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Bad Badminton Practice

September 11th, 2004. Published under Daily Journal, Sports. No Comments.

Yosep sent me an sms this morning. He told me if I was going to the badminton practice. I replied him and told him that I’d be there. Then I continued sleeping. Some times later, my housemaid told me that somebody was on the phone looking for me. Who the heck was that disturbing my sleep? Ah, Sigit. He told me that his friends couldn’t join today’s badminton practice. He asked me if I wanna go to another place then. He said he would join his ex-teacher at the Petra highschool at Jemur Handayani. He also informed me that Yosep had agreed. I thought it didn’t matter so I agreed too. He told me to come to his house so we could leave together. It was a good idea since I didn’t know where the place was. He explained his house location. Surprisingly, it was very close to mine. Only several blocks away.

I went to Sigit’s house at about 1.30 PM. It was a building material shop called “UD Lancar”. An old man, maybe his father, asked me if I needed anything. He thought I was a customer te he. I told him that I wanted to see Sigit. He then called Sigit and permitted me to go inside. I decided to leave my motorcycle at Sigit’s house so we could go together by his car. We wait for Yosep near the security post. Yosep didn’t know the place either so he needed Sigit to show the way. About 5 minutes later, Yosep arrived and we rushed into the gym.

It was a three-floors building. The badminton gym was located at the top floor. Wow, it was a multi-function building. The top floor was being used for badminton practice by some adults. But I could see a couple of basket ball rings and indoor soccer goals there. The lines on the floor also showed me that the room was convertible for playing at least four games: badminton, indoor soccer, basket ball, and “sepak takraw”. It didn’t matter anyway. The room was big enough for three badminton fields.

Hey, where did the wind come from. Oh gosh, the ventilation holes near the roof were giving too much space for the wind to come through. Damn it, I knew it wasn’t good. The heck, we had arrived there so we’d better play some games. The first game, Yosep, Sigit, me, and an ex-teacher of Sigit play a tight game. Yosep and I was not used to the windy environment when playing badminton. So we didn’t play well. It ain’t an excuse you know. But how do you hit the cock if it changes each direction often because of the wind. You know that badminton shuttlecocks are very light. I really couldn’t enjoy today’s game.

The Badminton Practice Review

August 28th, 2004. Published under Daily Journal, Sports. No Comments.

Yosep was on the phone this morning asking me if I was gonna to have a badminton practice. Definitely I would go. He called around 10.30 PM and told me he was just going to pick up Sudarwan and would be at the gym at around 11.30 PM. I was still on the bed so I got up quickly, bathed, and ate my breakfast. I arrived there at 11.30 PM more or less. Yosep had not arrived yet. It ain’t a surprise however, since Yosep is always late. The traffic he used to say. Fortunately Eddy, Sigit and his friend (I can’t remember the name, let’s just call him Al) was there already so we could start a double game. Al and I versus Edy and Sigit.

We beat Eddy and Sigit in a 30-points game easily. Eddy complained that his hand was injured so he couldn’t play well. Not more than an excuse to me since Eddy ain’t really good at double games. He is good in single games though as he has the speed and stamina. But power, self-positioning, teamwork, and ball placement talks much more in double games. In my opinion, Eddy considerably lacked those points. Sigit is powerful and a good finisher but he could hardly do anything in the game because he didn’t have enough assists from Eddy. Al is good at ball placement but he often overuses his abilities that leads to blunders. Yosep is pacey and he has almost unlimited stamina that he won most single games. In double games, he can use her pace very well to cover his partner’s holes. In this case he was almost always the MVP of double games. Sudarwan has a big fat body, much bigger than me so he doesn’t have Yosep’s or Eddy’s pace. But he has a considerable power and he is good at ball placement. This makes him a good double games player. The bad news is he is such an egoist that he always blames his partner when things get bad. He always makes an excuse if something is clearly his fault. Since Yosep is the most patient person among us, he partners with Sudarwan almost everytime.

What about me? In my humble opinion, I have the power, a pretty good ball placement, and self-positioning. I lack the aspect of speed and stamina. Therefore I like to finish every game as quickly as possible. I also lack the determination. Sometimes I played so damn well that I could devastate my opponents with a very big points difference. But some other times I played a very bad game that my opponents could see me as a joke.

Teamwork? I can do well with the pacey type such as Yosep. In such composition, Yosep do much as the defender and I act as the attacker. But we rotated the partners often, with the exception of Sudarwan and Yosep since Sudarwan can’t go along so well with the others. With Eddy, I can’t do much because I can’t expect a good assist from him. He always gives the perfect ball for the enemies to smash it at us. Usually, I gave everything I got like there’s no tomorrow. That way we could lead the points from the very first time. Then, if our opponents were nervous enough to catch up we could win the game. But if they could catch up, I usually ran out of stamina and they would easily beat us.

I can’t play well with Sigit since we are pretty much the same type. Two attackers without defenders means that we usually scored as much points as the opponents. The games usually tied but since there should always be a side that win a game, our probability of winning is about 50-50. I should be able to do well with Al as we play differently. I play explosively while he plays softly. But since both of us tend to make a lot of blunders, the result is very unpredictable.

