Tue June 22nd

Hours before my trip, my father-in-law showed me a report on torrential rains hitting the city of Fuzhou, China and people being evacuated there. This was some cause for concern for me as Fuzhou is where the 2nd tournament will be held. The reason for me choosing to go all the way around the world was that I get to play 2 tournaments back to back-something I haven’t done is 10 years!!! Now is Fuzhou is under water, should I even go?? I later learnt that there are 2 cities in China by the same name and the tournament city is not affected.
My trip to China itself was decided in the last week. I wanted to play the 10ks in Thailand, but was out of qualies there. So I decided to play China. I bought a ticket, and got a Chinese visa in the last 4-5 days. By now, everyone at home had gotten used to my last minute change of plans. Thank God for that!!
My brother Ganesh promised to take care of the summer camps while I am gone. Our summer camps run in 2 different locations simultaneously, so this would be a tough few weeks for him.
Its now 5 pm. Now it hits me. I am going to miss my little girl. I have never been this long away from her. The last time I was away from her was about a week and I was just in US. Now I would be halfway around the world….. The only solace is that she is in fantastic hands. Sanjeev’s parents really dote on her and she is so comfortable with them. Hopefully she will not miss me too much.
June 23rd: I am on a plane to Taipei and will change planes twice before I will arrive in Hefei,China. After a 14 hr plane ride, I had a brutal 6 hour layover in Taipei before boarding my plane to Guangzhou. Now I didn’t have much choice in these reservations as everything last minute was totally expensive.
June 24th:Once I got to Guangzhou,I was briefly stopped by the immigration. My heart stopped for a second as China is not a country I wanted to be taken aside and interrogated. But thankfully, they just wanted to see my residency card of the USA.
I was supposed to have just 1 hr to switch planes to Hefei, but there was some serious storm brewing outside. I had not seen this kind of thunder and lightning and so all the planes were delayed indefinitely. I could barely keep my eyes open and after a 3 hour wait, everybody seems to be rushing.I thought that maybe our plane would finally depart only to find that they were distributing free dinner!!! Oh well! That seemed to keep most of the antsy people quiet for sometime while they had dinner!!!
After nearly 4 hours, we finally boarded the plane. Only to find that the weather had gotten bad again and we would not take –off for the next 3 hours. That was the most excruciating wait. I longed for a comfortable bed to sleep on. When I finally arrived into hefei at 130 am, I had to take taxi to the hotel. Except the driver had completely no idea where to go. He couldn’t even read the directions in English.Oh Boy!! I am surely in trouble here. Thanfully he had a cell phone and called the hotel number to get directions.
When I finally arrived there, the lady at the front desk tells me she has no room available. The was the last straw. I have never shed tears for these things when I was on tour. I have been through a lot worse while I was alone travelling in Europe. Man- I have had close calls… but now everything is a bit different. Maybe I have softened up a bit. Life in the US is certainly hectic, but very plush and very comfortable.
But now I am close to tears. I am in strange country stuck at 2 am without a room. But thankfully the lady called up another hotel for me and arranged a taxi for me to go there. Sanjeev had also been terribly worried and I was finally able to get a hold of him to inform him that I was safe. Now I am here….all I have to do is play some good tennis!!!!
June 25th: The sign in was supposed to be today.I was 4 out of the main draw. I prayed for some divine intervention which would allow me to get into the main draw directly, but I guess I didn’t pray hard enough!!
After the draw was made, I found that out of nearly 45 girls in the draw, I was one of the four people who didn’t get a bye. Now what this meant was, I had to win 3 matches to qualify, while the others just had to win just 2. Of course, I was furious. I was no 3 in the acceptance list, so why didn’t I get a bye? Just then I got a call from US and spoke to my girl for a few minutes. Sahana lightened me up so much by her talk about Snow White, that this became so trivial.
I still intend to confront the referee at some point….
June 26th: But now I had more important matters at hand. I had to perform at the best of my ability. I was drawn to play a Chinese girl called Leo Zhang. While I was waiting for my matches, a mother of one of the players asked me how old I was. Nowadays, I am not liking that question. I asked her to guess my age. She said 23. My day was made. When I told her my real age, she looked totally surprised.
My match began around 1130 am. The weather was humid and hot. Just the weather I like..There were not that many spectators. I was happy with the way I was striking the ball. The courts are a bit slower and bounce is quite high. I soon broke her serve in the 3rd game. After that I started gaining control of the match. I didn’t lose my serve the whole match,so I was happy with that. She did put up some more resistance in the 2nd set, but I felt I chose my shots wisely. I only went for broke if I had a clear shot of it. So I won my match 6-1,6-1. I know I am having a good feel and my timing is good, but my cause for concern is if I will have the fitness and if I can recover in time for each match? That is, if I continue to win……Tomorrow I play 3rd match of the day. Lets see if I can pull that one too….