(US Open 2009) Federer d. Robredo 7-5, 6-2, 6-2; + Random Things.
written: 11:49 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 08, 2009
I STAYED UP UNTIL 5-SOMETHING A.M. TO WATCH ROGER MAKE QUICK WORK OF TOMMY ROBREDO (who has apparently been outed by Billie Jean King recently as GAY!11!!!11! Which...yeah, is not surprising, looking at him) DESPITE FALLING ASLEEP MIDWAY THROUGH THE THIRD SET OF THE MELANIE OUDIN/NADIA PETROVA MATCH, AND TOTALLY FALLING ASLEEP IN GENERAL.
HE WAS SUPPOSED TO START AT 2.30 A.M. BUT THE OUDIN/PETROVA MATCH TOOK FOREVER, AS EXPECTED. HE STARTED AT 3-ISH IN THE END.
I FELL ASLEEP DURING ONE OF THE CHANGEOVERS. AND WAS NOT AMUSED, NOR HAPPY, WHEN THEY SWITCHED TO VERDASCO/ISNER HALFWAY INTO THE THIRD SET. AND TOTALLY MISSED ROGER GETTING THE EARLY BREAK IN THE THIRD SET.
I MEAN, YES, I KNOW ROGER WAS ASSURED OF A "W" THE MINUTE HE DREW ROBREDO, BUT FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, WHO THE HELL IS INTERESTED IN ISNER/TABASCO SAUCE WHEN ROGER FEDERER IS PLAYING ON ASHE.
ONE THING I HATE ABOUT THE US OPEN COVERAGE IS THAT THEY'RE ALWAYS SWITCHING BETWEEN MATCHES. I MEAN, I'M TOTALLY INTERESTED IN WATCHING OTHER PLAYERS TOO, BUT NOT WHEN ROGER IS PLAYING.
I THINK IT'S TIME THE MILLIONS OF FED FANS AROUND THE WORLD STARTED PETITIONING FOR A ROGER FEDERER CHANNEL.
Okay, no idea why the above is in caps. Anyway, Roger and Tommy played this totally cute point which Roger lost at the net that ended in both of them smiling like cute little boys. His opponents are quite amazing: they actually seem happy to be thrashed by The Man Fed. Robredo was absolutley DEMOLISHED after Roger got the break to serve at 6-5 in the first set. Demolished, and then having his remains thrown away. There was really nothing he could do against Roger, and he couldn't keep up the above-average play in the first set that kept it quite close until 6-5.
Sometimes I feel sorry for his opponents. Tommy's lost to Roger 9 straight times now. Roger plays Robin Soderling next, who's lost to him 11 straight times. Lleyton Hewitt lost to him, like, 13 or 14 straight times two matches ago.
HOW DO THESE PEOPLE STILL STICK AROUND AND PLAY TENNIS?
Andy Roddick's the absolute best. His record against Roger is 2-19. I mean. Wow. How do they still stay motivated? I wonder what they feel when they find out they're playing Roger Federer. I wonder what keeps them mentally in the match.
'Cause if it were me? I'd withdraw from the tournament the second I find out I'm playing an opponent who's beaten me more than 10 times in a row. It's just insane. It's just not possible for my thick skin to be humiliated so publicly and internationally over and over and over, AND OVER, again.
So yeah. I applaud every single one of his opponents who has a losing record against him, and yet still manages to show up to play, AND finish the match. Absolutely incredible. And it's not just a losing record - it's a record in which they registered a grand total of no victories.
He's truly incredible. And I cannot, for the life of me, fathom HOW it's actually possible for him to hit a fucking smashing winner off a defensive ball tapped back into play by the opponent that lands just inside the baseline. A FUCKING SMASHING WINNER. FROM THE FUCKING BASELINE. WHO THE HELL DOES THAT. ALL THE WOMEN CAN ONLY FEEBLY MANAGE TO PUT THE BALL BACK IN PLAY.
But oh, wait, what? They're not Roger Federer.
Speaking of women: OMG MELANIE OUDIN IS QUITE AMAZING ISN'T SHE. I was actually moved by her victory over Petrova (whom I find unusually hot). It's really a dream come true, literally, and it's such a heartwarming story. 17-year-old qualifier pushing and digging her way to the quarter-finals of the US Open. ON ARTHUR ASHE STADIUM, the biggest tennis stadium in the world.
At this rate, I wouldn't be surprised if she made the final. BUT THEN, she plays Caroline Wozniacki next - not a Russian. And ranked within the top 10. That should be interesting. Definitely gonna watch.
