幾鬼秘的部落格

This past weekend began with the arrival of the third largest purchase of my life (after my house and car).  After checking out a 2001 Kawasaki EX250 Thursday morning, I decided to buy it despite the damages to the body.  I had it delivered to my house Friday afternoon, and had it certified for safety the same evening.  Later that night, I decided to take the bike out for a spin around the neighbourhood.  This was the first time that I’d ridden a motorcycle on real roads, and it went quite well.

I was too excited to sleep that night.  I woke up at 6:30am unable to go back to sleep.  So soon after 7:00 I finally decided to get up to wash my car.  I went to the MTO @9 to get my license plate and came home ~9:30, and decided to ride to my parents’ house ~15km away, confident about my ride the night before.  Instead, 15m from my house at the first stop sign, I pulled in the front brakes too hard, lost balance, and dropped the bike after fighting hard to keep it vertical.  I almost couldn’t get the bike back up.  Having my confidence shot down, I decided to just cruise around the neighbourhood instead.  After half an hour of that, I tried going on a "real" road (ie. 60km/h limit).  At that speed the wind felt intimidating.  But now that I’ve gone on the highways a few times, I think the fear is more psychological than real.

The next day was a full day of riding.  I rode to Yorkmills/Bayview to have brunch with some friends, then to Cycleworld in the east end intending to buy some gears, but found it closed :(.  Then I rode back home via the 404, the first time I went on the highway on the bike, before heading out again to World Bowl to practice.

All in all, it was an extremely tiring and packed weekend (and I haven’t even talked about the doorsopen sites that I visited on Saturday!). 

Last night’s game was rather uneventful.  Even though I played consistently well with an average of 156, which is a huge improvement over last week, I still won only one point from the opposing team.  Out of the 3 games, I beat MJ twice and tied with her once, scratch!  Dang, I should’ve put some money on it :)  After starting his practice session spectacularly with 4 strikes in 5 frames, it was all downhill for DF.  At the end, we only scored 2 points, our worst team performance so far.

This morning I woke up with some rather sore fingers.  I knew something was wrong even after play ended last night, with a pretty tired arm.  I usually don’t feel much fatigue after playing, and we usually play a lot more than 3 games at a time.  I’m guessing that my thumb hole maybe made a little bit too large, so I compensated by grabbing the ball more tightly with my fingers.

Next week, our substitute "straight-shooter" NY will be back to anchor for us since MJ is busy.  That means that I’ll be the only team member with a perfect attendance record.  I think they should give me some reward for that

Last Saturday I attended G+C’s wedding, as one of the groomsmen and photographers.  I can’t remember the last time that I attended a wedding without taking on at least one of these roles, if not both.  This was probably one of the easiest wedding days that I’d photographed.  The day started relatively late, just before 9am.  And I carried only one camera with me.  As tiring as it is, I’d still much prefer participating in this capacity, than being just a regular guest.  No offense to the newly-weds, but when you’ve been to many weddings, as a guest, sitting through the 1+ hour ceremonies can be a little… dare I say… boring :)  And what about the hours that you have to kill between the ceremony and the banquet?

One important advantage of being a photographer while also being a 戥穿石 is of course being able to escape many of the silly tests that the groomsmen are forced to endure :)  My 竹升-ness also helps me excuse myself from at least a few of these tests.

Weddings can feel like reunions sometimes, and that is especially true this time.  I met up with many ex-coworkers whom I haven’t seen in years.  And from time to time, in this small world, you discover that the newly-weds and you actually have some mutual friends that you didn’t know you had!

After the wedding, I discovered that out of the few gigs of photos that I took that day, I could find myself in only one of them.  I’m sure that I do appear in other photos taken by the other photographers.  But until I get those pics, here’s the one precious photo of me…

Looking forward to L+J’s next month…

Tonight was the second week of league play @World Bowl.  Claiming that she’s currently in a slump, MJ, who usually scores about 30 points more than me, suggested that we make our games interesting - $5 if I win scratch, $3 if she wins scratch, or $2 per game with a handicap of 25 for me.  Feeling a little cocky after Sunday’s practice, I chose to challenge her playing scratch.

The 15 minutes of pre-game practice went ok.  So I couldn’t figure out why I was playing so poorly the first game.  It took me one and a half game to get my groove back.  Needless to say, I lost embarrassingly to MJ, although the last game was close before she pulled way ahead near the end.  Even with handicap I would still have lost 2 of the 3 games.  At the end, I averaged 135, which is above my usual average of ~130, disregarding last Sunday’s stats of course.

Perhaps even more embarrassing was how N, our substitute player, beats me with a plastic house ball :)  It’s incredible how accurately he can fire the ball right at the head pin.

I’m pretty happy with how I played tonight, even though I did lose 9 bucks :)  I recovered well after a disastrous first game, and played pretty consistently afterwards.  I’m a little disappointed that I couldn’t repeat Sunday’s performance, but at least now I’m giving myself more room for  improvements

Thanks to MJ for telling me about this very good read.  You can find it by googling the title.  I can’t remember the last time I read something so long in Chinese.  I’m so impressed that I actually understand it

Three weeks ago I bowled a life-time high of 218 at my regular Sunday practice @ World Bowl.  That’s pretty incredible considering that today I discovered that the thumb hole of my ball was 4 sizes too small!  It actually wasn’t much of a problem until last Wednesday, when I played at the first game of a summer league.  I bowled 150, 123 and 102; an average of 125, which is lower than I expected, but still pretty decent for me.  The problem was that by the third game, my thumb had warmed up and expanded so much that the ball could barely exit my thumb.  I couldn’t release the ball at the right moment, and it’d fly out and land half way up the lane!

That prompted me to have the hole changed today, and boy, what a difference that made!  I’d never
bowled so consistently, averaging 162 over 7 games, including my 2nd highest score ever (193).  Since this was over so many games, I think, and hope, that luck wasn’t a big factor I guess I’ll have the answer in a few days at the weekly league play.