August 10, 2016

Five Weeks Wandering - MD, NV, NJ, NH, TX
I've been all over the place these past five weeks. (I've spent the last five days catching up on piles of work…) Here's a recap – in reverse order.

  • July 31 – Aug. 4 – Coaching at the Junior Olympics in Houston. Thirteen players from my club, MDTTC, flew to Texas, and we dominated. (This was helped by a lot of states that quaked in fear at the power of Maryland Table Tennis, and so didn't show – hi California! Zero entries. Hope to see you next year!) Maryland won 30 medals, including 17 golds. I wrote and sent out a press release and group picture, which was published by USATT, Butterfly, and a shortened version in the Baltimore Sun. Also got to spend a late afternoon swimming in the Gulf of Mexico, and spent a couple hours with some of the kids and parents at the Houston Art Museum. (I found a perfect way to increase interest – in each room of art, we voted on which piece "won the room." Picasso was a big hit.)
  • July 22-30 – "The Never-Ending Odyssey" writing workshop in Manchester, NH. This is an annual gathering of graduates of the six-week Odyssey Science Fiction & Fantasy Writing Workshop, which I attended in 2006. We workshop and write new stories, and have 3-4 hours each day of classes we teach ourselves. I now have four new stories. (To date I've sold 79 short stories and published three novels.) While there I stopped by the New Hampshire TTC for an hour, where I hit with Brad Robbins and others.
  • July 10-22 – USATT Supercamp in New Jersey. I blogged daily there, and the blogs were also published by USATT as news items, along with photos and video by Matt Hetherington. Now, for the first time ever, here are links to all eleven of my articles, as well as two by Sean O'Neill and one by Rahul Acharya. I'm toying with compiling this as a book.
  • July 3-9 – coaching at the USA Nationals in Las Vegas. Here are results. Here's my July 8 blog on the Men's Final.

Five Weeks of Articles
During my five weeks away, a lot of articles have accumulated at various places! Here are some you might want to check out:

Tom's Table Tennis Newsletter
Here's the new issue, which includes the following segments and other links:

  • Tactics for beating a looper
  • How to deal with too much conflicting table tennis advice
  • REVIEW: Butterfly Amicus Professional Table Tennis Robot
  • Table tennis at the Rio Olympics

Olympic Coverage
Here's the ITTF International Coverage, and here are USATT's News Segments. Both Men's Singles and Women's Singles are into the semifinals. So . . . do Mizutani or Samsonov have a chance against Ma Long or Zhang Jike?

Women's World Cup in Philadelphia
Here's the ITTF press release, in Philly on Oct. 9-11.

ITTF Launches Table Tennis X
Here's the article and video (1:38).

ITTF Launches New Website!
Here's the ITTF press release.

PingSkills Answer Your Questions
Here's the video (55:08) from Aug. 1.

ABC News and Navin Kumar
Last Thursday ABC News taped a news segment at MDTTC featuring "The Bionic Man" Navin Kumar, where I was his hitting partner and was also interviewed. It hasn't aired yet – I'll link to it here when it does – but here's Navin's posting and picture on it.

NBC News and Kanak Jha
Here's the video (2:28) of the NBC News special on Kanak Jha before the Olympics.

Meet Nigeria’s Quadri Aruna
Here's the article and video interview (3:32) from Pong Universe.

Why Do Ping Pong Balls Burn?
Here's the article.

Jason and Alex Piech at the USA Nationals
Here's the video (3:58)! They are from Arkansas, but came to Maryland for two weeks of MDTTC camps recently. They were also at the Junior Olympics – both got medals.

Sid & Nandan Little Big Shots Video
Here's the video (5:57) of the Naresh brothers from Chicago.

Trillion Dollar Bill and Ice Cream
At the recent USATT Supercamp, I twice tried to pay for items with a "trillion dollar bill." Here's the video (23 sec) taken by Allen Wang as I tried to do so at a convenience store. I also tried to do so when I treated the kids to ice cream at the camp – here's the video (1:45) taken by Arcot Naresh (I previously linked to this one). I often give out these trillion dollar bills to kids as rewards for various achievements. Regarding ice cream, on the last day, just before I left the camp, I stocked the freezer at the house we were staying at with ice cream. Here's the video (15 sec) of the kids eating it and thanking me for it.

Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Game
Here's the video (14 sec)!

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