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It's the second day of the French Open, and mainly I sit around here watching tennis all day while pretending to be writing.
I keep telling myself that even though it's the French Open, there will be plenty of tennis available for me to watch back home,
but I just keep finding excuses to watch.
The best one, of course, is that by listening to the Dutch commentary I am getting practice in hearing Dutch and
learning a few more vocabulary words since you often know what they're saying from the context. I mean, surely there'll
be lots of opportunities to work "unforced error" into conversations on subjects other than tennis.
Or I could be watching a political press conference and comment, "faaaaaaaaaaabulous topspin!"
I haven't figured out how the TV at Rina's works yet, but this should come as no surprise since I haven't really
figured out how scheduling works yet in SF. Over there, I just rely on the Chronicle's sports section to tell me when
and where tennis is being played. Over here, like over there, there's a little magazine that supposedly tracks
everything, but in both places it's too much trouble to figure out. Luckily, over here Rina has
access to only about fifty channels,
so what I do is turn the damn thing on and go thru the channels from the beginning until I see a tennis court.
When coverage on that channel ends, I surf until I find another channel with a tennis court.
Doing so, on various channels I caught Mary Pierce's match yesterday, Justine's easy victory this morning, a good part
of Safin's slaughter of Sluiter this afternoon, and almost all of ageing Andre's loss to Jarkko Nieminen, the Finn
who will if nothing else certainly win the award for Best Men's Hair. Oh, and he knows it, yes he does. The cruel
cameras caught him repeatedly with his hands on it, and he wasn't just quickly brushing it out of his face in a
business-like manner, either. He was fluffing it up. Don't even think about denying this, Jarkko,
we got you on tape.
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