Dogbert’s Whip

Like almost all Filipino households yesterday, I was glued to the television screen to watch the highly-anticipated rematch between our very own Manny “The Pacman” Pacquiao and the Mexican Erik Morales. Towards the end of the 10^th round, raucous cheering and revelry swarmed our nation with Manny’s stunning knockout of the fancied Mexican. It was so unlike the pugilists’ previous encounter in March of last year when Pacquiao took quite a beating, and promptly lost in a unanimous decision. Back then, Manny’s personal issues – his woes with his promoter, taxman, and yes, even his boxing gloves and socks – were claimed to have contributed to his eventual loss.

It may seem like sour grapes but given that Pacquiao has become the hero of every ordinary Juan Dela Cruz, it’s no wonder that our countrymen feel so strongly for who could be the best boxer to come out of the Philippines. And with the depressing national and economic issues plaguing our nation, it’s no wonder that people would rather see a triumphant Pacquiao on the front cover of our daily broadsheets, rather than the latest developments on charter change and the please-make-it-stop-now-or-I’ll puke-green-slime “Hello, Garci” wiretapping scandal.

Pacquiao’s victory in the pinnacle of boxing glory inspired me to resume what I neglected to do for more than a month now: join my friends’ weekly badminton games in Star Smash Timog Ave every Sunday. For the past year, my clique has holed up in this place to smash shuttlecocks (or shuttledicks, as we prefer calling them) and stumble ungracefully on the Taraflex-lined badminton courts. Between my daunting office tasks and plain indolence, I somehow have all the varied excuses to shun performing cardio-vascular activities. But with the euphoric mood affecting me like a venomous snake bite, I decided to grab my stuff and head out for the badminton court.

My bestfriend, the Guru of Adidas and Badminton (GAB), who happens to be the best player in the group, has gotten pretty depressed with my and our other friends’ abysmal failure to improve on the game. GAB laments that despite all the pointers that he has shared to the group, most of us have somehow managed to wallow in the “skilled” (read: beginner) level instead of progressing to the “advanced” level. Up until now, our smashes lack power, our grips are all wrong, and our footwork is comparable to a duck that has gone to an all-night lager fest. It’s not like we lack the motivation to improve; but rather, we treat badminton as a social sport.     

Badminton has ceased to be the sissy sport that only shrieking girls in wind-blown skirts would play. In college, I passed the chance on taking a badminton class in PE for fear of my high school buddies learning about it. If I’ve known that badminton would be so huge now, I would’ve signed up for it in a heart beat. Nowadays, its blitzing popularity of the sport is evidenced by the growing number of private badminton courts mushrooming everywhere. I heard that some badminton racquets are even more expensive than most top of the line tennis racquets. The good thing about badminton is that one does not have to be built like a burly athlete to play. It’s not as physically demanding as most sports, and is one of the few games where technique and timing is more important than power or sheer brute strength.

Going back to yesterday’s badminton game, I immediately swung my racquet around as soon as I arrived in Star Smash. Since time was ticking fast, we didn’t have time (or just plainly didn’t want) to stretch and warm up. In the middle of one game, I had stitches all over my chest and back areas. It was hurting me like crazy, and it limited my mobility to chase after the shuttledicks. After losing two consecutive games, Yaya, one of our friends, joked that I was fast becoming the “alat” of the session. Not wanting to give up, I teamed up with Ivan, one of the better players of our group, and proceeded to win our game by bageling (15-0) the team of Luis and Joma (peace!). “Tapos na ba? We hardly broke sweat,” we kidded quite cockily afterwards.

Our group usually devotes 6-8pm of every Sunday to play badminton. For us, it’s a great way to bond since everybody can take part in it and a session would normally cost just a hundred bucks each. In contrast, it costs more than a hundred pesos to watch a movie in the theatre these days, and even a bottle of brew in your standard bar would come close or even more than that. Besides, Sundays also give us the opportunity to have supper and chit-chat after our games. It’s rather refreshing when friends are able to have frill-free fun and bond closer in the process. These days, such opportunities don’t come often.

Right now, my muscles and joints ache from playing two hours’ worth of badminton without much of a flex or a warm up. I might have to visit our company nurse to request for a pop of Alaxan. And since our group’s after dinner chat went close to 10pm, I now have this nagging urge to take an on the job discreet nap. Yep, it’s far from being comfortable, but with Sundays like the one that I had yesterday, it’s definitely all worth it.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 22nd, 2006 at 8:59 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.