The Dansk Badminton Life

bike love. (and cycle chic intro!)

2010-01-12T09:25:00.001-08:00

so i'm finally going to post this, which has been in draft form since.. basically august. it's about bikes, bikes in copenhagen, and my newfound love for all of the above. everyone who travels to copenhagen notices the bikes. i don't know all the stats, but there are a LOT of bikes here, and there's obviously a lot of planning that's gone into making the city hospitable to bikes, with some planning even specifically for the bikes. it's hard to describe, it's almost something you have to see for yourself. with that in mind, and to save me some time, i start you off with this article with some stats and cool infrastructure info, copenhagenize.com, a blog for all things bike, and these photos:

the easiest way to say it is that these are completely normal scenes (well, besides all that sun, but that's a different story). these could be at any intersection in the city. bikes are everywhere. it was fun to see the few times i visited last season, but more and more i just stopped noticing them, mostly because i wasn't one of them, and i couldn't relate. but then when i decided to move and live here, i got into it in a unique, personal way, and i'm now fully adjusted and in love. not to say the adjustment was entirely painless - my experience with bikes at home in california had been sunny, warm, kiddish neighborhood fun or family excursions for exercise: all diamond frames, tennis shoes, and rubber bands around the pant leg, following relatives in sporty bike lycra and sunglasses. oh, and we were all wearing helmets. growing up in the 'burbs' it didn't even occur to us to bike the 2-minute drive to the safeway down the road, nor to use the bike for 'normal' things. it just wasn't on the radar. and as i got older it became cars all the way as the bikes sat deflated, sad, and forgotten in the garage.

enter moving to denmark.

when i first arrived in copenhagen i was staying with a family and borrowed the wife's bike. hers was kind of like this (this photo, the photo below is of my current bike, the same family's summer house bike which they sold to me when i moved out). luckily my body remembered how to ride, but still, the priority was learning to navigate the bike world and figure out how not to die, which is actually quite easy here. (not to die, i mean.) there are both defined laws and unspoken rules, but once you have those down, you're set to go. i learned everything by taking it easy for the first few times and simply watching the other cyclists for the basics, the subtleties, and general know-how, ie. how to make left turns. here it's called a 'box turn': you cross straight and then stop, positioning your bike to cross perpendicularly to the way you just crossed, accomplishing the left turn. this was completely new to me, but it's not difficult. none of it really is, you just have to learn it and get used to it.

the more time spent on the road the more i absorbed and internalized about cycling in a city like this: where to look for the bike lanes, to notice when there were separate lights at intersections for bikes and start to understand the reason behind them, where to look for cars and pedestrians, how to pass, how to stop and start smoothly, how to check over your shoulder quickly, where to park the bike, how to take care of it, everything. it's been fun. this city is small enough that if you don't need to go far outside it than cycling is the best option by a mile. when visiting before i was working my way around by train and bus, which i can see now was really tedious. i love the freedom of the bike and how you're much closer to everything around you in real time, the sights and smells and sounds of the life of your city. you're exposed too, yes, but with all the bike infrastructure and the way the danes have grown up with bikes it's generally very safe; the drivers are taught where to look, there are separate bike lanes almost everywhere, and it's just part of life. there are some accidents, but they're either the crazies, or just certain situations you learn to watch out for. it's overall painless and infinitely enjoyable.

which leads us to the fun part: once you're comfortable cycling around the city, you can really start to play with it. the act itself becomes almost subconscious so you can start paying attention to everything else. you start out new, nervous, and uncertain, but gradually it gets easier, until one day you actually think about it and realize that you can't imagine getting around any other way. you learn to make full use of the basket options front and back and get used to grocery trips by bike. you start biking with friends since you're not using all your energy focusing on the biking. it becomes possible to listen to music. you start experimenting with riding in dresses, skirts, and heels and find that it really doesn't change anything. you find yourself shaking your head when someone is biking slowly on the left side of the lane or when someone almost falls of when starting or stopping. all in all you almost forget that 5 months ago you had no idea what you were doing, because it just feels so natural now!

before you know it, you're just another rider flying up knippelsbro in the 9pm summer light in flip flops in the posture your mom always told you to sit with at the dinner table, one hand on the handlebars with the other relaxed at your side, riding along glancing casually across the water to see the black diamond to the right, operaen to the let, making the subtle check before passing the mom ahead of you with her kid in the back child's seat. before you know it, you just know how to bike in the city, you know effortlessly when and where to look for what, how to be careful of cars, the signals, the etiquette, the whole nine yards. before you know it you're a full-on københavner, cycling even in the freezing winter, just a moving bundle of jacket, boots, hat, scarf, and gloves and flashing front and rear lights. snow? meh. basically, you find yourself wondering how you ever did it any other way.

..

and then if you're really lucky, you find yourself on this blog: copenhagen cycle chic :D there's a reason i'm linking to this now, as you'll soon see, but for now take it at face value that this is still a really cool and unique blog. i found it early on in my stay here and it's become one of my favorites. it's so much fun to see the scenes i see every day captured like this. (the first two pictures came from this site.) this is really what it's like here. it's also great when they have films like this, just a simple record of what goes on. also love the historical footnotes and explanations of how much biking is part of the danish culture. just love it in general. but as i said, there's a specific reason i linked to cycle chic, which should show up tomorrow! can't wait.

to be continued..

couchsurfing love and holiday plans.