And that concludes my tennis commentary.
I love the US Open.
Random things about me:
1. I like cafes. No, wait - I love cafes. TCC is my favourite coffee chain, and I enjoy sitting in a cosy cafe with a latte, a book, or with a friend. I don't like going to expensive restaurants, but I like going to slightly expensive cafes.
1 Caramel with Mag and Ven today totally reinforced that. I was fucking sick from too much cake (genuinely felt like puking in drafting tutorial and spent 10 minutes in the toilet 'cause I felt really sick), but oh my god, the latte was quite fantastic. It was the right blend of milk and coffee, and the coffee actually tasted like something. It was even, gasp, aromatic. That cannot be said of Starbucks coffee. And it also cannot be said of coffee shop coffee.
2. I love coffee, but it gives me stomach problems. I drink coffee at around 1 or 2 in the afternoon. At around 4-something, I'd start to feel gastric-y. I don't know what it is, and so I can't name it exactly; but it's this faint sensation I get, as if my stomach's empty. And I always, ALWAYS take coffee after food and never in the morning.
Needless to say this makes me very sad. And it's even kind of weird, considering I used to guzzle coffee like crazy. When rushing papers (i.e. starting on a paper two or three days before the deadline) I'd drink 5 cups of coffee at night to pull an all-nighter. On a normal day I drank at least three cups. And I was completely fine.
Not so much anymore. And I have ZERO idea why. It is very sad indeed.
3. I like walking. A lot. If the weather permits I'd choose to walk home from Rail Mall. If the weather permits I'd walk from the end of Orchard to City Hall, perhaps even to the Supreme Court. London was fantastic for me because Mag and I walked virtually eveywhere (I tried to do the same when I was there by myself but I couldn't understand the fucking map and so I ended up tubing from the National Gallery to Covent Gardens. Which was quite ridiculous because they were probably 5 minutes away on foot). And so was Paris, as a matter of fact, and to a lesser extent, Athens. The weather in those places was fantastic - barring the annoying light, all-day rain during our second day in London, the temperature was just nice for walking. It was even a bit cold in Paris at times.
Here, on a normal day I'm not able to walk five minutes outdoors without wanting to fucking die. The weather's getting better for sure, but it's not uniform, it's not consistent. Last night Tong and I drove to Orchard. I parked at the open-air carpark next to Wheelock. We walked down to Hard Rock Cafe (where I didn't wanna eat 'cause it was too noisy), then back to Wheelock, then across the road to the end of Shaw, then to the 24 hours TCC, and back across the road to Forum.
At the end of the walk I was so annoyed, hot, and irritated that I was seriously and genuinely on the verge of throwing a temper tantrum. If it'd been my parents, the tantrum would've been flung into the fucking humid air. I can't stand it when things don't go my way, when I don't get what I want when I want it (I wanted an iced latte. Didn't get an iced latte. 'Cause nothing decent was open, and the stupid TCC only had outdoors seat. WTF, outdoors? Do they think this country is air-conditioned or something? They must be out of their minds). To make things worse, I inherited my bad temper from my equally bad-tempered parents.
So yep, I was seriously on the verge of throwing a hissy fit. The annoyance was etched all over my face.
But then, my irritation melted away when Tong said, "Don't be moody. You're with me!"
We ended up at Forum's McDonalds' - the air-con was quite god-sent, the stupid McCafe had shit drinks, I ate a freaking Filet-O-Fish even though I wasn't freaking hungry, McDonalds' fries are really quite emaciated. At first I hated the idea of driving all the way to Orchard, just to sit at McDonalds' (which really isn't one of my favourite places in the world, to put it mildly. Don't understand why fast food places always smell of stale oil); but I was with my lovely boyfriend, who put up with my almost-temper tantrum, and held my hand throughout it all.
4. When I'm in love with someone, I can put up with a lot of things I'd bitch like hell about coming from someone else. Sometimes I worry about being too much of a doormat. I think I certainly was a doormat two years ago (or thereabout), but there's a fine line between compromising and constantly giving in, without getting anything in return. Of course, this begs the question: Do I expect something in return? I can be fake-romantic and say, in an entirely fake fashion, that I don't expect anything in return; but the truth is, generally speaking, I do. Everything in life is a quid pro quo - love included.
The good news is, my expectations are low, and I don't need a lot. An acknowledgement and appreciation of my compromise is good enough for me. I don't need a gesture in return for everything I do, and I don't need a similar compromise for every compromise I make. It hasn't been a lot so far, and I'm quite hardpressed to think of any off the top of my head - except maybe the smoking thing (went from "don't smoke around me" to "okay you can smoke if you want to and I'd even still kiss you after that"). I can't think of anything else.
