10.12.2009

Early Morning 10 o clock practice slot! We felt that the one hour slot will not be enough, so as we were going to sleep, we had decided that we would leave the rooms at 8:30 and by 9 o clock go to the court. I couldnt sleep well that night. First, Mittal was on phone for a loon loong time(initially outside the room) so I got to keep the fan on and sleep for a while. At 2 in the night, I woke up and the fan was off. Tried sleeping without the fan but it didnt work out. Finally by 3:30, I'd had enuff and turned on the fan. Slept peacefully after that :) I woke up when Sharada and Nidhi were outside our room asking for food coupons. It was already 8:15, well past the time I had decided I would get up... (but its excused .. I hadnt slept well :P ). I did get a lot of snide comments from some ppl "aap to 8:30 court jaane wale the!" We managed to reach court by around 9:30. and the court was bathed in sunlight! (alrite... its an exaggeration .. :) but yeah... sunlight found its way on a non-negligible part of the 3rd court. ) Jitesh said that the shoe-fellow couldnt come in the morning and would probably make it in the evening. Mittal got Sidharth's shoes instead. We also found that we had no boxes with us. All our shuttle boxes were with the insti kit and all of them were out somewhr. We told Edwin sir that we would need the boxes, but it seemed like we would have to get thru this practice slot without shuttles... Eventually, we borrowed shuttles from the Kanpur team. I was feeling pretty embarrassed by then... first shoes...then shuttles ... what next... I wondered...I dint have to wait long for an answer as halfway into the practice, Mittal asked Jitesh to tell the show-fellow to get wristbands, socks too. So, apart from rackets, we had officially for everything related to Badminton that could be asked for. Wow! Talk about coming prepared... especially a Gold Winning Team! The practice session was nice. I did some shadows and shuttle run, and got a better feel of the court. Was finally able to move around as I liked. Dont remember a lot about the session apart from that. Mittal and I played a singles in which Mittal was leading 19-11... and he lost it from there :P :P :P ! We headed back to our hostel. All I remember about 10th was that we were sleeping for most of the day. In the evening, I had a chat with my friend from Nagpur. AA Bhaiya was sitting all the while listening to us... dunno how he dint get bored with our nonsense... We went to meet that shoe-fellow finally. Mittal got shoes, grips, wristbands, socks ... Mittal paid for everything... and started walking back to hostel... completely forgetting to take his new shoes with him! we went back to the mess. Outside the mess, KGP team had arrived. On seeing the KGP team, Mittal tried hiding his new shoes...(kept it on the floor beside the mess gate! What a plce to hide!!) I met my nemesis again... (@Mittal: This time.. not only mine :P ). We got talking and came to know that Angam and Abhijeet had been practising (Nervousnesss!!!!) We told Abhijeet that Anish dint come with us because of his brother's marriage and he was aghast! Completely violated "Anish ne bataya bhi nai Amit bhaiya ki shaadi ho rahi hai!!" and we said" Humko to invitation cards bhi mile! :P " By time time we finished chatting with them, Mittal had forgotten all about his shoes again! We decided to hv some fun and sent his shoes to TT team's room with Ketan. We all went to canteen after that and as we were eating, Mittal suddenly realized his shoes were missing ... AGAIN! After seeing him worked up for sometime, we told him that his shoes were "TAKEN CARE OF" ...

At night, Apurv came and set up the LAN settings on Mittal's lappy. We watched a couple of episodes of FRIENDS and slept off ... Pretty uneventful day as I recall it .. .

Does anybody remember anything else that happened?!