you might forget the past, but facebook won't!
Facebook is amazing (and just a little bit scary). I have had one of those 'blast from the past' days, where random people from your past that you haven't seen or heard from in ages suddenly reappear. Two people from different places where I used to work emailed/messaged me today, and the crowning glory on the cake was someone that I haven't spoken to in about 8 years somehow found me again on facebook. :) It was a really welcome surprise.
It blows my mind that things that I thought were well and truly in the past can be revived. It reminds me of
other musings I've had in the past, about people and relationships and how they change. Life is so fluid and unexpected sometimes... especially when something from the past comes back and reminds you of things you forgot, or may never have noticed in the first place. :)
wimbledon
This post has been a looong time coming. But it finally sees the light of day! A round-up of my wimbledon experience this year :)
PART ONE: THE ACQUISITION.
It's 8pm on a sunday night. A group of friends in the city of London are on a five-way skype conference call. They have been brought together by a common goal: to score some of the few available tickets to Wimbledon centre court the next day. The task is difficult - the site restricts each person to only two tickets, and the group want a total of eight - but they are ready for the challenge.
The level of anxiety is high. Backup plans are formulated; fallbacks set in motion. Failure is unthinkable. The alternative is lining up at 4am outside the gates in the unpredictable London weather (no, thank you.) Having prepared as much as possible - preregistering accounts, saving credit card details - they sit and wait, nervously hitting refresh periodically... but not
too periodically, lest they get blocked from the site. They have nothing to do but wait until the clock ticks over to 8:30 and the tickets become available to buy. Everyone knows their task: as soon as you see the tickets online, let everyone know. Then buy like there's no tomorrow.
At 8:25, one of the party is disconnected from the conversation. A brief panic period ensues, but abates when he rejoins the conversation a minute later. The group is twitchy, nervous. They don't need anything unexpected to happen right now.
Each person has a different time on their clock, so some people hit 8:30 earlier than others. Some get to 8:30... but still no tickets. 8:31... no tickets. F5. wait. F5. wait... when will it end?
Then suddenly: a flurry of activity. The cry of "it's on, it's on!" cuts through the air, and everyone immediately refreshes their page. Some can see the change immediately, but unfortunately others are greeted with the same blank interface saying "no tickets available yet" with every attempt to buy. There is stress and confusion. Why are some allowed to buy and others aren't?
why??The dust settles 15 seconds later. Three of the five have managed to get tickets allocated, but the others are faced with a stonewalling message saying there are none left to buy. There are enough tickets allocated to cover the six on skype, but the relief is short lived, as one of the party is having trouble getting their switch card details accepted. Noooo...! Four confirmed tickets; two that may be lost to the pool if the two minute limit for completing the transaction is reached. Will they get so close only to stumble on a technicality? Panicked, they ask for confirmation of which numbers are supposed to be used and try again, but still no joy. The card just doesn't work. Fed up, they take drastic action and pull out their Australian credit card. The group prays that they have made it in time.
The request is submitted.... and rewarded! success! Six tickets in hand! They celebrate with relief, and now only have to wait until the morrow.
(I wrote the previous passage that gleeful night, buoyed by a natural high. Now...)
PART TWO: WHY LONDON WEATHER SUCKS.
We should have known by all the previous days that the rain was almost a certainty, but we'd planned this date weeks in advance. AND having gone through such an ordeal for the tickets, we felt lucky just to be going at all.
The night before I had gone to an internet cafe to print out the tickets, and at 67 pounds each they were not cheap. I had almost 1000 australian dollars of Wimbledon ticket mass in my posession, and it was making me n-e-r-v-o-u-s. Bigtime.
There was quite a bit of security at the entrances because of the recent car bomb attempts over the weekend. Traffic was slow and people/cars were being searched, which I was happy to put up with... it made me feel safer, but there were a lot of people and crowds anyway.
First impressions: Wimbledon is very green. There is green paint, green fences, green seats, green staircases, green buildings, green signposts and roofs and merchandise. The grounds are quite large and very purpose built. You can see giant rooms for the press; radio station facilities, first aid quarters, merchandise shops and stalls. There's a hint of a hidden members' world on the grounds -- sightings of (appealingly warm and dry) restaurants or covered terrances with people in them, but without any visible entrances. Wimbledon would be a nice place if it wasn't raining, but when it's wet there's just nowhere to go.
The rain did not really let up all day - we had at least five interruptions because of showers. When we arrived it was raining and play was delayed until 11:30, so we scoped out the grounds for a bit. There are three main courts (Centre court, Court 1 and Court 2), and a lot of outer courts where there are normally doubles matches or some of the juniors matches going. However, because of the rain messing up the schedule there was a Nalbandian vs Baghdatis match being played on one of the tiny outer courts with three rows of seats on either side that I was keen keen keen to see, but we had no chance of getting seats to.
We settled into our centre court tickets, which were in a surprisingly good position... as Phil said, we avoided "tennis neck" because we could see the whole court in one go :) The arena isn't nearly as big as I had expected either - it always looks so big on TV! But I felt quite close to the action. Unfortunately because of the buying process our six seats were in pairs that weren't really close to each other, so we swapped around a bit. Phil's fascination with ballboys and grunting female players made the rain-delayed morning quite exciting (as did his Maltesers and Pringles) while I brought 'sensible food' and a camera with video capabilities into the equation. And oh, did we make good with the photo and video...
First off was a Justine Henin vs Patty Schnyder match, which gave me a healthy new respect for womens' tennis. You don't realise the amount of power and talent they require to play -- it always flattens out when it translates to TV. I can only imagine what it would be like to watch Roger Federer or any other really great player at a grand slam. There were some really good rallies and the end score didn't quite match up with the quality of tennis; it seemed like a pretty close one in my opinion, but Henin won in the end.
Next up was THE match between Serena Williams and Daniela Hantuchova. Yes, the one where Serena collapsed on court because of a calf muscle strain and continued playing afterwards, and eventually won. It was a truly marathon event that was about 2.5 hours of play over a period of 6.5 hours thanks to all the rain delays :p I am ashamed to say that even though it was one of the most exciting matches of the tournament, I just didn't appreciate it because I was feeling impatient, frustrated and rather damp. I had seat-swapped to Niall's territory in another corner of the stadium where there were two of the most irritating children ever invented sitting right behind us. ARGH. Combined with the perpetual on-again-off-again rain, and a desire to see this match end so that Roddick and Mathieu could start theirs, I wasn't a very happy camper.
We were supposed to get four matches that day, but with the rain we only managed the first two, and only just. :( I was quite disappointed on the day that I didn't get to see any mens' matches. However, a day or two later I got over all the selfishness and was just glad I got the chance to go, which is more than most people can say.
And next time, I'll be there for a Roger Federer match. Just watch me. :)