My point is, this fine line between a healthy, necessary compromise and being an outright doormat is pretty hard to navigate. I completely lost my way in the past (won't go into details because they're retarded and a waste of time), but now, I think things are exactly the way they should be. I guess small things don't matter in the grander scheme of things - of you and me, of us, and the hope that we have to be together for quite a long time.
5. On a completely different note, sometimes I still want to write. Most of the time I'm quite hell-bent on that IHRL Masters, that job at Amnesty International (eventually), the United Nations (in my dreams). But sometimes, I still want to write - even though I'm writing basically nothing, and the stuff that I have written are utter shit. I know they are utter shit because they are not up to scratch, and I don't see the point in writing something, in producing something, that I wouldn't pay for if it came out published, capable of being purchased off a shelf at Kinokuniya. I read nothing but the best modern prose, the best comtemporary literature, and sure, my standards are subjective, but my standards are my own. And I can't accept anything less - from the writers I read, and from myself.
Therefore, this writing thing tends to pull me into two opposite directions. On the one hand, I love it like I've never loved anything before in my life; on the other hand, in my humble opinion, I'm good at it, but not that great. And this is my honest opinion. Maybe I have the potential to go somewhere with it, but writing, like any other talent, requires hard work. And I just don't have the capacity, the energy, the time, the motivation, to put in the necessary amount in that department.
Seems like quite a waste sometimes. Sometimes, it seems like, maybe, I really should be writing instead of doing anything else.
But when I think about how I'm really not that great at it, any notion of pursuing this writing thing ends up feeling like a waste of time.
But then again, we only live once, right?
6. Because we only live once, I'm not looking forward to the next two years of my life. To say the least.
7. I can't decide if I'd rather go to the UK or the US. Going to the UK means I can go around Europe and have a fucking good time, but I'd like to experience a different education system. Going to the US means I can experience a different education system, but it means...I'd be in the US. America. Um, ew?
I adore Europe and it's absolutely fascinating to me. The richness of the culture, of the history, and standing in the middle of an archaelogical site that predates you by so many years that it's utterly inconceivable to your puny brain, and being a part of that vast, immense history - even if it's just a small part, an insignificant one, easily forgotten, making absolutely no impact. I love going to ruins even though sometimes there's nothing much to see because the idea of standing on a piece of land that has seen thousands of years of wars, deaths, progress, change - it's immense. It's incredible. The very idea of being physically there, a part of history, it's absolutely mind-boggling and it thrills me so much that I really can't adequately describe it. Going up the Acropolis and standing at the apex, looking down at the whole of Athens, was absolutely one of the best moments of my life, and being lucky enough to fulfill one of the things I wanted to do before I die was really quite amazing, to say the least.
Europe is full of places like that. Even being in the Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, Notre-Dame, the stupid Palace of Versailles (too opulent that it was disgusting) - absolutely incredible.
I don't know if I look elsewhere for the collective history and experience that I'm deprived of as a Singaporean. Maybe that is so. I'd be honest and say that Raffles Hotel is one of my favourite places in this country, and I also love the Fullerton. I think the National Taiwan University is absolutely gorgeous (I found out during Edu-Dine when I sat next to a professor from Taiwan that NTU was built by the Japanese during their colonisation). And I think BTC is also absolutely gorgeous (though Block B is STILL fug-ass).
I like being in old places, old buildings, historical ruins. It doesn't have to be in Europe, and sure as hell doesn't have to be European or Western. Angkor Wat and the entire archaelogical (ok forgot how to spell this) site was absolutely amazing. Malacca is one of the few places in Malaysia that I really like because its unique historical experience gives it a distinct character from the rest of the Malaysian states that I've visited (admittedly, not a lot).
Therefore, I feel like going to the UK. Because, Europe? I'm absolutely in love with the idea of Europe. I can't say the same for the US.
But I don't want to go to a civil law country because the law schools there are weird.
But the UK system is a bit sian.
I can't decide. =(
*
Ok I'm sick of this entry. Gonna go watch tennis now.
before sunrise // before sunset
Previously:
- - Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2017
I'm moving. - Sunday, Jul. 11, 2010
In all honesty - Tuesday, Jul. 06, 2010
What I want for my birthday... - Sunday, Jul. 04, 2010
On Roger's behalf. - Friday, Jul. 02, 2010