Pingpong and paddles

We used to play a lot of table tennis many years back. I have two table tennis rackets or paddles - one I used when playing and another on reserve that I got as an alternate but never got to play with. The one I used when playing, which is at my office, is a Friendship paddle. The reserve is from DHS or Double Happiness. I was introduced to these brands even before I got the pingpong bug during my grad school days. That was in high school when a close friend of mine was a table tennis varsity player for our school and showed me his preferred rubbers for his customized paddles.

 

Mint Double Happiness paddle inside the box and still sealed. I bought this from Chris Sports many years ago. Check out the price tag!

 

Back of the box describing the paddle specs. I think this is somewhere in the middle in as far as specs go.

Still sealed and good as new!

At the office, we have several paddles from Butterfly. These are the same ones donated by our Japanese friends who were posted at our office as JICA Experts a couple of decades ago. I'm not sure all survived but we played a lot before so the ROI for these were achieved. How did we learn to love pingpong back in the day? Well, it helped that one visiting professor from Tokyo was a Top Five player in Japan during his younger days. He was the one who donated the pingpong equipment and even organized and played a table tennis tournament at UP where he himself played. I remember he used the pen hold that was uncommon to us for being unable to provide a backhand. He made it look easy. 

 

I still play pingpong from time to time but not as often as I would like. Perhaps we should get a table at my other office and make it available to faculty, staff and students as part of our wellness activities?

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