30th November, 2005: Placed my order, Tele is on its way!!

I finally saved enough money to get my own gutiar. And it'd be a great one for sure with its quality and sound. The one that I'm getting is Fender Standard Telecaster. It comes with a Fender Gig bag as a gift. What a deal!!! In addition, I bought a black pickguard just to kick it up a little. I'll bring this back home and play with my entire awesome setup. Yay!!!! It's the best thing ever. Free shipping too..it'll arrive in 2-5 business days.

28th November, 2005: Hurricane III is here

The rubber that I ordered last sunday arrived...it took way way way way longer than it should be. Anyway, it's here. My first impression to this rubber is, it's very hard. I'm not sure how I'm going to play with it. I'll see how it turns out after glueing a few times on friday. It shouldn't be that bad...

28th November, 2005: Strat or Tele...

Standard Strat Satin Black Metallic

Satin Amber Trans Strat

I'm tangled up. Don't know which to choose from. I found that within the price range. I would be able to get a strat with better pickups. Seriously, I'm not sure how do they sound. It would be great if I can test it out one by one and gotta see all the colors. But that's not the case. I thought i've made up my mind to get a tele with maple neck. I've read that the standard strat is a cheap axe. Knobs don't work a whole lot plus pickups aren't that good. The Trans Strat has better customer feedback. I love the Satin Amber color combination. But I'm not sure about other color combinations. Probably I'll be stuck with this or the Butterscotch tele. Choice 1 or 2....

25th November, 2005: Wish to have a new guitar

Burning for a butterscotch blonde?

Now you can grab one on a budget. This limited-run axe is a Fender-designed honey. It features the most famous of all Tele finishes atop an alder body joined to the rock-solid bolt-on maple neck with maple fretboard and dot inlays. Also has a 25-1/2" scale, medium-jumbo frets, and 2 single-coil pickups.

Squier® Affinity Series Telecaster Special Features:

• Alder body
• Maple neck
• Maple fretboard
• 25-1/2" scale
• Medium-jumbo frets
• 2 single-coils

This is the baby that I'm thinking about. I love the color combination of this guitar. I've never had a tele. It'd be my first one. I want to try a faster maple neck this time. A guitar with trebly sound would be a new toy for me. I'm ready to play funky riffs with it. Hopefully, I can get it sooner with my earnings. I'm planning to carry it to Hong Kong and play with my stomp boxes and 12" cab.

20th November, 2005: Comfirmed that I'm going back Hong Kong for winter break.

Yes, it's confirmed that I'm going back on 27th Dec, 2005 until 11th Jan, 2006. I think I missed my family and the food there. Also, I'm a little tired of the southern life in the US. I hope I could get back to normal life in Hong Kong. I was thinking to visit my friend in Korea. But not sure if I could do that or not. Probably I can't. I ordered the world famous Hurricane III finally. It's used by all the chinese national players. My Sriver EL is not doing good on my forehand. I feel that it's a bit too soft and dwells too long. I hope this DHS chinese rubber will improved the consistency of my forehand shots.

18th November, 2005: 4 hours of carpet cleaning...

My apartment flooded because of the heavy rainfall on this tuesday. I didn't have time to clean it until today. So today I found a carpetcleaner out in the hallway and bought the carpet cleaning solution and cleaned up my carpet. Before, it smelled so terrible. Whenever I came in my apartment I could throw up. Now, after cleaning it still smell a little. But there's no way to clean it completely i guess. I 've to live with it. I played with my shakehand blade today. I felt good despite my forehand attacks are still akward. I love those rubbers on my blade. My butterfly Bryce on backhand is just right for me to do anything from looping to push. Good stuff!!!

13th Nov, 2005: The Unbeatable SIUC TT Team

5am in the morning outside the SRC

Schedule of the day

battle against NIU, since I lose my match

10pc Chicken McNuggets for my lunch (paid by SIUC)

vs. Maryville University

Gameover

Our team couldn't beat IIT tech. That was the toughest battle of the day...

I got up at 5 am in the morning. No matter how sleepy I was, I had to get up. We took off at around 6 am and arrived in Champaign at 9 am. It didn't feel that long to get to there. We had 3 matches against other 3 universities in the morning. We beat them all without any question. We even beat the previous years rival UIUC. I played with the only female player in that tournament against UIUC. My teammates gave me pressure since she's a girl, I could not let people laugh at me. Of course I won. And during the battle against UIUC, our number one player beat the guy who wore the USA TT shirt. It's funny that SIUC beat USA!!!! In the afternoon, I didn't warm up so well and I hit too hard causing me temperory injured my chest. But that's fine. I picked up my pace once again after losing a few games. It's a fun day. We had our free dinner (SIUC reimbursment) on Green Street at a Korean Restaurant. We all had a great meal without leaving any space in our stomach. From this tournament, I found quite some weaknesses that I've not noticed before after switching to the penhold grip. I would switch back to shakehand grip from now to increase my chances of progression. I'll see how it goes.

5th October, 2005: Worst ever...

It's the last week before the college tournament. I played a lot of games with my teammates. I couldn't play well..I missed my serves...I hit it too long... misjudge the degree of spin. Missed everything. Today I felt like crap. I've never had this kind of feeling before. Just don't feel right. Too many things are in my mind. Graduation...job...my life next year...All I could do is to scream and hit myself against a wall. I get to be ready for next week. That why I practiced so hard everyday by myself. There's no improvement or whatso____ingever!!! Darn it... The only good thing is, I played pretty well when we practice playing doubles. I got all the advantage for this. Coach will let me partner with the Malaysian guy and play doubles. At least I not worthless. I will enjoy every moment in the tournament. I know that I'd not ever have a chance to play in a club and tournament like this after graduation. I'm pretty sad that all the good things around me just come and go. Always when I get really serious on a particular thing, I messed it up or I can't hold on to it. I went to see "Jarhead" in the theatre. It's a movie about a kid went to the marine and wanted to serve his country. He found out that nothing is like what he thinks. Anyways, he was trained and ready to go to war. As long as he landed on the dessert, he missed his love one. The more he thought about it, the worst it became. When the war is over, he returned home and figured that nothing's like before. He still thinks that he's in the dessert. Same thing could probably apply to me. I pretty much feel the same way except I don't have to put my life on the line.