French Closed

Justine Henin-Hardenne, the 2005 French Open Women's Singles Champion, plays amazing tennis! Totally outclassed Mary Pierce. Won 6-1, 6-1. She has a fantastic one-handed backhand. And her serves are killer. Seems she was World No. 1 then some serious illness and then injury took her out completely for a year or more.

Rafael Nadal is also amazing, he's 4th seed and probably going to win the finals. He's very good looking too. Won Federer in the semi-finals. There was a point Federer won by hitting 3 volleys in a row. As Federer pointed out after the match, Nadal being a leftie does indeed shake things up a bit. That certainly works in his favor.

Just watched Nadal beat Puerta in the Men's Singles. It was a really close match, Puerta put up a good fight. He won the first set but lost the next three. In the fourth set, he was actually up 5-4 and had 2 set points on his service game, but dropped both, then went up with the advantage, but dropped it and dropped the game. Nadal went on to win 7-5 after breaking Puerta in the following game. It was a wonderful match. Puerta is also left-handed.

I'm done with my tennis sessions for this week, and ball stocks are up one point at this week's close. Going to retire one ball that's quite bald and bounces too much. Tennis prospects in the coming week don't look promising. Eugene has something on, and gz will be unable to book out for 3 full weeks. I've re-marked my tennis balls, the letters faded really quickly after yesterday's tennis.

The Men's Doubles were on yesterday, but stopped by rain after the teams had one set each. The last set was played today. The USA team consists of identical twins, one an inch taller than the other, one a leftie and one a rightie. As an American Scientist article I recently read said, "DNA is never destiny". The identical (homozygous) twin of an alcoholic has only a 50% chance of being an alcoholic.

Doubles is much more complicated, and faster-paced. The many-body problem in action. The twins looked strong at the beginning but lost in the end. I think they only play best of three sets. I took a nap in the afternoon. Took a nap yesterday at NUS between tennis sessions. The half-court is pretty good for practice, gets you tired out very quickly.

Ate durians yesterday and just now, delicious. Met Say Yang and Jasper today, went to eat at this vegetarian restaurant in Serangoon. Greenland. It's the place we were going to go to celebrate my birthday, but my granny fell down and had a stroke... for what it's worth, the food was very good.

I feel motivated to train up at the gym so I can play better tennis. Observed the people playing on the next court at NUS yesterday, when they grip the racquet in the forehand position, the racquet face is horizontal. Then I began to notice how the pros grip their racquets at Roland Garros, and that's how they grip it too. Gives more topspin.

Fell asleep early last night, was too tired to complete this blog post. The following is a letter I intend to send in to the Straits Times.

Over the weekend, I had a horrendous experience at Sportslink. I had bought a tennis racquet that was on offer, just that it was not strung. When I brought it elsewhere to be strung (the Sportslink in Funan didn't have the equipment), I was told that the racquet frame was missing the bottom grommet: a little (but critical) rubber piece.

I went back to the Funan branch thinking they would give me a replacement. But it seems that rubber piece was not part of the deal, though I was not informed of this "defect" when the racquet was sold to me. I tried to get a refund or exchange, but an exchange was only possible if the goods are in "selling condition".

Apparently, the racquet was no longer in selling condition because I had taken off the plastic wrap around the handle. It is outrageous that the racquet is however deemed "in selling condition" even with a missing grommet strip. I am exceedingly frustrated and appalled.

A word about programming now. Programming is a lot like magic. Neither achieve the impossible, they just appear to. It's an illusion of intelligence in one, an illusion of reality in the other. It's not that the macros I write in VBA do what Excel can't do or what a human can't do, it's just that it makes it more convenient. Repetitive, procedural actions are activated by a mouse click, which activates a pre-programmed series of instructions.

It's not that Excel can't do this or that, it's a matter of optimization, stringing together an oft-required series of steps in a "macro" so you don't have to click here and there and type this and that each time. It simplifies a complicated procedure by sweeping the repetitive motions under the rug of code.