2009-12-14T11:18:00.000-08:00

so here is a plug for couchsurfing, both the concept and the website. i did it for two nights in ireland when i was in dublin for the irish international (after my two-match run in the tournament was over, of course, the first two nights were in the tournament hotel). this was my first couchsurfing outside of denmark, and it was perfect! i stayed with two different people, both single guys living alone, and it was totally fine. my first host was feeling a little under the weather so he just directed me to a popular bar (yes, lauren goes to bars). after unfortunate run-ins with dripping candles and creepy italians, i did meet a friendly irish guy who ended up offering to show me around dublin for the weekend, which was really great. i linked up with my second couchsurfing host late saturday night, but we were both out and about again early sunday so that was a little limiting but still ok as i had my new irish friend showing me around again. it was a good tournament and a great trip overall. and the highlight had to have been hearing 'you scumbag you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot' sung back to me in an irish accent. that made my trip.

as for the holidays, i'm staying in denmark where there is a very good chance it will stay white outside and i'll have my first white christmas! and my first christmas celebrated on the 24th. very bizarre. i'll be up in skagen with the boy and his family, drenched in dansk 'hygge'. can't wait! happy holidays all :)

things that make you go 'huh?'

2009-11-19T06:59:00.000-08:00

so this is what happens in congress!

and this from mom: "you should ask people why you can’t sleep, that’s not good. it killed michael jackson!" she clarified that she knew it actually led to dependency on drugs, but still.

huh?

from the department of WTF

2009-11-18T03:44:00.000-08:00

what is this?? oh, it's this. i get it now. sort of. i'm thinking of asking kasper for translations of what she's saying, but i don't know if i want to know. it sounds vulgar and provoking. i really don't understand this.

on a more lighthearted note, it seems i'll celebrate thanksgiving after all. my new american friends and i are arranging a dinner party next week, and are now in the hunt for a hele kalkun in copenhagen. no luck so far.

and, in other news, i've discovered that there is a network for youth (which to them includes everyone under 35, although i don't know how they verify age) who are interested in opera. through this site i was able to go watch a dress rehearsal for 'carmen' a few days before the official opening - for free - at the beautiful new-as-of-2005 opera house. it's been a long time since i went to anything theater related, much less an opera, so it was really nice. i'm keeping my eyes peeled for the next one.

update, with sweets!

2009-11-13T09:42:00.000-08:00

so, breaking my now one and a half month-long silence, i owe you a lot of news. unfortunately, lots of that gets lost in my resolution not to detail competition results and that sort of thing here anymore since it's available much more directly at the website. so go look at that if you're curious about that kind of thing. the weekends of october were nothing to write home about, team match, free weekend (vinbaren!), tournament, free weekend with kasper after the danish open during the week, team match again. the schedule of competition is pretty intense, especially compared to the US, and of course i still have my academy training every weekday.. it's a packed lifestyle, but i love it. i'm nice and settled into my room with my old Danish man-apartmentmate, and i'm now plotting how to survive the winter. hibernation isn't an option, so i'm just hoping for not too much rain, as i do love getting around by bike.. cold and snow (i think) i can take as long as i have the whole checklist of glovesscarfhatetc. before i head out, but please, weather gods, easy on the rain.

into november, the weekend before last (6-10) i had a small break from the Dansk Badminton Life; i was in england for 5 days, the first half in birmingham, the second in london. birmingham was all business (read: check the website for that), and london was allll play. and kasper was along for the ride, which just made everything better. we only had one full day (monday) to sightsee in london, so we got ourselves up and out at 8 and stayed out until midnight. well done us. i think we basically saw all the 'things to see', the highlights for me being the tower of london (which is, in fact, much more than just one tower) and the crowns, and the london eye. we caught the eye right at sunset, so over the course of half an hour on the slow-mo ferris wheel it went dark and all the city lights came on and it was so beautiful.. as an added bonus since there weren't very many people waiting they only put 12/13 people in the pod-things as opposed to the usual 25. my london pet peeve was having to go upanddownandupanddown each time we wanted to change tube lines, but i guess something has to give. still, the general lack of touristy chaos made me resolve to plan all future holidays on mondays.

back in real life, in copenhagen, it's getting colder and darker all the time. it's black at 5pm. it's cold, and the wind can push the tempurature below freezing. yesterday (sunday) the sun fought through the clouds and we got a gloriously sunny warmish afternoon, which is something you learn not to take for granted in winter in copenhagen.. according to the news we've only had 3 hours of sunshine all november. oy. so i spent it with a new american girlspacefriend wandering around flea markets and stores that opened up along ravnsborggade as a 'julemarked' (christmas market) and then going to a movie/music video screening at an apartment right on the lakes hosted by the most stereotypical french artist-man ever, complete with thick accent, wine, cigarette, and thin supermodelish Danish squeeze. he practically oozed pained-artist. the evening ended in a russian video game designer who lives at that apartment walking my friend and i through 'mini ninjas' with incense wafting about and georgian choir chants playing from his conputer. gotta love the randomness of it all. this is part of my newfound determination to really get out and meet some non-badminton folk, which is proving to be not as difficult as i thought, but still frustrating sometimes. but i've found a few friends who are as eager if not more to explore the city, so it's nice to have new people to do things with.

and that's enough for now, so i leave you with this: 'haribo sport mix'. yay badminton ~~birds~~ shuttles!! they don't taste like much, just gummy sugaryness (sugariness?), but that's not the point. it's good stuff.

reorientation of The Blog and updates.

2009-10-07T11:22:00.000-07:00

the Blog will now just be for musings and miscellanea, as there's a 'News/Recent Results' page on my official website that covers all the competition and strictly badminton-related stuff. and i'm tired of doing it all twice haha.

i'm off to england today to see friends in birmingham and do a one-day boot camp for their club, Activ Sports, and then to spend some time in london. the boyfriend is coming along too. this comes as a good time to take a small break from the last 3 months of non-stop, intense badminton training and competition. everyone needs a break once in a while, and i've been feeling the need to get away briefly and recharge the batteries. i'll come back the better for it, i think.

more long-overdue updates later, i promise!! have a good weekend.

the 2016 olympic city decision in my backyard FRIDAY!!

