Table Tennis
September 26th 2002 -
Table tennis
Today, my first ever recorded table-tennis win at work. Oh sure, I’ve won a couple of games here and there, but only against unrated players (you get a “rating” when you record your score. It uses a similar system to chess). I’ve managed to pull a couple of losses out of the jaws of victory before – from winning 19-16 in one match and 20-18 in another – and I almost managed the same in today’s win, but fortunately my opponent was able to make a mistake and save me another humiliation.
I also had a hit-around with the #1 and #9 players. They were both on one side, I was on the other, and it was all excellent fun. Lots of smashing, trash-talking, and unlikely saves. Not proper games, but real fun. There are a lot of players who treat smashing the ball as something to do only when given a real sitter. These two, however, have the proper spirit of trying to cream the ball no matter what the situation, and are good enough to get it in almost all the time. Wonderful to watch.
Bundaki
There are some links that I need to point you at to give you the proper context for this, but anyway, today I finally felt that I was part of an extremely cool company. It was the day of the Bundaki challenge. And I’ll tell you more about it when they get the photos up.
I mean, Baltimore was a pretty hard act to follow. Until all the layoffs and the pain and the suffering, it was an extremely good place to work. The social club was lively, the working atmosphere unbeatable, the friendships strong (for that matter, my previous work five years ago at the D.S.T.O. had an equally excellent group of people to work with, but the work itself wasn’t as good). So pretty much any subsequent workplace was going to suffer by comparison.
I’m coming around to favour my current work more though, recently. The bundaki challenge has sealed that: I’m happy working here.