Green thing on my back

For ten bucks, I recently bought a blue T-shirt with a green thing on my back. Apparently, I am to wear it tomorrow as the Kontingent faces Kolumbia tomorrow afternoon in a showdown of Yella tennis supremacy among East coast Ivies. Yeah, right...

In the meanwhile though, May is rolling in which means the means of Daniela Hantuchova will be appearing in Paris. While she may be more suited for magazine covers, as shown here from a recent edition of Italian Vogue, the red of Roland Garros will do.

The bargain basement of life

My life's a bargain basement, all the good shit's gone - Bon Jovi, Saturday Night

Turns out the basement can be an interesting place though. Maybe the hottest, slinkiest, and all the other good shit's gone, but doesn't mean there can't be good finds to be made. A week ago, in a basement, I finally met the Szetos. Seemingly ragged from being on the later side of sixty, maybe more, this couple certainly proved to be much more than leftover bargains. There's nothing particularly impressive about senior citizens who are retired and living it out in Florida. Alright, maybe they drive a car the price of your house or fly their pets on business class. But it is normally a lack of recent achievement which has landed them into the basement along with the young and useless. The older stuff are remembered (or forgotten) for what they did a long time ago.

The thing that caught my attention about this couple was how they met. And the journey they have been on ever since. Like a Wong Kar Wai movie overplaying itself by forty five years. Postwar Hong Kong, mean relatives. He worked at a theatre as a projector, literally rolling reels that had arrived from across town by bicyle, sometimes rickshaw. She worked the ticket booth when there were they were short of hands for the second show. Immigration, children, and entire careers later, they gave me what would be my golden nugget of the afternoon: why the Easter bunny tastes different. In his American alter-persona, Mr S worked at a chocolate factory and thus was able to provide the figure of $1.20/lb for common milk chocolate - in 1972. Apparently, with African currencies in a freefall ever since they were created (no kidding), this price hasn't changed that much. I'll keep this in mind before I shell out green for a box of Godivas. The big story, however, was that there was such a thing as synthetic chocolate which is where the Bunny comes in. Like how the Playboy bunny is 30% silicone, the synthetic brown stuff is roughly a third dried dairy product. I will never eat Easter choc again.

Resetting the clock

With her visit finally over, things are beginning to revert to a more normal pace and style. Then again, normal can be pretty plain and I find myself bored. Yes, this less than two days after an early morning trudge to the forsaken plot of marsh that is Philly's airport.

In addition to early flights, this weekend has been a somewhat forgettable one, if not only for having spent most of it asleep. There is now a pretty severe dimple in my mattress, as well as a chip on my friends' staircase after having slipped down it this afternoon as I slumbered for just a moment too long. Lesson learnt: don't close your eyes on a staircase. Very important indeed.

Apparently, I should have also kept my eyes open early Saturday morning. Turns out that tennis also requires an attention level slightly above that of REM sleep. But after 11pm (yep, you read that right), it's hard to tell the difference as balls flew in all directions. By the end of the Woo Jung spectacular, I went home with no new TV, little respect for myself, and likely even less from the old folks who actually beat us. Despite their rather moot English skills, they caught the front end of my loud and untimely outburst of #$@%^^# morons. But to every cloud is a silver lining, meaning that I now have four bottles of bobumjukun wine in my cabinet. I guess the cloud part is receiving the quintessential Korean aphrodosiac liquor when your mate is not around... Ouch, and I thought those freaky lobs hurt.

Anyhow, it's once again time to dig deeper into the mattress, catch those Z's and see what tomorrow brings.

Almost, almost

If you haven't seen anything here recently, it's because there hasn't been anything to see. Sure has been a busy two weeks. Only a few more days to go and life reverts to a less hectic schedule. Until then, here's one for our fans...