The Bad Volleyball Day
[Thursday, 23 November, 2006]
It was the same day I did the essay for Jielin until 5am, she sent me a message before 9am to thank me, but instead of making me feel good, I went back to sleep immediately with some cursing.
It was around 10am when my mum played me as well. It had been a trend that I would wake up late just for lunch but she offered to buy me breakfast and I had to finish the “Dou Hua” before it turned bad. I went to sleep immediately after eating.
Another weird thing was that she did not call back to take order for my lunch. The first good thing about the day was my cousin gave me her old computer finally for me to boost up my system a little. Then I went for volleyball at Clementi ITE in the small rain.
I was lifeless after starving and carrying the heavy old computer. There were a few unfamiliar faces making lots of noises and I did not join in the training. Then, as Kok Chiang was playing with two of the newbies, I joined in and he left suddenly. I was trying hard to save all the balls until one of them hit the ball at me when I was right in front of him and my spectacle was spoilt.
Weitat helped me to get two rubber bands from the administration room and I had a hard time trying to fix it temporary until my fingers hurt, yet proved no result. Then, I got superglue from Mingen’s car, which was a mini first aid container. The super glue flowed out before I pressed it or even knew it until my skin got so heated up. It was too late.
After the training when the net was set to more standard height, I was busy getting the dried superglue off my hands while others were practicing spiking. It irritated me for very long until the friendly match against the outsiders started.
Then, I realized there was no place for me to be inside the court. Mingfa, Mingen, Kok Chiang, Weitat and two of the new faces had the positions. Finally in that night, I saw to a greater disgusting fact of volleyball game that even when it was planned to be a game for friends, stronger players stood better chance of enjoyment.
I had to play as libero in the second game just to give Mingfa “face” and it was quite a redundant role actually. Until the third game, I managed to take over one of the strangers’ position. Then, I was kind of freaked out by the other stranger, wearing a Shuqun jersey. He showed his thumb for every good ball and held that position and even expression for as long as ten seconds. This friendly but noisy guy was shorter than me but played much better.
We had a break right after. I took off my shoes to see what was hurting me when I was taking off during the jumps and realized one of my toe nails had crack and there was blood. Mingfa’s nail clipper was the savior and he claimed that every volleyball coach would have one pair of it.
After that, the two outsiders left and we continued to play with Meijun joined in the team. It was fun at first until my left ankle failed me again. Then I remembered just a month ago I could not even bend it and yet I was forcing so much work on it upon recovery. I had kind of sprained it which led to lost of many chances to perform; I was given chances to spike down but the plain distracted me badly when I was in the air or perhaps I did not even jump to the normal height and lost control of myself. During the second game, I was almost disabled.
As we went to the washroom to clean up, I realized I had forgotten to bring my towel. Alas, my lunch was the nice chicken chop again at the “half chicken” shop at Clementi, which marked the second good thing of the bad day.
Labels: dinner, volleyball
... Skai (Kailun) dreams @ 2:42 AM
