Wren's Web Log
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Delusions of Tennis Grandeur
September 15th, 2008 at 02:47 am |
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I've been playing tennis since i was a kid.
It doesn't mean that i'm any good - it just means that i learned how to play at one point in my life, in the same way that i learned how to read. So in the same way that I'll pick up a book every so often and read it based on my astute learnedness and ability to read, on certain occasions i will feel inclined to pick up a tennis racquet to relive my former days of glory: I joined the tennis team in my junior year of high school. I'm not altogether sure how I managed to make the team in the first place since everyone pretty much whalloped my ass during tryouts, but the tennis coach was a math teacher. And I, a skinny, scrawny Chinese kid, was in his class. Racial generalizations aside, I'm pretty sure I was given an unfair edge and hence a resulting spot on the team. Due to the lack of funding in the public school system at the time, we only ended up playing one big tournament. And as you can guess, I lost every single match that I played - but somehow at the end of the year I managed to get the tennis team MVP award! I asked the coach after the awards ceremony why he picked me, and he said: "Because Warren, you play with heart, and I like your attitude." I guess playing with heart means being an Asian in his math class who sometimes answers questions correctly. Coming back to the present, I've started playing more tennis again after a ten-year hiatus. I had a bi-weekly hitting partner for awhile (whom my friends convincingly argued was also bi-sexual, putting an end to that friendship), started a World Team Tennis team in a recreational league, and this weekend I even had the balls (figuratively) to enter a men's singles tournament at a more advanced playing level. I figured I would do pretty well since I wear Michael Chang's Reebok Pumps and hit with Roger Federer's Wilson pro racquet. Just kidding, but not really. Image is everything, after all. So I'm at this tennis tournament the other day and the coordinator tells me to go warm up before my match. Warming up to me means tying my shoelaces and maybe doing a couple of stretches. I get to the court to greet my first opponent and he's skipping rope! He's got a total game face on and looks like he's about to get ready for a boxing match, let alone a tennis game. After exchanging brief introductions and opening stories (EG: "Yeah, I was the tennis team MVP in high school") and sizing each other up, the skipper wins the coin toss and decides to serve first. "Alright, no big deal Wren," I think to myself. "I can totally take this guy, my cross-court forehand is an absolute weapon." He tosses the ball in the air and coils up for his first serve.... KAPOW! I stand there like a deer in the headlights, wondering what just happened. 15-Love. We change sides and he serves again. KAPOW!!!! This time I manage to blink, which is slightly better than just staring blankly as if nothing even happened. 30-Love. I won't bore you with the rest of the match details, but I lost 2-5, 0-5 (tournament rules were play to 5 games each set, as opposed to the conventional 6). We reported back to the coordinator and he blurts out: "What?! You're finished already??" The guy looked confused as if he didn't know what to do, or say. "Uh, why don't you play until 6 games in each of those sets, play a few more games and see what happens." I appreciated the not-so-subtle pity, and came back to him within five minutes with a new score: 3-6, 0-6. My luck pretty much carried out over the rest of the weekend, losing the next three matches: 0-6, 0-6 against a beginner, 1-6, 0-6 against a 50-year old, and then a crushing defeat of 0-6, 0-6 against another guy who beat the skipper. I think I have a new tournament record in efficiency of losing (EOL % would be highlighted on my trading card if I had one). The amazing thing though, is how my girlfriend still managed to make me feel like a champion. "You'll always be the MVP in my world, Warren," she lovingly expressed to me over the phone as I sobbed about my losses (Note: I'm somewhat adlibbing her words to a, ahem, certain extent). Thanks baby, you'll always be my MVP too! | |
Are you human?
May 5th, 2008 at 06:26 am |
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A lot of people have pointed out that my site has been overrun by spambots for the past year or so. Or maybe it's just my arch-nemesis trying to give me a hard time. To you sir, I bite my thumb. Comments are now enforced by completely automated public turing tests to tell computers and humans apart (CAPTCHA), got it? Thanks to Wooly for weeding out my DB. | |
It was only a matter of time
May 5th, 2008 at 06:20 am |
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 I've been living in an apartment for a couple years now, but It was only a matter of time before it happened: I finally managed to clog my toilet.