2009-09-30T14:40:00.000-07:00

so, while everyone in denmark has known about this since forever, i just found out on sunday that the IOC is voting literally this friday, oct. 2, on where the 2016 summer olympics will be. and the vote is here in copenhagen!! the four candidate cities are: chicago (usa), tokyo (japan), madrid (spain), and rio de janeiro (brazil). i'm undecided/ambivilant, which probably isn't good as i'd like to shoot for 2016 as well so some might say i have an interest? i know i should be all 'USA!! yeaahh!!!', but i'm somewhat bored at the thought of another olympics being in an english-speaking place. that's quite a specific bone to pick, i know, but still. and tokyo has a special place in my spleen (don't ask). the point is, i'm not sure about my choice, and i'm not even sure if i care. but i care about the decision itself!

the place where they're doing the meeting/presenting/deliberating/ rhetorical fistfighting/voting is in an event center thing called the bella center, which just so happens to be really close to where i live. we're talking a 10-minute bike ride here. i'm sure all of you have been ignoring my pleas to orient yourself on my life by checking out copenhagen on a map, so i'll elaborate. this bella center is located on the island of amager (which is pronounced 'ama', the second half of the word serves no purpose as far as i can tell). it's the island that also has the airport on it, and it's slightly southeast of the city center and connected to the island right where the city center is located by 3 bridges. i also live on this amager island. the bella center is pretty far to the west, i'm about in the middle, and we're pretty much on the same latidude.

today i biked over there just to see if anything interesting is going on (i had hopes considering michelle obama and oprah are in town), but rather expectedly and unfortunately there is security. i could bike into a far awayish parking lot, but another lot and the entrances were covered. and i'm sure things will get a LOT crazier when president obama arrives tomorrow (no idea where the other heads of state + entourages are?) and the show happens friday. according to one person i talked to one of the three bridges will be closed off entirely (this is one of the main two, the third one is further south and i assume less traversed) and a good number of the streets around and leading to the center will be blocked off. which makes sense. at least it's not the city of copenhagen itself being paralyzed, it's just most of amager.

but that doesn't matter because they're setting up a big screen in rådhuspladsen, the main city square, where they'll be broadcasting the decision live at 6:30PM CET. the announcement is sandwiched between live concerts from two big danish artists: aqua (yes, aqua is Danish) and D.A.D. i have coaching that afternoon in my club, but i have arranged for partial coverage and will hopefully make it to the square in time to see the announcement live. exciting stuff. may the best city win?

after friday's excitement it's another team match weekend, in which herlev will travel to odense and attempt to continue the winning streak. if the first win counts as a streak?

in other news, this performance is superior to the studio version of the song. she's kind of hit and miss for me, but when it's hit.. wow. if you don't get goosebumps at 2:36-46 you need your sensory organs checked.

and finally, a quote for the week: "schedule him for surgery, dig that thing out and he can start enjoying real misery instead of the fake stuff." -house

bye!

3 weeks of results and 1 of moving.

2009-09-28T12:20:00.000-07:00

hi all!

apparently regular updates means once every month. hm. must improve on that. so, starting from that E tournament sept. 5/6 in aarhus, it was not as good as i hoped, i lost the first round to anne hald in 3 sets. but i came down with something in the morning and i could feel it affected me during the match so i was happy with the fight i put up at least.

the weekend after that i moved from the family's basement to a room in a shared apartment in kastrup, which is a town/area on the island of amager just southeast of the city center and also where the airport is located. look it up on the map. i'm now living with one other person who is a) Danish, b) male, c) my dad's age, d) a plumber, and e) totally ok. at first this understandably freaked my parents (and relatives and friends and etc.) out, but it is normal in denmark to rent rooms out with no real ok-or-not-ok conventions as to who the renter and rent..ee are. did that make sense? the point is, i'm very happy with it, also largely because it's very close to KMB, where the IBA practices every morning. this means that it's only a 5-minute bike ride to practice every morning, which i know i will be even more grateful for as we get more and more into winter. i'll be in this apartment until i leave denmark for the summer which won't be until around april next year.

the following weekend herlev had our first team match on saturday (the 19th), and we won 7-6! full results here. they were relegated (originally wrote that as 'regulated', whoops) from the 1. division last season, and in that season they lost everything - their best result was a 5-8 loss. so everyone was very happy with the win. i won both of my matches quite easily, but i was playing against younger players (although the girl i beat in singles is the top u17 girl in denmark right now) and other upcoming matches will be more challenging.

finally, this weekend i played in a senior M tournament here in the KMB hall and placed second! i'm very very happy with this as it was a strong field and my performance was strong overall and especially good in the semifinal. the full results in a pretty strange format here. this gives me a lot of confidence going into next weekend's team match and the week after that's EBU in cyprus. so now after taking this monday off to rest from the tournament (both the semi and the final were on sunday) it's back to practice to prepare for the next rounds of competition.

thought of the day: over the last two months the days have gotten shorter and shorter in crazy fast fashion. and i liked copenhagen better when it was sunny all the time and without rain. but now it feels like this.

that's all for now, but i'll likely post again in a few days on more frivolous things.. vi ses!

season 2009/2010.

2009-09-03T14:55:00.000-07:00

as stated in the last post, for this season i'm stationed in københavn, denmark. which is the Danish (aka the correct) name for what we know as 'copenhagen'. i can't easily describe how to pronounce it in danish, so just listen to this news dude saying it at 0:20.

i'm playing for the herlev/hjorten badmintonklub, located in herlev, northwestish of copenhagen central, playing the first ladies singles in the 2. division. which, if you remember, is technically the third division down. it will be very challenging. the atmosphere in the club is great so far, last weekend we even were treated to a teambuilding weekend involving the usual silly team games and team names (ours was 'team alternative team energy') and minor (on my part, at least) drunken revelry. the club website is here.

i'm also practicing at the International Badminton Academy (hereafter the IBA), under coach michael kjeldsen, who has worked with peter gade before, among others. this is where anna rice (the canadian player who won the bay tournament and the us open ) spent her 8+ years in denmark, the academy is something like 10 years running, and lots and lots of good players have been through and come out of this place. it's exciting to be there. website here, although the list of players supposedly here needs a little updating.

