(Long) Intro...

Greetings BF'ers,

I am cheongsa.

Occupation:

6th year PhD candidate, hoping to graduate by next year. Thesis dissertation on condensed matter physics theory. Specializing in computation of density matrices, if that means anything to anyone.

History:

I started playing badminton at age 10. My father marked out a badminton club on the lawn outside our house, and my brothers and I, along with some kids from the neighborhood, started knocking the shuttle around. My father taught us how to serve, but beyond that we had no formal training. We enjoyed the game anyhow, what with wind and sun and the uneven surface of the lawn.

I played this outdoor and informal version of badminton all through my primary school days. In my last year in primary school, I played my classmate, who was in the school team, by chance, and had a glimpse of what 'real' badminton is like. But unfortunately, I went to a secondary school with no indoor badminton courts and thus no school team or PE lessons in badminton. I still play outdoor badminton with my brothers once in a while, but for all practical purposes, you could say that I took a four year break from badminton.

After getting into junior college, I resumed playing badminton regularly again with the school's badminton club. I started getting serious about badminton, and learned how to do a proper clear and execute a proper backhand stroke from a fellow club member who had a friend in the school team.

Then, like all able-bodied male Singaporean, I was enlisted for national service, spent six months charging up hills and sleeping in the wilderness, before I signed on for contract service for five years. After a two year hiatus, I resumed playing badminton regularly, this time with my father and his senior citizen friends. This period shaped the way I play badminton: because the folks I played with had little formal training, little speed and much less power, their badminton is one of strokes and placement. Plenty of drops, plenty of clears, plenty of reading the opponent and exploiting fleeting openings. I also played a lot of singles against my father, who uses the backhand grip for every stroke (yes, even the forehand clear) and had the sharpest of drops. I had to get my footwork really polished before I had a chance against him. But once I started getting to the shuttle, it was a matter of me wearing him down.

After my contract expired, I went on to university. For most part of my freshman year in college, I was still playing with my father and his group of friends, but then course work started getting heavy, and for the better part of my remaining four years (2 BSc, 1 Bsc (Hons) and 1 MSc) in the university, I did not play much badminton. And after finishing my masters, I went on to pursue a PhD in the East Coast of US.

At first I did not think that there would be anyone playing badminton here in US, so when I came over, I left all my rackets at home. By the time I discovered the badminton club here, I had already stayed away from badminton for six years. I then took one painful year, both mentally and physically, to get back into shape, and bring my game play back to the level it was before. But while the basic strokes came back after a while, my smash never really did come back, and I find my style of play evolving from an aggressive smashing one to a defensive one, with the point of attack changing from the baseline to right at the net.

Skill Level:

Based on the two regional badminton opens that I have been to in upstate New York and Pennsylvannia, I would say that I would be very comfortable playing at the Men's B level, and can hang in there for a while at the Men's A level.

 

Hi cooler,

In a way, yes. The main thrust of my thesis is on how to use density matrix eigenstates and eigenvalues as a guide to Hilbert space truncation and doing renormalization group analysis.

But lately, I have been looking into how to use the density matrix to discover what kind of order parameter a system possesses...

 

Actually, the time I spent on badminton is almost the same as the time I spent on my thesis research.

I should be ashamed of myself...