Restrictions

The Beijing Olympic 2008 has ended 4 days. I am feeling very grateful as there is still no news about China playing sabotage in all the Olympic games, and I even read a news about changing results of a China female taekwondo athlete due to false mark given. I am very proud of China where it suppose to be my origin as they are highly ethical and do not play sabotage in sports, that means all of their 51 Olympic gold are gain from pure hard work, an extra honour for their athletes. Cheer for them! Speaking of sports ethic, the Korea nation seems to be have no sports ethic at all. My dad always said when Korea host some major international sports event, they can just do anything to gain higher status, this is very clear during the Seoul Olympics and Korea World Cup years ago.

Rules, are none other than part of restriction in our life. Most of us thinks it is something negative, as most of us swear to be a rule breaker, but actually it does make the world a better one. As a matter of fact, the basis of games comes from restriction through the form of rules, and without rules, games are not fun. Imagining yourself to play a game that you can do anything, after a while you sure will feel boring, because it is not challenging at all. Rules make people have hopes in playing a game, games that make people overconfident or no hope at all are just boring, as when there is hope, there is chance to win. This is what keeps people playing game.

As for me, when I came back from holiday, I was actually happy, because at school, there is no action restriction although there is time restriction. Whereas at home, there is constantly action restriction from parents that forbid me to go online. But thinking in other way, if there is no time restriction at all, I might don't feel like coming back to school again, because no restriction make me lazy. Restriction is very important to me indeed, because I like to compromise with it. Do you have restriction and do you like it?

Reverse Backhand

After playing ping pong aka table tennis for a few months, I realize that with my penhold style, my traditional backhand is hard to control and slow compared to my forehand, and I can't even smash with my traditional backhand (Jacson can do it though, sometimes). So, I try to use reverse backhand to replace my traditional backhand, but most of my friends advise me not to do it, one says he never heard of anyone doing that before. But, I wonder why, how come he can miss Ma Lin and Wang Hao, the table tennis men single gold medalist and silver medalist for Beijing Olympic 2008.













They are both penhold grip players. Ma Lin and Wang Hao are able to use reverse backhand very long time ago as shown in the picture. The picture was taken 5 years ago. Surprisingly, for unknown reasons, all the 3 China female Olympic athletes for ping pong are shakehand grip players, I thought there should be a mix between shakehand and penhold grip.

Well, my reverse backhand still sucks with the 0.01 probability of success, I guess I have to try to improve it.

New Things

Something interesting happened today, I just bought a new ping pong bat today. I have spent RM 245 for the whole set including the bat, the bat case and the cleaning set. I asked my friends who is very good in ping pong and know very well about bats to accompany to give me advise. In the end, he did a great job as well and the price is lower than what I expected. (Because he made a rough guess price for a far more advance bat for me before we go)

This is not very interesting at all. The really interesting thing come in now, when we heading back to the place we usually play ping pong, there are another two friends there. They are curious about my new ping pong bat, and keep asking the price etc. There is one thing in common, most of the people keep saying that this bat is very good, this bat is so spinny blar blar blar, and my bat becomes a new celebrity, everyone wants to try it.

I wonder, is it everyone keep praising my bat because it's new or they just don't want to upset me, or they just go for public views. Sometimes people is like that, when something new comes in an area, first thing they think is it's good, it's totally good and it's positive. Well, I think I have to accept it and try to train to be a better ping pong player, but I still hope I can know whether my bat is really good or not.

P.S.: Yes, Jie Han, I'm not sure whether you are still reading my blog or not, but I agree that this post is just like a diary. Sorry, but I want to put up an example before I try to express my main idea.

Time

Recently, the MRR2 bridge is having a crack again, which everyone have been anticipating as it is a Sami Vellu's production, with the motto of "Nothing happens is a miracle". This reminds me of the last time it cracked, I just couldn't remember when is it, my mum told me it is about 2 years ago, but I just can't remember the time gap. Well, the time pass by us all the time, most the time unnoticed by us when it pass, or maybe we just forgot it after it passed, this is true for all those events that are not very important to us.

I can remember most of my very close friends and I plan for a gathering for everyone of them during their birthday since our secondary school graduation. This reminds me of Pei Shian, Chee Meng and my birthday is coming in a month and we are having a grand celebration by then. However, I just can't remember when was the Hong Kong trip my parents brought me few years back; when is the exact date my parents brought me to Melbourne; how old is my youngest sister now, well, maybe not entirely forgot, but always very blur, because she is just like grow up at an instant.

I think that I am a person that have a very good sense of direction, but not in a good sense of time. I am very poor in notice the time gap for certain events, I don't know this is a good thing or not, but I am sure I am very lazy to memorize every single event just to improve my sense of time. Speaking of time, Malaysian's clock is go slower than others, and after 17 years living here, I still find myself couldn't adapt to it, most of the time I have to endure with it and wait there patiently, and in the end such person like me are known as "nerd", this is totally unfair. In a society, you either join the group or out of the group, even if you know that what the group did is wrong. If you don't follow them, you will be end up being cornered out, so I rather do everything my own, do everything by myself and wrong by myself, unless there are other peoples have the same aim as me, I will either join them or ask them to join me.

知足常乐

在这个世界上，只要是有哲学思想的道理，无论是宗教，成语，格言，名句， 都不难找到与知足常乐相关的思想。 我们知道只要活在这个世界上只要无欲无求， 就能非常快乐，因为你不再需要为任何事情打拼，不再操心与及担心，那该是多么美好，多么理想的生活啊！

只可惜，谁能大声出来说一声自己是无欲无求的？每个人都为物质，金钱而操劳一生，沉沦在欲望的陷阱中。Karl Marx的共产主义就是想打造这么一个世界，可是我们看今天的共产国家，比如说中国，已经渐渐趋向资本主义； 缅甸呢，就成了独裁主义。

能说什么呢？只能说知足常乐太理想，太遥远了。我呢，只想在外面买东西时吃得饱，荷包又不会缩水得太厉害就很好了，因为我的食量很大，又时常在外面走动，时常吃不饱。真的很羡慕那些食量小的人，很容易就满足他们的肚子了，不像我，时常委屈我的肚子。