i'm staying with a family (again!) in the first bit of time here in a place slightly north of copenhagen called gentofte. this is where the rich people live, as everyone in denmark will tell you. someone has told me it's like the beverly hills of all of denmark. in any case, in a country with (4) cities that are covered in apartment buildings (but reasonable 7ish-story ones, not like the freakish jack-and-the-beanstalk beanstalk tall hong kong ones), this is a small and very nice city neighborhood with bigger than normal houses and wealthier than normal people. so there you go. i have a lovely basement room, which isn't at all as creepy as is sounds, it's just another level of the house. yes, there are windows. but i'm looking to get my own place aka a room somewhere else, probably in some kind of shared apartment, closer to where the academy practice is (kastrup).

and there you have it! next week i'll have more updates and a report on the weekend, in which i'll be playing a Danish tournament (singles only) in the city of aarhus. this is the highest level (meaning grand prix meaning E) in the Danish tournament circuit, and my first round is a former european champion, anne hald jensen. draw, etc., here. coincidentally, this is the same tournament as i wrote about in this first post explaining the Danish Way under 'Danish tournaments'. it's crazy to think how many things have changed in one year. *shakes head in wonderment*

oh, and randomly, anyone else excited for grey's anatomy starting season 6 soon? i'm kindof hooked. mostly because of the featured music. and the occasional great scenes. and the excellent use of the word 'seriously'.

also, this song makes me want to bang my head against a wall. unfortunately, it's very popular here. this one is catching on too. this is terrible.

have a good weekend everyone! :)

resuscitation, or, the eagle has landed (again).

2009-08-31T07:40:00.000-07:00

hi all :)

clearly, i majorly Failed at keeping up with things last season. i can only explain that by saying.. yeah. sorry :( but i was pleasantly surprised at the number and range of people who asked me what happened to my blog, so i have decided to revive it. and to commit to keeping it up. all season. this is my promise to you. so before we dive into this season which i have already dove (diven?) into, a quick wrap-up of last season and description of my summer.

last season finished after 4 playoff matches with skagen staying up in the danmarksserien, neither promoted nor regulated, which was the goal of the season. well done, everyone! i enjoyed my last weekend in denmark, said my goodbyes, and left at the very end of march. then after playing the international challenge in finland (losing first round in 3 sets to camilla overgaard of denmark) and spending a week with friends in birmingham, england, i flew back home to california for three days before turning right around and flying out to hong kong. i had talked with one of the hong kong national team coaches at the all england back in march and in the course of talking about the sudirman cup he mentioned that the HK team lets people join their training for short periods of time, so i jumped, and got to spend a week there before going to guangzhou early and filling the time until the sudirman cup training with the guangzhou city team with some bonus private lessons from former chinese team member and olympian chen lin.

the sudirman cup was.. ok. the US mantained our tradition of finishing 20th no matter how many countries are participating. in all 4 matches the US played (against the czech republic, bulgaria, sweden, and ukraine), i played doubles with daphne (ng, an old friend and former trainingmate), as per our WD 1st place result back in january at the team trials. all of my results can be seen here. after the tournament i had a few days back in hong kong with the parents and innumerable relatives and the best food in the world before flying home to sfo, finally.

the next 10 weeks through may, june, and july were a blur of training at smash city and Getting Things Done (broken up nicely by a 2-week visit from the Danish boyfriend), including getting my driver's license!! i left the states on july 29th, managed to see 2 jacquelines in 4 hours in london, continued onto denmark, spent a few days at the boyfriend's, then moved to copenhagen, where i'll be spending the season. and that brings us to now!

next post will explain exactly what i'm doing this season. stay tuned!! and thanks for coming back to this blog after all this time :D

the view from the peak in hong kong. amazing.

and a song to tide you over: peter broderick - and it's alright.

so much for updating..

2009-01-14T10:05:00.001-08:00

*just realized i'd drafted this like 2 weeks ago and never actually got 'er done. whoops. so here's the update of how we're doing so far in the season, etc., etc.

skagen finished 3rd in our group, as seen here. individual match results can be seen here. but everything is ok, because at the start of the season we knew that hjørring and højbjerg were likely to murder everyone, so even after a shaky start to the season (involving lots of injuries and away matches), we still finished pretty much where we were supposed to. now we're playing to move up to the 3rd division (if we'd finished in the bottom 4 of the group then skagen would have been in danger of dropping back down to the regional nordjylland serie 1). schedule for those playoff matches can be seen here. and 10 points for you if you know what 'jylland' is. first match is tomorrow in a town/place near the city of aarhus, about a 2-hour drive away.

lauren's record in the 7 group matches: 7-0 singles, 2-5 doubles. and yes, i won the sudirman cup trials in DOUBLES. wtf. i only dropped one set in all of my singles, because i was sick that day, so one Danish danmarksserien player has some major bragging rights :)

i played in the international challenge in stockholm, sweden, last week, and lost out in the second and last match of the qualifying. highly disappointing, but i learned things. not sure about future tournaments, and even less sure about next year/season's plans. but i'm working on it.

thought of the week: i can't believe 'name' (goo goo dolls) was written in 1995.

quote on my life: "yeah but you'll listen to sad songs and have weird dreams then write a blog about it!!"

current favorite covers:
the ataris - the boys of summer (ah, summer..)
david cook - always be my baby (words cannot describe.)
snow patrol - crazy in love (really!)

denmark turns lauren 20!

2009-01-10T01:40:00.000-08:00

birthday plans: exploring skagen with AK, mikkel, and kasper. well, exploring for me, same old same old for them. plan is to wear a triangle scarf, ride a bike, pretend to be Danish, and start the roaring 20s off the right way.

happy birthday to me!!

it lives!!

