OC Squash March 2022 Tournament

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One of the consistent squash tournaments that takes place in SoCal is the OC Squash Tournament held at the OC Equinox in Irvine. It occurs roughly every March and October and generally draws at least 30-50 players of various levels (from 3.5 to 5.5). As one of the only few local tournaments within driving distance, it’s a good opportunity to estimate your current squash skill/levels and gain insights on where to improve next. It’s a double elimination match and is fairly well organized for such a large player base.

During the pandemic, the tournament was put on hiatus. This was the first squash event of the year and drew approximately 30 or so players of various levels. The tournament coordinator was able to fill out three brackets of 8 (4.0, 4.5, 5.0) and a round robin bracket. Not too shabby for the first squash event.

I participated in the 4.0 bracket this time around. Having played before in the 3.5, I figured the 4.0 might give me some issues/challenges. Interestingly, many of the previous 3.5 players were also playing in this bracket leading me to conclude this was probably a combination of two brackets. Seeing the bracket, I thought I had a fairly good chance to place at best 2nd place. Why? Mainly because T was also playing and at my current fitness level, I know I cannot win against her athleticsm.

Day 1:
Day 1 ends with me in the losers bracket with a 2-1 record. I won the first match relatively convincingly. Lost my match against T. And won the first losers bracket match convincingly too. My adjusted lob serves were still a little shaky but good enough to demoralize both opponent where I won. When they were unable to return the serve effectively, they don’t even have an opportunity to win the point. The match with T was excrutiating. I committed too many errors and generally wasn’t able to dictate the pace nor control the T.

Day 2
Being in the losers bracket, I need 2 wins to put me back into the winners bracket and an additional 2 wins (for a total of 4 wins) in order for me to win the division. Day 2 starts off with a no show so that’s an easy win. The 2nd win starts off a bit shaky as my serve wasn’t consistent enough in the 1st game of the 2nd match. It was actually being called out in the 1st game quite a few times. But with small adjustments, I managed to win both the 2nd and 3rd game on the backs of my serve and to fully frustrate the opponent in the 4th game to win the 2nd match. That’s win #2 and that puts me back head to head against T.

My 3rd match of the day was against T. She’s used to the timing of my lob serve and was able to return and stay competitive. Ultimately, I committed too many errors, was outplayed by T quite a few times, and general frustration/fatigue finally took over in the 3rd game.

I ended up placing 2nd place with an overall 4-2 record with both losses to T.

Portola Coffee Roaster

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I’ve mentioned Portola Coffee in the past as one of the initial “gateway beans” into appreciating coffee. Going down to OC, I had the opportunity to buy a bag of Portola-roasted Ethiopian beans from the Sidamo region. Making my latte, I taste berries and a hint of florals. The flavor profile is amazing.

Anodyne Coffee Roasting Co

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February’s Trade Coffee selection is this wonderful single origin Anodyne Coffee Roasting selection from Colombia. The bag smells amazing even after a month. I smell hints of fruit and this nutty aroma. Making my latte, I initially taste fruity and sweet flavors that melts into to a chocolate milk after taste. That chocolate after taste is very enjoyable.

Robert Reich’s Wealth & Poverty Class

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I recently stumbled upon Robert Reich’s (link 1, link 2) Poverty and Wealth YouTube lectures. It’s only up to episode 5. I’ve already watched the first 4 episodes. In these first 4 episodes, Reich sums up some of the current social, political and economic ailments that are affecting the US and the world at large. I expect him to explore different facets of these topics over the next few weeks.

So far, he’s has so far talked about income equality, investor’s perspective, globalization and housing inequalities. He does a good job discussing the history of how the situation came to be by engaging listeners to think about these issues while also providing possible avenues of solutions.

I really recommend any of my readers to listen him.

Options Trading

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Watching these YouTube videos (link 1, link 2, link 3) on options trading, I view options trading as an anti-thesis of normal stock investing where the judgement is based on the value of the stock price fluctuations rather than the value of the company.

Evans Brothers Coffee Roaster

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January’s Angels Cup comes from Evans Brothers Coffee Roaster. It’s a “signature blend” with beans from Columbia and Brazil that’s a medium roast. Opening the bag, I’m greeted berry and nutty aromas. However, after making my latte, the sweet berry flavor dominates each sip. With each sip, the aftertaste though has a pleasant chocolate flavor that really makes this latte delicious. I wonder what ratio of high quality beans were mixed to make the sweet fruity flavor profile.

More Thoughts on Russia’s invasion

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With all the reading I’ve been doing on the invasion, the gods of algorithm showed two interesting viewpoints of why Russia is invading Ukraine.

