Shawshank's 岁月点滴

It’s Wimbledon time again. Strangely enough Wimbledon is my favorite of all four grand slams.

In terms of the games of tennis itself, Wimbledon is not the most impressive: If you want to see the beautiful baseline move and slice, super long games, Roland Carros in Paris is the place to go; the beauty of modern tennis is manifested to extreme in Ausse Open and US Open; games at Wimbledon are serve-and-volley games, which is the least enjoyable from a spectator’s view. For the players, it’s type of ground with erratic ball bouncing, difficulty in movement. It seems like there should be no reason Wimbledon being my blue eyes.

Why? Is it because Wimbledon is the only place I have been to so far? The fact is true, I missed Flushing when I was in New York, and never been to France or Australia. But, is that the sole reason?

 I went to the small town in October of 1998. Underground (Americans call it subway) transportation in London is well developed. Took the train from Waterloo, London, soon I found myself standing outside Wimbledon railway station — only to find out I should have gotten off two stops earlier, because the All England Lawn Tennis Club is located out side the town. Luckily enough small towns in UK are not big at all (of course, from a Texan’s point of view:)) and 20 minutes later the grand Center Court appeared before my eyes.

The whole building is painted in tennis-court-dark-green, with a capacity of a few thousands. There is even a tennis museum in the building. At the museum entrance, there is a huge plate, with all the champion’s name inscribed on it. There are so many familiar and unfamiliar names: Sampras, Agassi, Becker, Lendel, …. There are so many names that the plate occupied the whole wall! Each name is a piece of history and it extends to more than a hundred years ago!

Walking through the meuseum you can see evolution of tennis (actually Britain is the birth of all modern racket sports: tennis, badminton, pingpong…. ), from the game, rules, racket, and even dressing. Exiting the museum and standing by the court, the audio recording of one of Pete Sampras’s Wimbledon game was being broadcasted. Sampras wrote another legend to Wimbledon’s history: out of his 10 adventures here, he stood to the last 7 times! ……Although the court is empty, it still feels like there is another to-be-epic game going on……..

Now I found the answer: It’s the history, the legend, and the myth, for both past, and future of Wimbledon.

Today is the second consecutive day I decided to go to library to study. Like usual, carrying my laptop with me. I have to admit I am a computer person (a better term for geek), I really can’t think of any time period longer than an hour without a computer when I am not sleeping, swimming or taking shower.

But today, I have to review some operations research stuff. I decided not to turn on my computer until I am done. Just for a few minutes into my OR stuff, I began to feel the imulse to flip the lid the turn on the switch. "Why am I doing that?" I asked myself. Email? No, you can check it later, it doesn’t make any difference, actually. Else? no! Then why the impulse? Thank God I survived the temptation and killed my time without a computer! I was amazed how much I have done during the period, because I remember yesterday when I was doing both: studying with laptop on, and I ended up being not productive at all!

Some study a few years back shows computers help people to be more productive. Well, I would say: Not always.

Where is the temptation coming from? It’s the ecstacy of facing the unknown, the possible excitement, joy, fear, …… How do you think?