2009-01-09T03:17:00.000-08:00

the blog comes back to life!!

after the first stint in frederikshavn of having to wander down to the library for public computer internet access sans privacy, personal storage, and cookie-allowances, lauren is back in business. which means back in denmark, back to sleeping at proper hours, back into practice, and back with a spanking new laptop! if i sound excited, that's because i am.

currently working on a massive (kindof) update with links to how we're doing in the season, hints at what's next, and other random stuff. but for now, random stuff!

current liked songs:
pete yorn - bandstand in the sky (typical lauren.)
the coral sea - look at her face (energetic. head-bobbing.)
missy higgins - nightminds (soothing? nice chorus.)
kanye west - heartless (can't resist haha.)
sara bareilles and ingrid michaelson - winter song (so cute..
and fitting for cold cold Danish winters.)

thought of tuesday: who would've thought that miss denmark 2008 would be half-african? sat with her on the LHR-CPH flight. she was really nice and down to earth and it really wasn't as amazing as it sounds to have met a 'miss someone'. it was interesting though. and scarily, she's only my age. oh, and if any boys are reading this, swimsuit picture here.

quote for the day: "flattery will get you nowhere."

political irrelevance..

2008-11-02T04:20:00.000-08:00

a recent ad for obama features the new song 'can't go back now' by the weepies. excellent.

on the other side, sarah palin got prank called and spoke for a good 5 minutes to who (whom?) she thought was president sarkozy (of france). jesus christ. some people (like that blog) are saying she was just playing along, that at some point she caught on, but listen to it yourself, especially the abrupt ending, and see what you think. this. is. scary. SCARY!!! isn't this tina fey? no, it was confirmed by the mccain campaign, THIS IS SARAH PALIN TALKING.

this what the prankster posing as sarkozy had to say afterwards: "On voulait vérifier si Sarah Palin était aussi peu intelligente qu'on le dit, et j'ai bien peur que ce soit le cas. (...) Il faut aussi dire que ces gens sont tellement habitués à contrôler leur message qu'ils en viennent à ne plus écouter la question."

taking a stab at it with my high-school-scored-a-4-on-the-AP-test french, this translates to: "we wanted to see if sarah palin is as stupid as people say, and i'm afraid that was the case. it should also be said that these people are so used to controlling their message that they don't even hear the question anymore."

sigh. PEOPLE. vote!! [obama/biden] now. do it now *ahnold voice*.

end irrelevance.

hello again..

2008-10-18T01:48:00.000-07:00

slovakia results. not so good. but must move on. and do better.

politics update:
i got my pretty vote-by-mail ballot mailed here to frederikshavn, filled it out, and it had better be back in alameda county by now - that thing cost three dollars to mail back!! well worth it, though. important votes: obama/biden, and NO on prop 8. don't screw with a constitution, not even a state one. unless it's for a good reason. and this is Not.

pop quiz: what are (is?) drosophila? why are they useful? note down what came to your mind, and then observe: this is scary. i know i say i dislike science, in that i don't want to devote my life and brain cells towards studying it, but i still have a place in my heart for past science classes, lessons learned and models memorized: purpose, hypothesis, data, analysis, conclusion, etc., etc. don't mock research, please. and don't vote for her/them, please.

foreign language music videos of the moment:
lee ji hoon feat. shin hye sung - a doll [korea]
d'massiv - diantara kalian [indonesia]
celia - soapte [romania]
rocazino - all my love [denmark]

Viby and Next

2008-10-10T13:11:00.001-07:00

results from viby, in a nutshell: lame in singles, 2nd in doubles. i slept like sh*t the night before, was exhausted, and played practically in my sleep against lærke, who is my training partner and almost daily sparring buddy. but then i accepted that i can do better, sucked it up, and pulled it together for my doubles with - you guessed it - lærke! the games were pretty ridiculous, both times we were down late in the third game, only to win on high serves. 1st game - 6 in a row. 2nd game - 4. amazing. the semifinal was easy and in the final they were just too strong.. apparently they play in the first division. there were no money prizes but we both got a set of travel face washes and tonics and lotions that came wrapped like a birthday present, so that was cute.

next up: a future series tournament in slovakia. draws here. to get there we're driving 2 hours to aarhus, then taking a ferry to copenhagen. (a ferry! the last time a took a ferry was the star ferry in hong kong, but i think this will be different. bigger. evidence: the car is coming too.) anyways, then we fly copenhagen-prague-slovakia. 5 players in total from the academy are going: myself, lærke, jelle (from holland), and manuel and rosario from italy. it's my first time really traveling with training-mates, with that kind of support, not to mention a manager, so this should be interesting. wish me luck!!

rediscovered video of the week: remember this?

english songs most frequently heard on Danish radio
: i kissed a girl by katy perry (I'M SO SICK OF THIS SONG.)
: love song by sara bareilles (tolerable. i really like the beginning.)
: i'm yours by jason mraz (some crap reggae version, this is so much better.)
: forever by chris brown (his voice is weird.)
: so what by pink (annoying to me, but i can see how people might like it.)

luckily i brought one of those cool things that plays music while charging the ipod, so i can have Lauren music all the time. yay! ok bye.

2nd Match, etc.

2008-10-09T13:46:00.000-07:00

hi kids.

we lost our second match.. 7-6. sigh. my singles was fine, but we lost our women's doubles 19-21 in the third game.. gah. match results here. current standings here. on tuesday i traveled to Aarhus with some of the VEB team members to watch their second match in the badmintonligaen. VEB won 4-2 after a scary start.

next up is a tournament in Aarhus this weekend, most unfortunately i have been drawn to play my fellow academy member and doubles partner for this tournament, Lærke, first round in singles, but we'll duke it out and i'll have the results here next week. then on wednesday most of the academy players are off to either the dutch open (gp gold), or the slovak open (future series). i'm going to slovakia, playing singles (seeded 3rd) and doubles again with Lærke.

i'm still doing well here and working with the manager of the academy on getting out of his and his family's hair and getting my own apartment (!!!) in the city center. well, more like town center. hope everyone's doing well and that some of you did take the time to slog through my explanation of how the Danish badminton system works, because it's really quite good. you should try it! :]

..

thought for the day: it would make me really happy, i think, to live on a street called parallelvej. or even better: badmintonvej.

classical piece of the moment: vivaldi's four seasons - spring

quote for life: "the really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day." david foster wallace

Update!

