Champion Ping-Pong Club's two greatest members

Since Ian is leaving on Saturday and my lessons are done, we wanted to leave something for our ping pong coach to remember us by.  We got this picture taken at a studio.  It was a funny ordeal getting our pictures taken, but I think it turned out okay.  We put one in a frame and gave it to our coach.  He cleared a whole shelf on his desk and to put the picture there.  I’m glad we’ll be remembered.

I had my last ping pong lesson yesterday.

I paid for a month of lessons and yesterday was the last one.  Even though I'm still in Incheon at least until August 16th, I'm going on vacation and when I get back I probably won't have the time.  It's pretty sad actually.  It'll be the first chapter of the autobiography I'll write when I become a professional ping pong player.  I'm sure I'll see him before I leave Incheon though.  I think I'll buy him an English book to study from.  The one he uses is older than I am.

DO I HEAR CHALLENGE?

I'm about to leave my apartment to go play ping pong with my boss.  Well, she's sort of my boss.  She's the 6th grade bojangnim, which means she's sort of the captain for all the 6th grade teachers, which includes me.  I like her a lot because she's a nice 50-something lady and she makes an effort to speak to me in English.  She said she's been playing for a few years, so she'll probably destroy me, but it'll be fun.

DO I HEAR CHALLENGE?

I'm about to leave my apartment to go play ping pong with my boss.  Well, she's sort of my boss.  She's the 6th grade bojangnim, which means she's sort of the captain for all the 6th grade teachers, which includes me.  I like her a lot because she's a nice 50-something lady and she makes an effort to speak to me in English.  She said she's been playing for a few years, so she'll probably destroy me, but it'll be fun.

Lee Soo Yeon is one of my heroes.

So, she's a professional table tennis player born in Korea.  She has a pretty long list of accomplishments and she's currently coaching in the United States.  I like the way she plays and her matches are fairly exciting, but the best part about her is that she's also a fashion model.  Here's a video where she's playing ping pong in a mini-skirt and heels.  She's definitely one badass bitch.

Sooyeon from SPiN New York on Vimeo.

Different strokes

I finally feel like my ping pong game is really coming together.  The first week of lessons was really great,  I felt like I was learning things and I was hitting the ball really hard.  Then after we got past that, we moved onto some of the more complex stuff, like the more complex strokes and putting spin on the ball.  To be honest, it was really frustrating.  I couldn't hit a forehand loop drive if my life depended on it.  Don't even get me started on the backhand cut.    Now I've finished learning all the strokes and I feel a lot better.  Sure, I'm probably not getting as much rotation on my forehand as I could be, but I can tell that the topspin is there.  So the foundation is set.  If I compared myself to a diamond, which I do regularly, I'm still raw and uncut.  It's going to take quite a bit of practice for me to really shine.  Luckily, there's still plenty of time until 2016.

My future as a professional table tennis player.

I've thought long and hard about my future and this is the only way I see it happening:

• Early September 2010 – I move to Seoul for a new job, but I have to quit going to the Champion Ping-Pong Club.  I thank my coach, Park Young Gil, for teaching me the basics of table tennis.
• Late September 2010 – After finally settling into my new job and apartment, I sign up for ping pong lessons.  At first, I'm a little hesitant about my new coach's training program, but I finally settle in and start learning more advanced techniques.
• Mid 2011 – I go back to Los Angeles, taking the ping-pong techniques I learned in Korea with me.  I sign up for lessons at the Westside Table Tennis Center, taking lessons from former U.S. Olympian Wei Wang.  Of course, I purchase my own table to practice at home.
• 2012 – I enter into a few basic tournaments.  Being unable to shake the nervousness of competitive play, I lose horribly in the first round of the tournament.
• Early 2013 – I start finding my groove in competitive play and decide to enter more competitive tournaments, so I enter the California Open of Table Tennis.  I lose miserably.
• Early 2014 – After my loss at the California Open, I decide to switch to a new ping-pong club to get training from a different coach and new practice partners.  Once again, I enter the California Open.  This time I manage to get third.
• Late 2014 – I enter the nation table tennis tournament.  I know I still don't have a shot of winning, but I go for the experience.  After the tournament, I go to a doctor because of recurring shoulder pain.  They tell me that I lose my arm if I continue to play competitive table tennis.
• 2015 – This is the year of change.  After hours and hours of pondering, I decide that I can't give up table tennis.  Instead, I decide to start training myself.  What I come up with is a new defensive style of play that's less strenuous on the shoulder.  I re-enter the national tournament and take first place with my new style.
• 2016 – With winning the national tournament, I'm the American favorite in the 2016 Olympics.  My new style of play manages to win me through the early rounds, but is still not enough to beat the Chinese powerhouse.  I end up finishing just short of a medal in fourth place.
• 2017 and beyond – I open my own table tennis center.  Players from around the world come to be coached in my defensive style.

Yep, that's how it's all going to work out.  It's seriously the last shot I have at getting into the Olympics, unless they decide to finally make bowling an Olympic sport.

Partying hard.

The problem with staying out and drinking on Saturdays now, is that I barely wake up in time for my 3:00PM ping-pong lessons.

There's a manga for everything.

Like most things I take an interest in, I usually check to see if there is an anime or manga about it because I like animated stories telling me how thing should be in real life.  What makes me say this is because I just finished the manga Ping Pong today, which is about two childhood friends and the high school ping-pong team they're on.  To be honest, it really isn't that great.  The artwork is alright and the plot line is pretty linear.  However, it did teach me a few things about ping-pong, but most importantly, that I have to think, breathe, and live table tennis if I have any chance of becoming a professional.  Just take a look at this one panel from the manga:

That's right, it's blood on the handle.  It looks like I have chosen a rough path.

The USA is out of the World Cup

and so is Korea.  Now I can finally stop pretending that I like soccer and move on to more important things, like what happens in the world of professional table tennis.