It happened so quickly - I was half-awake, and thought nothing of it. So I flushed again. And again. And before I knew it, my excreta were bubbling marvelously over the rim of the toilet and onto the bathroom floor. I hastily constructed a barrier with paper towels to prevent it from contaminating my room and frantically started searching for the plunger, and realized, of course, that I didn't have one. Now, a plunger isn't exactly something you go next door to your neighbor for, like a cup of flour ("Hey Bob, I shit a squirrel today, can I borrow your plunger?"), so I threw on some clothes and bolted out the door.
Arriving at the super market, I dashed over to the cleaning supplies aisle and picked up some latex gloves, sponges, solvents, and of course, a plunger. Then something caught my eye: 50% off all air fresheners and aroma candles! I'm a sucker for a good deal, so I loaded up my cart with a bunch of those too and headed for the cash register. While loading my items one by one onto the belt, I felt the customer behind me staring. Or maybe she was wrinkling her nose. I guess the combined smell of sweat (from running) and shit isn't the most fragrant aroma you'd expect to encounter while buying fresh fruits and veggies at your local grocery. I looked behind and saw her eyes focused on the items on the belt. The expression on her face changed from polite discomfort to utter disgust, upon which she proceeded to take her items to the next cash register instead. With a cart full of cleaning materials and air fresheners, I'm sure it didn't take a genius to figure out that I must have made quite a mess. The cashier, who at this point had already begun scanning my items, was a little more polite, and simply smirked and asked if I was having an eventful morning. I haven't had to use the plunger since that fateful day, but I've learnt my lesson: it now sits underneath the sink in the bathroom, easily accessible and ready for action on a day that I least expect it. | |
Raising the Bar
June 25th, 2007 at 06:04 am |
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No offense to any of my friends who are already married, engaged, or galloping at high speed on their paths towards symbiotic matrimony - but I had a chance to attend the wedding of two people who pretty much define the perfect couple.
A couple weeks ago in Toronto, my old buddy Christine tied the knot with the love of her life, Lyndon. Don't worry - this is not one of those pithy blog posts that spits out wishy-washy nonsense of how or why two people are indisputably meant for each other, how they complement each other like a perfectly harmonized chord, or how she... how she completes him. I will, however, single out and pay homage to Mr. Lyndon Wong, who has forever raised the bar for earnest Chinese boys hoping to ever become the "ideal son-in-law". During the banquet, Dr. Wong delivered several heartwarming 'thank-you' speeches: one spoken to his parents in eloquent Cantonese, and another dedicated to Christine's parents in well-practiced and articulately-enunciated Mandarin. I really gotta hand it to him - not only is it hard to write something like that without sounding overwhelmingly cheesy, but as a CBC (Canadian-born Chinese) it really takes guts to expose yourself (and your accent!) in front of a large audience like that. Good show old chap, good show! As he humbly wiped a tear from his eye, and as his parents and parents-in-law sat at their tables radiating with the brilliance of an enormous supernova, I could detect the throng of Chinese mothers in the same room glaring at their sons-in-laws - who in turn sat there nervously shuffling their feet, wondering why they never thought of that. Way to raise the bar buddy. Why'd he have to go ahead and make things difficult for the rest of us?? | |
Time to rethink the career.
June 22nd, 2007 at 07:39 pm |
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Daily injections of espresso
$1.80 / shot 24-can pack of Red Bull $42.99 Various TV dinners and late-night snacks/junkfood $30 Spending the last three weeks working on a software application, tirelessly coding day after day after day, pulling an all-niter the night before a client presentation to make sure it's bug free, running the app in front of them the next morning and seeing the disappointed looks on their faces when the damn thing doesn't work, single-handedly messing up a deal that could potentially cost your company a couple hundred thousand dollars, then learning afterwards that the bug was one measly line of code that was accidentally inserting a blank character (" ") before each database entry, causing the entire app to fail... Priceless. | |
The Emasculation of Warren Poon
April 27th, 2007 at 04:47 am |
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 According to some of my closest friends, I'm steadily turning into a fruit. I wholeheartedly contest this, but thinking back and looking at some recent events I can understand where they may have derived their logic:
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On art, by one who has little understanding of it.