2008-10-03T07:34:00.000-07:00

i know i’ve been MIA for almost 2 weeks, but now i’m back from my hiatus and can update! (i really like that word, actually.. hiatus. hiatus. hiatus.) ok, moving on, where shall i start?

last last weekend on saturday (sept. 20) i played in my first club match EVER. it was exciting! in a small, routine-for-everyone-else kind of way, but still exciting and kind of a milestone for me, since hopefully (and in the short term, definitely) this was the first of many many team matches. i won both my singles and doubles in 2 games, and Skagen won the match overall, but with a score of 7-6. there are 13 matches played in total: 4 MS, 2 WS, 2 MX, 2 WD, and 3 MD. the goal is to win by a score of 8-5 or better because that means the team gets 3 points towards the season. since we only won 7-6, we get 2 points and the other team gets 1. if you click on this link here you will see the results for that match. and you can see the standings for our group after that first round of matches here.

it was a really new experience for me, since i’ve played on teams before (ie. pan am juniors – shout out to mike gamez, who passed away just recently – sudirman, uber, etc.), but those were all on a big scale, representing the US and competing internationally. this was much smaller; the match was held in a multi-use gym that was part of a club that also had a swimming pool and other sports facilities, and there were only a few people watching. both teams were cheering and supporting, but sometimes the hall (i’m getting in trouble for calling it a ‘gym’, which to these people means a weight room) seemed too quiet. but we did do warm-ups as a team, and afterwards all the players went to dinner and then to one of their houses to hang out, so that was fun.. the idea is that playing for a club gives you another social circle (i guess outside of school or work), so it’s part competition and part fun. it’s still so new to me since we don’t have anything like this back home, but i’m enjoying it. while still doing my job, of course!! we have another match tomorrow, i’ll let you people know how that goes.

i took a break from the Danish Badminton Life last weekend to go to copenhagen (in Danish, københavn, pronounced cue-bin-houn, like hound as in dog without the ‘d’. that’s the best way to explain it, really). remember what i wrote earlier about season plans? i looked at my season plan and realized that between now and roughly february i had (have?) NO free weekends besides last weekend. at all. there’s always a club match, a Danish tournament, an international tournament, or other personal commitments. so i decided to take advantage of the one free weekend and arrange a trip to copenhagen. as fate or luck or something would have it, a friend from high school is studying in strasbourg, france, and so she brought a friend and we three met up in copenhagen for the weekend! we stayed with a family i know in gentofte, a suburb just north of copenhagen. we stuck to the touristy stuff, since we didn’t have that much time, but we covered most of it, i think. weather was great, city was beautiful, it was a fantastic way to spend a weekend. pictures should be on facebook shortly, as soon as i find a computer with that simple uploading thingy. but here are a few for now:

that’s all, folks! hope everyone’s well and enjoying school and/or Life and VOTING!! (had to throw that in.)

songs of the last two weeks
: 'life is short' by butterfly boucher
: 'walk on' by U2
: 'sky' by joshua radin feat. ingrid michaelson
: 'today has been ok' by emiliana torrini

the Danish way (part 2)

2008-09-13T12:07:00.000-07:00

building off part 1 and including some odds and ends:

[flag] even while living in denmark and representing a club here, if i play international tourmaments i will still be representing the US. so no worries there.

[Danish ranking] you have to be registered to play in a Danish club to get a Danish ranking. makes, sense, right? if you look here http://www.infosport.dk/cgi-bin/MMS.dbf/sen_rang.hms?start=30&fb=DBF&list=SEN%20DS&soeg=1;amp;ko=-1&un=*&klub=&person=&personID=, you will see me (representing my club, Skagen) ranked 52, as of today. clicking on the point total shows that, besides the tournament in aarhus, my points currently come only from my results in international tournaments. clicking on others' ranking shows that the Danish ranking is also composed of results in team matches, so we'll see what happens to my ranking as the season progresses. also note that to the far right, the 'EMA' means that i'm only allowed to play the E-, M-, and A-level senior Danish tournaments. side note: it's funny to see how completely untouchable tine rasmussen is at #1.. that's what comes from winning a few super series, i guess.

[the league system] this is the "secret" to Danish badminton success. there are hundreds of badminton clubs in Denmark, and the vast majority of them have teams competing in a league. for now i'll stick to describing the senior league at the national level (senior meaning older than U19, and national meaning under the Danish Badminton Federation), leaving out junior stuff and lower-level regional leagues. there are 5 divisions, listed here http://www.infosport.dk/cgi-bin/Display2.dbf/raekker.mml?ak=&rv3=Mixed&rv1=DBF&rv2=01&arkiv=. it's important to note that a club can have more than one team as long as those teams are playing in different divisions. for example, Greve (a club located near copenhagen), has a team in the badmintonligaen, the second division (technically the third division, are you following??), and the danmarksserien, not to mention their teams in the junior levels, etc. see here: http://www.infosport.dk/cgi-bin/Display2.dbf/klubovsis.mml?rv1=200006&navn=Greve%20Strands%20Badmintonklub&fb=DBF

this season i am playing for a club in the danmarksserien. if you click on that in the first link above, and then click under 'vest pulje 2' where it says 'komplet program', you will see the full schedule for this season where the 8 teams in this group all play each other sometime between now and january. if you look for my club, Skagen, you will see that we play our first match on sept. 20 at 4:00pm at Støvring. and so on and so forth. i think this is also where you'll be able to see the results, but i'll check on that after the match. as you can see, there are 8 groups of 8 teams, so there are ultimately 64 teams from all over denmark fighting to move up to the 3rd division (again, technically the fourth) next season.

