chinalisation and randomization

seriously, the made-up word game has gone too far. a famous financial analyst here has a chinalisation report. first of all, that isn't a word. second of all, that ISN'T a word. third of all, if it were a word, it'd be spelled chinaliZation. fool.

i'm back from manila, and it was a blast. our paltry team of 8 picked up 4 more guys and 1 more girl. the girl, pong, played coed in college for colby (in maine), and she had spent last summer in boston (speaking of first world connections, i met jenny yang (?) who plays/played for emory and had nancy as her camp counselor at nutc! led to an instantaneous rave about the awesomeness of nancy. yay nancy!).

the tourney organizers knew how small our team was, so they seeded us in the b division. we played only local teams, one of which beat us, preventing us from playing up into elim rounds. its amazing how much the sport has grown in the phillippines. they have a year round 20 team league. the style of play is very distinctive. lots of squirrelly handler cuts, io's+high release backhands, every once in a while, jack it deep. all of their teams are super quick, and some of their guys have amazing ups. i'm particularly impressed with how much they use their girls. my goal this tourney was to practice poaching/baiting. i got punished for it twice with deep throws to the girls for scores. (i think one of them was a hammer). lesson learned, only let your girl go deep if there's a guy deeper than her. otherwise, i felt pretty good for my poaching. i definitely stopped a couple of throws to guys, even getting a d on a deep throw. baiting-wise, i got 2 run thru catches in 1 game, but in the other games, they wouldn't throw to their girls if i was anywhere near, even tho i was running flat footed and breathing heavily (pretending to be tired).

i also think i'm getting better at the leadership thing--ironic, given this is the first tourney in a while where i wasn't actually a captain. maybe i just don't like the responsibility. or maybe i just enjoy butting in.

anyways, the game we lost, we lost b/c we couldn't stop their deep threat, which astounded me b/c we have really good deep men. a couple were misreads, and maybe the ground is softer than our guys are used to, so they can't jump as high and end up jumping too early (oh yeah! the ground was amazingly soft and muddy--my favorite field conditions, so the turf shoes were unneeded after all). in retrospect, maybe we should've just had one of our guys backing their deep the entire game (like c-mo did to beau in 2004 finals). i dunno, as a girl, there's very little you can do when we lose like that. as a pseudo-captain...i dunno. maybe we should've used more of a zone, but their guy was beating us in 1 on 1 matchups all over the place. maybe the cup could've stopped the huck. ah well.

oh, and the first game, i was the rabbit for a 1-3-3, which was working well, until their main handler winds up for a huge backhand, and i manage to get my right hand in the way. i think the impact twisted something in my elbow (of course he called the foul, and i couldn't contest). i sat out for the rest of that game, and i could neither straighten all the way nor bend all the way without pain for the rest of the tourney. made my forehand very suspect. 1 game, i completely lost my io flick. foo. and sat night, i couldn't reach my face with my right hand, which means: left handed washing of hair, left handed brushing of teeth, left handed eating of food. you have no idea how much my face misses my right hand. my hamstring, on the other hand (har har), held up very well.

and now for something completely different. FOOD! last night, i ate three dinners: a sandwich and a bun at the manila airport, my in-flight meal (which tasted great), and a plate of spaghetti at the hk airport. we spent so much time eating that we caught the rest of our teammates at the airport express for the ride back into town (they had taken a later flight). AND. are you ready for this? thursday is thanksgiving! it totally snuck up on me this year. but i do have a tday dinner thursday, a tday dinner friday, and a recovery hike saturday. i'm pumped. this is gonna be a great week.

oh, and michelle wu from smite 2002 and smitten 2007 is in town! i'm "doing" dinner with her tonight (what is up with the doing of the meals? is dinner your mom? no? then we won't be doing it, will we? actually, michelle said "having dinner" or something equally innocuous, but i'm sick of the doing...everyone past a certain age/importance seems to want to do their meals). anyways, i'm excited for korean food tonight with wu-tang.