly. speed.

another big thing about badminton is the DEPTH (of the game).

there are so many different shots to hit, each with their own different opportunity, timing, and pace. one second it's a smash, then it's followed by a cross-court dropshot, and then a counter dropshot, and at the same time, having to incorporate all that with shot disguise, good technique, swift footwork, and mental awareness of the opponent's position, your position, and where the birdie is. AWESOME. depth.

another big thing about badminton is WHACKING-STUFF-WITH-A-RACQUET.

i like it.

haha, no, but really, whacking stuff with a racquet just feels so natural to me, and it's also cool having your "personalized" racquet that you can call your own and put whacky colors of grip tape on, etc.

but maybe.. i like badminton so much because of the great people that have always surrounded me when i've played the sport. :]

['tis time, the three things that thou .. thast thanticipated]
-i can crack my right pinkie whenever i want.
-when i write on a computer, i always, always, put two spaces after a period. it just makes sense to me.
-i like my boba tea to have a boba:tea ratio of 1:1, as viewed from the side of the cup. that means a lot more than is regularly given in a commercial cup of boba tea from i's or noodle gourmet or anywhere, really. i'm used to it because my mom would often make boba tea at home and we would have an insane amount of bobas so i would get to set the proportions myself. goood stuff.