Tuesday, September 28, 2010
The last time I went to a Chinese restaurant was years ago, during a farewell lunch for a co-worker that wasn’t so much a goodbye as it was a hearty hello to questionable cuisine. Full disclosure, I usually top out at places like Pei Wei or, in what the public apparently deems as the Taco Bell of the Far East, Panda Express. I don’t care about “authenticity,” end of the day. I just need to know whatever’s happening in the kitchen falls under the comforting purview of health inspections on a regular basis. Well, I broke my streak today.
Part of me wanted to be open to change. It’s been a while, after all, and it struck me that perhaps I’m in a different place now, where the idea of enjoying Asian food, even more so than the scallion chicken I ordered, would be the dish du jour. In my mind, I was extending a veritable olive branch to my heritage. Turns out I should’ve had an actual olive branch for lunch instead. It was the usual suspects, as you may have surmised. Grease in generous portion. Chicken of mysterious origin. The ensuing MSG-induced headache.
That said, takeout was free, which significantly reduces my license to complain. And what I really wanted to discuss, anyhow, was progress on the ping-pong front. You may recall my quest, along with how much I like the skill acquisition framework. With table tennis, it’s more a question of skill reclamation. Sure, there’s a ton more to learn. But at my current juncture, I’m content with thawing out what I remember, and once the basics are in place, doing all I can to invent, to author the outcome of every point, if that makes any sense. Today’s tally? Six games, all favorable, and shit just got real.
When you think about it, I suppose ping-pong has oriental roots, so maybe this could serve as a substitute olive branch for today, kind of like an alternative peace offering to compensate for the scallion chicken. Isn’t it, like, a major sport across the Pacific? Then again, the office ping-pong tradition existed long before I got here and upped the Asian to non-Asian ratio to 1:50–the golden proportion for me, incidentally–and when the people have spoken, you have but to listen.