another exercise: go back to the link above and this time click on the top one, 'badmintonligaen'. this is the top league, and there are only 8 teams total. click again on 'komplet program' and you'll see that the first matches already happened. click on 'info' next to Vendsyssel against Team Skælskør-Slagelse (and then try pronouncing 'Skælskør-Slagelse'). you'll see the lineups as well as the results. the Vendsyssel team is from frederikshavn, they practice and play in the same sports complex that i train in with the Frederikshavn Badminton Academy (they play in an arena that's multi-sport and sometimes also used for meeting and concerts while we practice in a smaller badminton-only hall). the match was held here at home, so i actually watched all those matches. that really brought it all to life.. i'll see about posting pictures, maybe on facebook.

people say that this is the 'secret': that the club matches are at such a high level (even in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd divisions, etc., there are some very good players. example: yao jie plays in the 1st division) that without much travel and cost you can still compete and get very good match experience. club matches are roughly once or twice a month, but add to that the 2/3 times a week club practices, on top of whatever other academy traning you have going on, and it all makes for a pretty intense Dansk badminton life. and one of the best things about the league system is that so much is invested in it: because badminton is so popular all around the country, there are plenty of sponsors, from big companies providing enough that teams can afford to fly foreign players in just to play the team matches (that's what tony is doing) down to local businesses supporting the small local club. and the match between Vendsyssel and Team Skælskør-Slagelse was televised. live. it's a far cry from badminton in the US.

[season plan] it's a foreign concept in the states, but it's something Danish players (and a lot of other players) take as a given - that you need to have a plan for the season, a calendar showing clearly what matches, tournaments, etc., you have when, so that you can plan your training, traveling, and whatever else accordingly. for example, in october i have a team match the first weekend, a Danish tournament the next weekend, the possibility of an international tournament the next weekend, and the denmark super series in the last weekend. in between those i still have academy practice every weekday and club practice in Skagen 2 times a week. all the way until march, this is what my plan is. this is the Life.

hopefully that explained it all a little more (actually it damn well better have), but please let me know if something doesn't make sense, or if you have other questions, and i'll see what i can do.

.. of the week

2008-09-12T02:16:00.000-07:00

song of the week: 'dream' by priscilla ahn

thought of the week: i'm not sure if my prudish self will ever get used to talking to naked people in the locker room. no showers for me unless i'm on my own. ugh.

article of the week: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-seitzman/sarah-palin-naked_b_125861.html

quote of the week: "goddammit.. it's good to be alive." from a Skagen teammate

..

part 2 is coming soon..

the Danish way (part 1)

2008-09-07T06:18:00.000-07:00

ok here we go! this might get a little messy, but i'm going to do my best to explain exactly what i'm up to this year, and how the Danish badminton system/setup/thingy works in general.

disclaimer: i'm writing from my experiences so far and my personal arrangement for this season. i'm sure there are different arrangements and ways that people are doing this, so don't take this as definitive.

as far as i can tell, there are four separate.. things, for lack of a better-sounding word, that make up the Danish badminton life. they can be mixed and matched as suits your needs, and they are: clubs, academies, Danish tournaments, and international tournaments. taking each one in turn:

[clubs] you play "for" a club. if you're Danish, i think you just sign up; i'm not sure if there are membership fees or what the criteria are for becoming part of the club team. clubs also have the option of hiring (yes, this is a job) foreign players, theoretically because they'd be stronger than the local players for whatever reason. i think clubs are limited to three foreign players; in my club there are also two dutch boys but the rest are Danish. i have a contract with the Skagen Badmintonklub (http://www.skagenbadmintonklub.dk/cgi-bin/hovedmenu.pl in Danish and not updated to boot) for this season, which runs basically from september to the end of march. to put it bluntly, i'm being paid to play badminton this season.

[academies] this is a place you pay to train at. it's a high level of commitment, and from what i can tell people only join academies if they are playing badminton full-time or if it doesn't conflict with work. i don't think people go to school and practice at an academy at the same time since academy trainings are usually in the morning. academies that i had heard of and considered are the International Badminton Academy and the Greve Training Center (both located close to copenhagen). instead i chose to come to the Frederikshavn Badminton Academy (http://www.frederikshavnbadmintonacademy.com/index.php?id=6&L=1, in english!) which is in its first year. the website has details about the facilities, coaching, schedule, etc. training officially started on september 1st.

[Danish tournaments] there is a circuit of tournaments within denmark that you can only play in if you are registered to play for a Danish club. there are varying levels in the senior division as well as junior and veteran divisions. in the senior divison there are E, M, A, B, C, and D levels. based on my current Danish ranking (see part 2), i can only play in E, M, and A tournaments. to bring this to life, look at this http://www.dansk-badminton.dk/dbf/Turnering2008-2009/GrandPrix/Aarhus/GP0809-AB.PDF and click on the left where it says 'dame single'. i actually hadn't entered on time, mainly because i had no idea this tournament was even happening, but we called on friday and found out the top seed, nanna broslat jensen, had withdrawn, so there was an empty place in the draw that i could fill. as you can see, i won my first match but then lost in the quarterfinals (i think the score was actually 19,19 but that doesn't make me feel any better).

[international tournaments] these are the tournaments sanctioned by the bwf, listed on the calendar at http://internationalbadminton.org/calendar.asp?mm=9&year=2008. one obvious benefit to living and training somewhere in europe is that everything is so much closer (duh), so , at least to play european tournaments, travel costs and time can be cut down significantly.

these four things put together can keep you surprisingly busy.

PS.

