Week 15 & 16: April 7 - 20
Badminton: 4.5 / 5
School: 2.5 / 5
Misc: 4 / 5
Overall: 3.67 / 5
Badminton: 2 / 5
School: 3 / 5
Misc: 2 / 5
Overall: 2.33 / 5
I apologize for lumping both weeks together, but I was away in Lima, competing at the Peru International in Week 15, and then coming back for 3 final exams in Week 16. To top it off, I also had the BC Provincials to play on Friday and Saturday. I am finally done, so hopefully I can keep updating a bit more regularly for the next little while! I will do my best to update chronologically, so I guess the most interesting part will be up first: Peru International!
As Air Canada was sold out on flights coming back, all of us Vancouver booked the flight with United/Continental to fly down to Lima, Peru. Typically, there are 2 major routes down via Star Alliance partners and it would be usually United or Air Canada. I would fly Air Canada if the flight is cheap, but it connects in Toronto and sometimes the flights don't sync up, meaning that if you flew to Toronto early in the morning, you still might miss the flight to Peru and have to go the next day. The other option, which I've done a few times now, is fly from Vancouver to Houston, then Houston to Lima. Unfortunately, the flight to Houston is really early in the morning (~06:30) but it gets us into Lima on the same day (arrive ~23:00). The reason we stick to these airlines is to gather Aeroplan status miles, as options are limited in Canada. Perhaps if Westjet joined One World, maybe that would be a cheaper alternative, as you could fly American Airlines, British Airways, and Cathay Pacific. Otherwise, you're stuck with Air Canada, Lufthansa, United, and a couple other ones, but apparently it's not easy getting into Asia. It was quite costly booking flights to Malaysia for the 2013 Sudirman Cup coming up at the end of May.
|My unique luggage stickers|
|(Source: Me) El Tambo - Lobby|
|(Source: Me) El Tambo - Room|
|(Source: Me) El Tambo - Restaurant|
|Follow the (Purple) letters!|
So the next morning, I was off to play Men's Singles, as the other Canadian player withdrew from the tournament due to an injury, and I won a 3 setter against a player from the Dominican Republic. He had a pretty good attacking game and I also made a lot of mistakes, but I was able to adapt a bit better at the end and came through with the win. Unfortunately, my next round would be the tournament's top seeded player, but that was the least of my worries at the moment. I took a taxi back to the new hotel we were staying at to confirm rooms, then walked back to the El Tambo to check out. Fortunately, the others didn't have to play until Friday, so they were okay. After moving hotels, the rest of the tournament went quite smoothly, minus the fact that the tournament kept changing the transportation schedule on us, so a few of us ended up taking taxis and getting reimbursed later on. That evening, I went 3 sets with Kevin Cordon of Guatemala, the top Pan American Men's Singles player. Even though it went 3 sets, I never felt in control of the game and was always chasing. It didn't really bother me as his skills were much better than mine in Singles, but it was nice to challenge him and it was overall a great learning experience. Definitely gave me a lot of things to think about after the match!
|Lunch at Chili's|
|Working hard, or hardly working?|
|(via PhotoGrid - Android)|
The NEXT MORNING (Tuesday), I had to be up and ready to write my deferred neuroanatomy exam. It wasn't so easy and I felt I could have studied a bit more, but perhaps my approach to the course wasn't so accurate. I spent a lot of time with the textbook and reading things that were a bit too detailed at times, when I probably should have focused on just the lecture notes. The textbook made some things confusing, which ended up wasting time because I had to look it up to try to understand it, and it ended up being too complicated and non-examinable anyway. Although at times, it was interesting to delve deeper, the information I remember wasn't of use in the context of the course and I probably didn't remember everything about it anyway. I suppose it will be a valuable lesson on being more specific in what I have to learn and that I shouldn't try to learn everything, because that's simply not possible. Anyway, I went home right away after my exam and began reviewing for my biochemistry final, which was the next morning, also at 8:30am. You can start to see how Peru International is kind of on the brink of "academic suicide". Regardless, I was able to focus and study and overall, I felt reasonably prepared for my biochem final. Again, there were many things that were too detailed, but my approach to the course was slightly better, as I spent the majority of my time on the lecture slides, and just skimmed the textbook. Actually, I skimmed 3 different textbooks, and I think that may have been what saved me from failing (well, we'll know for sure when my marks come back...).
|All matches within about 24 hours (XD final was at 7pm)|
Oh, lastly, before I forget, one more thing that happened this week was the launch of a new badminton footwork app for your iPads and tablets! I'm actually endorsing this app because I'm in the demo video :P I think it's a neat thing to have, especially if you really want to improve your badminton. I would probably rate footwork as one of the most, if not THE most important thing, and no matter what event you play, solid footwork will always help! Anyway, check it out when you can (not out on Android at the moment, but coming out soon) and support a local developer's app! Support badminton! Support me! Pretty please? :)
|Official // Facebook // Twitter // YouTube|
Thanks for visiting! See you next week! Some matches from Peru International can be found on my YouTube Channel: towbsss
For the rest of the matches, please visit my YouTube Channel!
|Time to relax!|