April 3rd, 2007 at 06:22 am |
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A couple weeks ago I bought a Digital SLR. I love it to death, and I do not in any way regret the rather expensive investment. I'll admit, however, that my lack of artistic creativity and bleak understanding of the craft give little reason to post anything of value on my website's photo gallery. Aye, I'll never have a natural photographer's eye, or the ability to stereotypically "capture" a moment. Even with today's abundance of powerful photo manipulation software, it's quite unlikely that I'll ever impress anyone with a digital photo: a bitmapped array of otherwise lifeless pixels. On the rarest of occasions, though - late at night, when I have time to myself and am mindlessly perusing the contents of my memoirs - I'll encounter something that, for lack of better wording, becomes my inspirational muse. 
I don't remember the day, the occasion, or even physically being there. Nor do I recall who actually took the photo. But affording it the briefest of glances strikes me in a way that leaves me brimming with nostalgia.
It sometimes worries me that I am so faithfully subscribed to a certain opinion of family values. On one hand, the realization of the precedent and its sacrifices, combined with a feeling of reverential respect and gratitude, makes me all too vulnerable. On the other, it blesses me with an affable tranquilité - an understanding through which I can, possibly, forge a better relationship with my parents. Nonetheless, looking at this photo gives me, in the best of times, reason to keep on smiling; and in the worst of times, reason to keep trudging on. No family is a picture of perfection. Every life story is marred at some point by the slings and arrows of, well, life. But as far as I can see, this photo captures and encompasses, in its whimsical glory, every childhood memory I ever had, may have had, and have ever wanted to have. Every face in the picture tells a story of why that person is smiling. And each of the performers is forever preserved in ways a Sears catalog will never comprehend. Not too long ago, while perusing the galleries within the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, I read an artist's inscription on the wall: "it's not art until I say it is" (I do paraphrase, ever so slightly). This, my friends, is art. | |
The World's First Metro-sexual
January 2nd, 2007 at 03:15 am |
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For Christmas, my mom and sister gave me a bunch of lululemon athletic apparel: two pairs of yoga pants and a hooded sweater. Like many other women in the GTA, they've been proudly donning lulu-garb for some time now. In fact, my sister absolutely loved lululemon so much, she used to wear her first pair of yoga pants for days on end without washing them. I know that sounds pretty disgusting (because it is), but she did this not because they were trendy and fashionable, but because they were in fact super comfortable.
I, however, am quite hesitant to dress myself up in clothing that is primarily meant for beautiful, skinny, and mostly feminine people. Not that yoga is immensely gay or anything, but I'm pretty sure I've never seen, say, Don Cherry strut his stuff up and down the HNIC studio in lycra pants that were designed to eliminate chaffing. Besides, the last time I bought clothing from the same store as my mother and sister, I was nearly put in a position to question my own sexuality. The story goes something like this... Many years ago, Jacob Jr. was the de facto fashion standard for girls aged 7 to 12. I can remember countless shopping trips to Sherway Gardens where myself and my friend Brian would be dragged along with our sisters, only to idly sit by while they tried on clothes. Thankfully, Brian and I both had (besides each other) portable electronic videogames to keep ourselves sane. One fateful day, however, my mom decided it would be quite splendid if she could buy clothes for both my sister and myself at the same store, and asked the sales associate if they had anything for boys. "Why, of course we do!" the cruel witch replied, "Jacob is a unisex designer! I'm sure your son would look very fashionable in... THIS!" And then, as if waiting for that moment her entire life, she happily pulled two very girlish-looking purple-and-pink shirts off the rack, and into my confused, gullible hands. I'm not sure which is more diabolical:
So, you can understand why I'm a little less adventuresome these days, and wary of modeling clothes that only serve to further accentuate my love-handles. Not to mention the fact that the apparel's brand name begins with two rhyming syllables, clearly indicating that it is devoid of any and all masculinity! | |