2008-08-31T15:00:00.000-07:00

this is a great article describing what i wrote before about the world being interested in this election. brought to you by the uk, with a very refreshing title. the best sentence, in my opinion: "It is a contest from which the world cannot stand aloof, since American presidents do not stand aloof from the world." bingo.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/simon_jenkins/article4642035.ece

give it some time. and some attention. please?

and then if you feel you need a reward:

http://philosoraptor.blogspot.com/2008/08/ham-sandwich-mccains-actual-choice-for.html

Palmestranden and US Politics

2008-08-30T12:20:00.000-07:00

today was a beautiful, sunny day, so i went to the beach.

that doesn't sounds quite right, does it? (*scratch your head*) beach? sun? denmark? huh?

get this: there's a stretch of the coast called palmestranden (translation: palm beach), where every summer, palm trees and other beach apparatus are brought in and the palms are planted for the season. and then in the winter, they are taken away from the bad bad cold to a greenhouse. the website is here: http://www.palmestranden.dk/index.php?ID=21&lang=en

it's not quite as idyllic as in the pictures they have, since pictures and especially pictures from official websites are generally too good to be true, but it was close. it's really well done, even if, having seen los angeles palms, i wasn't impressed with the size of these. but it's a neat idea. and we did play beach volleyball; along with the palms they had set up 6 volleyball courts and a few handball goal net type things (not going to pretend i know anything about handball). i think they change the setup a little each year, but there you have it. pretty cool.

.. part 2: us politics

so now we have it: obama-biden (d) v. mccain-palin (r) + others who won't win. my unabashed pick? obama-biden. my top three reasons for being for obama-biden:

1. i'm a raging young impressionable liberal who hasn't grown up enough to become a conservative yet. and i have a leftist bag. this is the least serious of the reasons, but as long as we're going by identity politics, that's my identity.
2. when he speaks, it's not just that he does it really well, it's that he's saying things that i understand. his narratives of his story, of the american story is one that i follow. and when he talks about how people are going to be different and disagree no matter what, but at the same time the world is shrinking so much that we can't simply blow off the rest of the world, it gives me hope that someone is finally willing to acknowledge that at the highest level, and act accordingly.
3. everywhere i've gone, people ask what i think about president bush. and so i ask them that they think. and no one - no one - has anything good to say. at all. ever. but i ask them about this election, if they're following it, and if they have any preferences, and the answer is always yes, fairly closely, and obama. it's true that people abroad shouldn't decide our election, but obama seems to get people to look twice at america. people are interested in obama, and so they are interested in america again. and that shouldn't be dismissed lightly.

top three reasons i'm against (not 'not for', against) mccain-palin:

1. to put it bluntly, he's old, he might die, and his vp choice is who? there are enough reports out there already about how she hasn't thought too hard about the iraq war (she's been busy running alaska, which unfortunately is now the butt of jokes about number of people in alaska vs. number of people in various cities vs. number of caribou also in alaska), how little experience on national issues she has, and how this looks like shameless and skin-deep bait for women voters. a good (and pro-obama) blog to find stuff on that and stuff in general is http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/.
2. he doesn't use the internet (much). call that a shallow reason, but come on. in this world, in this day and age? if you're not a part of what makes the world go 'round, how can you lead such a big part of it? and, while we're on the subject of technology, his wife looks like a fembot.
3. his campaign so far has made me want to bang my head against a wall. he used britney and paris in an ad. he mocked obama's maintaining-tire-pressure comments, and two days later said he "didn't disagree" with them. and his answer to almost everything contains "you can't say anything to me because i was a prisoner of war". i don't see what that has to do with anything, but more than that, it's not an answer to anything. you think russia or china or iran (our apparent current axis of evil, or at least axis of people-with-a-lot-of-power-who-don't-do-what-we-want-so-we-call-them-some-kind-of-evil) will care about that?

and the lists go on. i'll give the republican national convention a chance, but seriously. people. obama-biden '08!!

..

oops! of the day: i spent a good 10 seconds holding the shift key while scanning the numbers on this blasted Danish keyboard, looking for the dollar sign. gah.

ok, enough with the off-topicness. next up: my first attempt to detail and explain the danish league system.

The URL, explained

2008-08-28T08:25:00.000-07:00

for those of you who care:

laurendoesdenmark seemed too boring and entirely predictable, so i made a tiny switch et voilà!

if you can't get your mind out of the gutter, then put a comma or a pause in your head between 'denmark' and 'does', pretend yoda (pause) you are, and see if that helps.

thought for the day: a magazine titled 'EUROMAN' really isn't that amusing, now that i think about it. but it was at the time.

Danish Things

2008-08-27T05:40:00.000-07:00

today i fried my first Danish egg in a Danish frying pan in a Danish house. it was subsequently eaten off a Danish plate using a Danish fork. and it was delicious.

i'm now typing this on a Danish keyboard which is driving me crazy because of weird Danish key placements and the presence of weird Danish letters like æ and ø. it's actually not terrible, there have been worse keyboards, but the two worst things are that the shift key on the left is half the size it should be, so if i'm not careful, 'Danish' ends up as '>danish' and the question mark is next to the number 0 at the top. very annoying.

the Danish people i have seen so far have been, with few exceptions, tall, Danish, and gorgeous. you'd think it's just a stereotype that the average Nordic person is better looking than the average person from Anywhere Else, but this is just more evidence that at least some stereotypes are based off of truth.

next up: tackling the Danish language.

Arrival In Denmark

2008-08-26T03:10:00.000-07:00

the eagle has landed!!

after surviving frankfurt and copenhagen airports i arrived in aalborg on sunday, august 24th, at 11:30pm local time (9 hours ahead of california) and was picked up as arranged (always a good start to any trip). for this first bit i'll be staying with this family that usually hosts players upon their arrival in denmark to help with adjusting, etc. i managed to fall asleep at 2am and slept until 3pm. and i met the family's two adorable daughters, ages 5 and 7. i can't verbally communicate with them at all, but that didn't stop them from having me play with them for two hours.

for those too lazy to look up frederikshavn: http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=frederikshavn&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl

practice at the academy doesn't officially start until september 1, so this week will be somewhat spur-of-the-moment, but on thursday i go to my club in skagen for the first time. and then the real work begins.

thought for the day: it's weird to think i'm sleeping in the same bed that has slept roslin hashim (MAS) and flandy limpele (INA), among others.

song for the week: 'open your eyes' by snow patrol

[so how was that for a first post? they'll get better, i promise.]