What Justin is thinking…

It has been a little while since i last wrote, the reason possibly being my last post, where i talked up my excitement and love for the game of Netball. Well the tournament that i thought was going to be on was postponed for a week, so i had another seven days of anticipation, and as it turned out when the big day did arrive i still didn’t step onto the court. You see the night before i was playing in my thursday night team ‘The Planeteers’ and less than a minute from the end of the game i leapt up to grab the ball and I landed on the foot of one of my team mates. My ankle folded like a piece of paper and i went down writhing in pain. We finished the game losing by almost thirty points and i couldn’t put any weight on my right foot. So i was resigned to the bench for our intercollage games the following day… On the plus side i now have probably the best bruise i have ever had. It stretches from my heal up over my ankle and wraps to the inside of my foot in dark purple smears, pretty cool stuff. But i’m wondering if the repercussions of this will last longer than the 4 to 6 weeks that my med student friends said it would take for my ankle to get back to 100%. Until now i have never actually had a serious sporting injury, just a couple of grazes or a banged chin or black eye. So i have always had a bit of an inkling that i was invinciple. In Netball any ball that i could possibly get to i would jump or dive for, with catching the ball being my only concern. Now that my mortalness has been rubbed in my face i may have concerns for my physical well being, i may not lust after sporting greatness in the same manor, yearn for a successful pass or crave shooting a goal with the same intensity. My firey passion for sport may be extinguished.

Actually I doubt it, I’m already counting down the weeks until i’ll be right to play again, and with each match that i miss i feel like i’ve thrown away an unopened present. It’ll just mean that i will have a greater appreciation for having ankles that bend and flex, so accordingly i’ll try to keep them in that condition for as long as i can.

Netball; The sport of the Gods; The game they play in heaven; if exercise were a food then this would be lasagna. It really is just rocking my world at the moment. In a normal week i play on thursdays and sundays, although i was giving the mega exciting news today that the mixed intercollege tournament has been moved forward to tomorrow! So i will get three games in less than 15 hours time! I only wish that it was a bit tougher sounding.

Being a predominantly female sport I get some pretty strange looks when i mention it to people that I not only dabble in Netball, but that i strive to be the perfect example of an allround A-grade player.  If i were this keen on Basketball, which is quite similar then I would be well respected and people would probably hold me in some esteem, but Netball doesn’t quite have that effect. It’s not that it doesn’t impress people, actually for the intercollege games i feel very wanted and get the inkling that i am of some value – but it is always like people are holding back a little giggle. This though does not deter me at all, my passion for this game blinds me and I always proudly nail my colours to the mast (although i make a point of making sure they are not rainbow or pink colours – I’ve got to score man points where ever i can). Netball – Bring it on!

On Wednesday I did my first shift at a community radio station of my very own show. I was a little nervous, but once I settled in I really quite enjoyed chatting away into the black spit protecting screen covering the microphone. I mentioned some interesting things that I saw in the newspaper, I had a segment called Laws of the World, I adlibbed at times better than I thought I would and only once did I press the wrong button. Yet when I finished I felt just a little bit empty.

            I was quite proud of what I did, but I had absolutely nothing to show for it. I could not hold up the work that I had done over the last three hours and I couldn’t even talk to anyone that had heard it as the station didn’t broadcast into any area that I knew people in. This got me thinking on the drive home though – was I doing it to hear myself on the radio, or for other people to hear me? Or was I doing it because I like the medium and communicating with people? As I’ve said earlier in this blog, I think that the best communication is two way, so it would be more beneficial to hear back from someone that heard it, but this is not the only reason for doing it.

            When I’m fencing with my Dad on the farm the most satisfying thing after a hard days work is to look back and see a fence where there wasn’t one before and to know that you’ve put it there. With radio work though, I have to seek gratification from it in some other way. I have no idea how many people are actually listening but perhaps this is where the beauty lies, because it is quite a hoot imagining that I am talking to thousands of people, when in reality it may not actually be anyone. So perhaps not having any rock hard evidence of what I’ve done is actually a positive.

So here is what I am thinking. I have been invited to go to a local pub for a latin dancing night with some friends that i did a bit of salsa dancing with earlier on in the year. Dancing is good fun, but i struggle a bit when you actually have to make up the moves and get a bit awkward and nervous especially when i’m dancing with a girl that i don’t feel comfortable with – i’m just not the most confident in that sort of situation. The girl that i often dance with isn’t going to be there, and i feel quite tired as i played soccer today, so really i would prefer not to go. BUT, my alternative is to sit at home and watch a movie or maybe watch the footy even though i don’t really care that much about it, although it does have the social factor to it. Either way i’d feel a bit guilty for giving up the opportunity to go dancing choosing instead to sit down and watch a screen – but such is life. Both are forms of entertainment and even though i place dancing as a better sort – can you actually say one form of entertainment is better than another if they both do the same job of passing time???

Podcast. This is a pretty common word now, meaning a section of audio that you can download from the internet and play on an MP3 player. I read recently of the journalist from the British newspaper ‘The Gaurdian’ who coined the term, apparently an amalgamation of the words ipod and broadcasting. Now it wasn’t so much the way that the word was formed that caught my attention, but the fact that one person created it and it is now in such wide use. Wouldn’t it be cool to be that person, everytime you hear that word spoken, you could be like ‘oh yeah, that is all me!’

Yesterday i coined a term, it isn’t a terribly good one, and in all fairness it doesn’t add much to the English language, but it’s hard to come up with something unique. Basically i turned the name of a food into a verb. Over dinner i was discussing the merits of reheated lasagna and why it is often better then having it straight out of the oven. You see, the three parts of the lasagna –  meat, cheese sauce and pasta, when put in the fridge get quite cold, and they need to huddle together for warmth and security, and it is here where they give up their former selves to unite and become one – they lasagna! So lasagna is the process where two or more things merge into one. This term can be used quite broadly – here a couple of examples

‘Notice how regardless of how much you stir it, oil and water will never lasagna’

‘The connection between the man and his horse was astonishing, it was lasagna’

‘So how about it baby, do you want to come back to my place and lasagna?’