1/24/07

Softball: Post-trip (Another Argument for Spanish)

Dear People,

Jonny’s team pan-seared my own, 18-13, but that’s only because I was suffering from a brutal bout of jet-lag and was technically unconscious for most of the game. Yeah, even when I was hitting those perky up-the-middle singles, I was actually sleep-batting, and generally speaking, my performance on defense was one of feigned aerobic sentience.

The upshot is that I don’t really remember much, though for some reason I do recall that in the 7th inning, I let a perfectly playable grounder to first ricochet out of my glove and back to Tom O at the pitcher’s mound, who immediately hurled the ball 10 yards to the left of Nikki’s outstretched mitt as the go-ahead run crossed home. Of course the Nickster was not one to just sit there and be outdone, and therefore she instantly scampered for the orb in question and then zapped it right back to second, or more specifically, 15 yards past second into the verdant grasses beyond.

This allowed yet one more run to score and another runner to advance, but in fairness, that’s a small price to pay for the privilege of taking part in an actual three-error play! Yeah, that’s three errors in a single play, and just for the record, I can tell you that in ‘Nam, they don’t have games where that would even be possible! And to think that some people still ask why I bothered to come back.

In any case, and as you know, I continue to maintain a strict moratorium on new additions to this list, but I have decided to make a rare exception, and thus as of this week, I am adding seven new potential players to our community. I realize this further increases the risk of over-booked games, but since they all live in either Hong Kong, Shenzhen or Shanghai, I doubt any of them would actually fly out more then every two or three weeks.

More importantly, I can reveal that these seven persons, my fellow tourists in ‘Nam and personal pedagogical heroes, were instrumental in my first baby-steps toward competence in the Mandarin tongue. Yes, the fact is that after just three hours of determined coaching and oral repetition—mostly on the bus between Saigon and the Cambodian border--I was able to produce a comprehensible version of “I drink water”! (“Wah--Heuh---Shay,” baby!)

Now you may be thinking ‘BFD,’ but I would gently remind you that Mandarin is the native gab of 700,000,000 speakers, and at the risk of sounding overly giddy, I believe that if I can maintain the steady linguistic progress that I achieved on that bus, I would be basically fluent by 2070!! Yes, strong is the will when the path is so short, and therefore there will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11AM, IF I get enough commits by this Friday morning…Raymond


1/24/07

Softball: Nature’s Grand Tableau

Dear People,

There will be a game at Codornices this Sunday at 11AM, and of now, it is full. As usual, please let me know ASAP if you committed and need to cancel, and if you’re looking for reopened slots later, feel free to contact me.

This week’s field fee is just $3, and that includes a private, one on one post-game cage-secure encounter with that hideous Deep-Sea-Frill-Shark-thing that looks like a fossilized eel-monster with an embittered “why-can’t-I-play-softball?” ‘tude*…Ray 845-7552

* http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=431041&in_page_id=1965

BACK