Ping pong in Oxford

Or as the Chinese say, "ping pong."

I went to my first meeting of Oxford's table tennis association yesterday. Unsurprisingly, the club here is done more formally than it is at Caltech. They have uniforms, warm-up jackets, and all sorts of other stereotypical things one would expect to see for sports at a place like Oxford. The team members are pretty hardcore, though a couple of them did have trouble with my serve. The other people I played --- others in the club and people considering to join the club --- couldn't hit my serve at all (which is the usual thing I see). I didn't notice anybody using the pen-holder grip, though I did some some play styles that I knew about and had occasionally seen (Wei Wang demonstrated them). It will be good to get more of a chance to play against people who employ those styles regularly.

I only played once during the summer, so I was a bit rusty. One could thing about the club being more formal is that we do some drills during the club meetings, which makes up for not having a class as we do at Tech. This was a very pleasant surprise. The drills we did on Sunday were pretty familiar (though they were specified a little too much, IMO). This included a particular drill with the backhand loop, which I don't have but most of the team members do. Also, there was a variant on this in terms of playing a 21-point game with one's partner and not being allowed to use forehand at all. That was a good drill, although I lost a couple of points when my opponent used forehand anyway (granted, in shots that definitely called for it).

Most of the club members seem nice, but a couple of them seemed to have the sort of stereotypical holier-than-thou attitude that one hears about Oxonians. We'll see how that goes.

I played for 2.5 hours yesterday, which is a bit much for me at one time. The surface on which the tables were placed is made of some sort of rubber turf. The ball wouldn't bounce when it hit it, so there was a lot more bending down to get the ball than I'm used to. I found that to be both annoying and tiring. Also, it didn't help my knee, which was a bit sore before I started. Playing on that surface seemed bad on my knee, so we'll see how that goes as well. I feel like it's much easier to hurt oneself seriously with this surface rather than just a wood one below the tables. One person did suffer a slight ping pong injury, though he was better in a few minutes. (Some dumbass went right behind him while were were in the middle of a point, so of course there was a collision. Why can't people understand that when somebody is in the middle of a point, you give them space and don't go right next to them? I fail to grasp why people find this so difficult, and most of the ping pong injuries I've seen occur when some dumbass does this. Also, is it so hard to wait for the end of a point? It's not like they last that long at non-professional levels!)

This club also charges --- it's 15 pounds per year or 30 for life (as long as one is affiliated with Oxford). I chose the latter because that's a dominant strategy if one is going to be around >= 2 years, and I'll obviously be around a lot longer than that. Oh, and I'm not eligibile for the team because permanent faculty aren't eligible. Grrrr.... At Tech, postdocs weren't eligible because the NCTTA rules work just like the NCAA ones. Now I go to a place where postdocs are eligible but permanent faculty aren't. Ah well. Next Sunday, I'll try out for the team anyway and if I would end up making it (which is iffy, but I might sneak in there at the bottom, which is what happened both at Cornell and at Tech when I was an undergrad), then I'll be allowed to practice with the team in their extra Friday practice and just won't be able to participate in tournaments. Alternatively, I could just be the mascot again...

Anyway, it was great to play ping pong again! (No Sean mauch sighting this time, however... I would have been really impressed had I run into him doing martial arts there.)