Balls of Fury

In the last couple of weeks at work they have held a Table Tennis Tournament. It was one of the festive morale-boosting activities planned for the slide into the end of the year. We work in a really productive environment where we both work and play hard (as I have mentioned before).

The 'tea pause area' nearest our workplace has a table tennis table and since we moved here in may a good few developers have taken to playing a game or 3 at lunch time. Some are reportedly pretty good players too.

Since I am game for pretty much anything, I leapt at it and  signed myself up when the Tournament announcements was made. But since I am also not very athletically blessed in most sports (I do ok in running but suck at anything involving actual skills or coordination), I was knocked out in straight sets in the first round. Que sera sera. 

The developers duly made it through the rounds and into the finals. Personally I think some of them should be spending more time DEVELOPING! :P

On the day of the big 'Balls of Fury' (as the tournament came to be know) final showdown. I was sitting in our morning meeting when Di came in and placed a note in front of my saying 'Will you play TT in a Sumo Suit?'. I giggled shrugged and gave her a thumbs up and off she went to hatch one of her diabolical plans...

A couple of hours later I was summoned to the storage closet (yes REALLY), where I met with my opponent and partner in crime Raymond. We then had the hilarious and surprisingly difficult chore of donning the HUGE over-sized heavy Sumo Suits. We nearly fell over several times almost bringing the shelving down with us. I am sure anyone walking past that door would have wondered just what was going on in there! :)

Finally we were dressed and ready for our pre-final curtain-raiser show-down. Di rushed off to assemble and prepare the crowd for our arrival. And we just had to saunter in and be entertaining...

Well. Walking in those suits is near on impossible! Instead we had to painstakingly shuffle-waddle all the way down the passage. It was slow and tough going. I actually had to stop and rest a few times! Buy the time I got to the tea pause area I was panting and sweating! LOL.

Finally Raymond waddled around from his side (he had further to shuffle) and we started proceedings with a hearty chest bump which nearly saw both of us ricocheting backwards off our feet. The crowd was well amused at that.

Soon we got to the task at hand which was play a game of Table Tennis. Easier said than done though as we could barely get the bat in place never mind serve or return a shot. And picking the ball up once it fell to the ground was literally impossible, as was reaching over the table. It was hilarious.

We had a lot of fun though and we managed to get a bit of a volley going at one point.

Eventually our game was over and everyone got to enjoy the real nail biting final, while we - dripping with sweat - waddled back to our storage closet to pour ourselves out of the suits and try to cool down. Di had thoughtfully left a bottle of water for each of us.

Just another fun day at the office!