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AMASHIWI

"Culture is the heritage of us all. some may be more interested than others in the treasures of the past, but no one can fail to take a pride in his country's participation in the story of mankind, as represented in carvings, sculpture, music, paintings and the other arts. And there is a personal commitment to this, for no man can really say he is alone: we are all joined through our identity, with the cultures which are part of the mainstream of life"
- Simon Kapwepwe, Zambian Independence Freedom Fighter

"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm" - Winston Churchill

"Try to be the rainbow in someone else's cloud" - Maya Angelou

"Your time is limited so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinion drown out your inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition" - Steve Jobs








Wednesday 26 May 2010

Tennis And Basketball

Nadal made a good start today.  6-2,6-2,6-2 but don't be fooled by the numbers, he had to work harder than I'm sure he expected to "breeze" through to the second round.  I was very impressed by his opponent, the young Frenchman Gianni Mina, who eerily reminded me very much of his fellow countryman Gael Monfils.  Same body structure, same dressing, although now Monfils has been dropped by Nike.  The sleeveless shirt reminded me of what John McEnroe dubbed Nadal's "pirate" days.  He needs to go back to wearing the malanga mpamvu, which literally translated means showing power.  This conventionality of dressing he has employed in recent years after he became World no 1 is not on, and I liked the checked shorts he was wearing in the tournaments leading up to the French.  I digress. I was talking about Gianni Mina.

I just hope that Mina does not follow in Monfils footsteps and becomes all flamboyance and flash and no substance with the gifts bestowed upon him.  I had such high hopes for Monfils, who along with Tsonga showed a lot of promise.  Tsonga managed to make it to the top ten, while Monfils continues to lounge at the brink of greatness.   His mental game is terrible.  He clearly has the fire power and plays to be a greater player.  Instead he chooses to showboat, with unbelievable gets, tumbles to the ground, and ridiculous splits on hard courts to reach balls. Or he does the complete opposite, cowering in a corner when he should pounce and being aggressive when he should be cautious.  I hope that Mina only uncannily resembles him superficially.

I have now been sucked into the Western Conference play-offs and watched the Lakers lose to the Suns which now ties up the series at 2 apiece.  Kobe Bryant was not very nice in the conference following, and rightly so - the commentators were asking stupid, repetitive questions and clearly he was angry at the loss.  And he said that the team needs to defend and it's not about offense so many times really why ask the same question in a different way?! However, he said something with regards to something I always wonder about - the validity and virility of stats.  I mean some of them are really interesting but what does what happened in years before got to do with anything?!  Especially with teams because its not only a different set of circumstances, its also a matter of different players altogether.  When someone talked about how in game 5, the Lakers have put the pressure on in the last few years, Kobe completely dismissed them and said what happened before doesn't matter, its the present that he has to worry about, or something to that effect. The Suns are a powerful team and they can beat the Lakers so that should not be taken lightly. Which reminded me of Nadal and how he seems to play as if every point is in itself is the most important thing, he is able to shrug off the past so easily and never gets carried away into the future either, nor does he seem to think or care about what he has done before. He's a very in the moment kind of guy...Hence the post: Tennis and Basketball :)

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