About 120 students, parents, and school staff from the Table Tennis Club of Alec’s School went to an open Table Tennis Club in ShenZhen today for a half day training.
We left the school in 3 coach buses at about 8:00 this morning and got there by 9:45am. There were some 25 tables there on one floor all for our about 45 students total. Every 2 students split a 3 hour session with a local coach over each table. Alec was very enthusiastic at the beginning as opposed to his partnering schoolmate that immediately the coach showed her different emotions over the two. While she was smiling and clapping hands after Alec’s first round, she was hitting the ball toward Alec’s partner for his not paying attention. Not too good a workmanship but coaches are coaches, I suppose. Yet, judging by his responses, I believe Alec’s partner may have some sort of learning disability which is unfortunate and I am sorry for his being mistreated. However, toward the end, Alec too started showing signs of fatigue and that frustrated the coach a bit.
I don’t blame the coach as I saw most of the kids from our group have that natural lazy postures where they all stood with slanted shoulders, crooked spines and strengthless legs. When they were getting ready for the ball, they all stood with a “bus waiting” posture. There were exception, of course. Those who have won inter-school tournaments played excellently as usual. It just disturbs me to see that kind of laziness in most HK kids. Although I have been reminding Alec about his postures constantly in the past, somehow it still got into him. Maybe it’s time to have a word with the Principal. Some sort of Commando training might be needed to call for.
The coach was great in that she did pointed out and corrected several of Alec’s form and techniques in such a short time. Although not enough to metamorphose Alec, it was beneficial to Alec’s play nonetheless.
Another matter was that the mother of Alec’s partnering schoolmate went to collect the balls for the coach. Initially, I too thought that would be a courtesy thing to do for the coach but the moment I saw her facial expression showing some kind of discomfort with that and that she finished off with each student for the round by finishing off the balls in that one basket and went to collect the balls herself, I realized if we kept refilling the basket for her, there would be no indication of when to finish with each student for the round. Within the 3 hour session, even though the coach played much better than the students, she did need that break while collecting balls. When I explained this to the parent, she insisted on doing so and explaining that by doing so, the coach would have no reason to stop teaching! Only when I explained to her that the coach is also human and not a machine or slave and that she needed the ball count to rotate the students, she would stop refilling the basket. It was only a 1-1/2 hour session less about a total of 10 minute ball collection for each student. Even if the coach were to add back those 10 minutes of ball collection it wouldn’t make much improvement to the training. Besides, both kids themselves lost interests and showed body fatigue less than 2 hours into the 3 hour session already. It is funny to see how some people always keep tap of the clock without functioning their brains.
We went to a Shanghaiese restaurant for lunch in a mall similar to the Festival Walk we have here in Kowloon Tong. Alec took a half hour one-on-one Ice-skating beginner’s course at the mall and another half hour of free practice all for RMB150, skates rental included. We shopped a bit afterwords before we headed back, and I was stunted by the high prices of some the Apple Computer products there. RMB1600 for an iSight with the rest of the product prices blocked out of my mind for now for they too were too expensive for me to bother keeping track.
Once again, the Mainland trip reminds me of how stupid our “one country” boarder crossing procedure is compared to the “two country” Canadian/US boarder. But that, would be another blog message.
WhaUSay?!