Everytime I played with Sudarwan is a nightmare. We share the same type so it should be like me and Sigit. The bad news is that Sudarwan is so bossy. But I can’t just let him put all the blames on me. Never. So we can’t help each other in a game. We play as we like egoistically. In a game, both of Sudarwan and me fight against three enemies. In my case, I fight my two opponents plus Sudarwan. I think you can pretty well predict the result. We lost almost all the time. I can continue this review, but I think it will be very boring. By the way, put Yosep and Al together to create the most boring team since both of them tend to play defensively.

Friend or Foe

After the badminton practice, Eddy told me about his recent project. He was working on a Karaoke computer program. He needed to create a software equalizer and found a great difficulty programming the sound card. I then suggested him to use DirectSound. He didn’t really understand it so I explained a bit to him. He also didn’t have the DirectX SDK to create a DirectSound application so he followed me home to get a copy.

After his leaving, my grandma asked me about him and my other friends. She asked why my friends seem to come often only when they needed something from me. I didn’t say a word to her although I knew the answers. A friend in need is a friend indeed, isn’t it? Most of my friends are from the same kind of people. People who need my knowledge, my stuffs, or my money. People who are close to me when they need something from me and just disappear when they have got what they need. Of course, some are sincere but they ain’t that close to me :(.

Does Sharing Hurt?

August 6th, 2004. Published under Daily Journal, Games, Sports. No Comments.

So dizzy so sleepy. I didn’t sleep enough last night. The Ninja game kept me awake all night. Worse, I was scheduled for the first shift on Friday. I got to get up early to get to the office on time. Well I made it. Luckily, Vebby offered me a breakfast, Nasi Kuning. It really helped.

After another lunch at Jula-Juli, there was a knowledge sharing about colors and their psychologies. Yenny, who happened to study visual communication design at UK Petra, shared her knowledge nicely. Unfortunately she couldn’t answer a question from Jonathan. He asked why did we use the CMYK coloring technique when printing instead of the RGB one. Well, as usual, when posed to this very kind of situation, I spontaneously joinned and tell them my opinion. As I predicted, I saw some people looked sarcastically at me. Maybe they thought that I was showing off but I did know the answer and I just wanted to make everything clear. It supposed to be a knowledge sharing anyway, right? This happened almost every time but I couldn’t help it. If something went wrong, I automatically tried to correct it. It’s natural.

Because of this, when I was in the high school, my friends called me Mr. Know-it-all, Walking-dictionary, Computer-brain, what-so-ever. Honestly, I don’t know things better or more than anybody else. Maybe the only difference is that I shared my knowledge more than them. I always enjoy sharing my knowledge because I also learned something when sharing mine. The more I share the more I get. Well, in Yenny’s case, fortunately she has a humble heart. I my self could never imagine if I was at her place. Having someone taken over my place like that is like he’s throwing the mud on my very face. That’s why I tried not to ask any question to her during her session. I didn’t want to humiliate someone with that humble heart.

Friend of the day: Vebby

Today my work was appraised by my boss. Productivity, quality, discipline, initiative, and teamwork got the very usual values. When it came to teaching and learning, I didn’t get that high value because I gave no tutorial or training last month. To boost the value, I mentioned that a few days ago I did share my knowledge about the Microsoft .NET with the division heads. My boss then told me I should share the knowledge with everyone, not just them, to get a point. Wow, I didn’t know there was such a rule. Well, because I had not read the rules thoroughly anyway, I didn’t argue. It wouldn’t go to the teamwork either because it had nothing to do with my job.

My boss then advised me to write and post articles to get more points for teaching and learning. Honestly, I didn’t really know what to write. The things I learned were mostly so technical that I didn’t see the chance anybody would understand. I believed that noone would be interested either. I didn’t mean that everyone in the office is idiot. But my job was so different with theirs. They had nothing to do with my job as well as any knowledge about it. Actually, there was only one person sharing the same job with me. But I believed it wasn’t efficient to post something in a public forum that would be read only by one person. Anyway, I’ll give it a try one day. Maybe they will need the knowledge later. You’ll never know.

After the appraisal, Vebby, who sat next to me, asked whether I had mentioned the .NET thing. When I explained the situation she looked a bit upset. She even inquired Jonathan, one of the heads, whether he had written my name on his teamwork list. He said yes but he didn’t know about the other heads. She didn’t feel quite satisfied with the answer and continued discussing this problem. I knew she’s such a caring person but I was affraid she would go too far so I stopped her and told her that I didn’t mind. Anyway, my average appraisal values was quite pleasing. Well, thank you Pei, what you did really meant a lot to me.

From badminton to Ragnarok Online

Today I should have a badminton practice with my friends. I was just arrived at the gym in Barata Jaya when I got an sms from Yosep telling that there’s no practice today because somebody just passed away and the gym was used to place the body. Okay, no badminton game, but I could just play another game, Ragnarok Online :D. My swordsman character finally reached the 30th level. Still much more to go. The maximum level is 99. Can’t wait until it reached the 50th level when I can change the job to “knight”. It really needs a lot of time. Surprisingly many people have reached the higher levels. Yeah they used bots to play the game for them automatically. Cheating, huh. When you’re cheating on a game, it ain’t fun anymore. You better not play it at the first place.