1) It’s for the resources. Apparently, there are huge deposits of resources in the Black Sea off the coast of Ukraine/Crimea as well as natural gas deposits under Ukrain.

2) It’s historical. The birthplace of Soviet Russia originated from Ukraine and are thus “one people” with Russians.


Again, I absolutely believe the western democracies HAVE to retaliate in force. It’s democracy at stake. Where are all the Republican hawks who are spouting how great US democracy is and how great freedom is?

My thoughts on Russia Invading Ukraine

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In the past 48 hours, Russia is invading Ukraine.

Let’s think about it… a soveriegn nation is actively attacking and invading another sovereign nation. The last time this happened might be when Iraq invaded Kuwait (I think?). The rest of the world MUST respond by sending troops to defend and free Ukraine. It is the ONLY ACTION to take. If the world doesn’t commit any military action, it sends a signal that any nation who has a large military can attack and invade a smaller weaker neighboring nation while only suffiner “sanctions.”

The current sanctions will not do any good now that the fighting has started. Sanctions probably would never have worked against Russia. Russia doesn’t care about the money. It has enough resources and neutral parties (namely China) to trade with. What Russia wants is to annex Ukraine via puppet government similar to the old Soviet Union/USSR days. Russia is actively calling out Western democracies bluff on the use of force and the world needs to come together to show Russia cannot bully the world.

What can the world do? Here are my thoughts:

1) The United Nations should also seek to remove Russia from the Big 5. It should be replaced by another country (India? maybe an African country? a vote from the remaining assembly members?). There should be some sort of bullshit rule the UN assembly makes that specifically amends the UN rules that kicks out Big 5 members by a vote… maybe a majority of Big 5 + majority (or 60%, 65%, 75%?) of the assembly members. Russia after all has to be punished.

2) The democracies of the world MUST react with force to defend the principle of democracies.

3) China… yes China… if they want to take an active role as the 3rd super power… China should actually be leading the charge and be the first to put ground troops in Ukraine. Why? In the weeks leading up to this invasion, Russian “rhetoric” to justify invasion was centered around “freeing/liberating” the breakaway Ukrainian provinces. Or “supporting the breakaway provinces” plea to free themselves from “Ukrainian tyranny.” US intelligence apparently debunked most of these stories. Does any of these “free from tyranny” language sound familiar? Tibet? Xinjiang? What if a neighboring country decides to “Free Tibet” like how Russia is “freeing these breakaway provinces”? China absolutely needs to take a stand against Russia if anything to protect it’s own borders but more importantly shift the focus away/out of the bad parts of China and brand itself as Ukrainian liberators against Russian hegemony. China is probably in the best global position to act. They either need to stand up and become the 3rd super power or remain as a lackey to the Russians.

Bird Rock Coffee Roasters

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January’s Trade Coffee comes from Bird Rock Coffee Roasters. Looking at the label, it’s a single origin light roast from Guatemala’s Huehuetenango region. Smells wonderful even after a month. Making my latte, I’m blown away at how sweet and fruity it is. I taste this wonderful mix of honey and apple-like flavors that morphs into milk chocolate. The latte’s are so delicious that I’ve made probably two lattes every day since opening the bag.

The Ocean Cleanup

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Readers of this blog may have heard of this “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” It’s actually two regions in the Pacific Ocean where the ocean currents are collect and “round up” so to speak the various floating plastics and other man-made debris gets washed off, tossed off, drained away, and generally discarded on land and somehow makes their way into the ocean and ocean currents.

ALmost 10 years ago, I heard a Ted Talk of a young environmentalist seeking to change and clean up the oceans. From time to time in the past 10 years, I heard about his successes and failures in the news but much of that news was drowned out by COVID19. Late last year, I read an article that demonstrated the successes of one of his systems. After many years of not seeing/reading updates, I read through and watched quite a few of the Ocean Cleanup YouTube videos. It turns out the Ocean Cleanup has been busy not only developing more efficient systems to clean up the garbage but also on ways to recycle and reuse the recovered plastic into more interesting things. One of these reuses is to make sunglasses and sunglass container.

This effort to clean up the garbage is admirable. To support this project, I paid and recieved these $199 sunglasses. Are they expensive? Yes… but instead of thinking how expensive it is… I’d like to frame it as paying to clean up the plastics in the ocean while also paying to fund alternative methods to resuse the plastics collected. These sunglasses show that the technology exists to reuse discarded plastics. The biggest issue now is to be able to scale up the process enough so that this Ocean Cleanup is self-sustaining to support itself. I bet the founders would love to tell people that they have recycled/reused all the plastics in the world and there is no longer any more plastics to recycle and reuse.

One man’s trash is another man’s $199 treasure….