Women's Tennis

Tennis was my first sport as a youngster but unlike basketball (which I also played) I didn't enjoy tennis as a spectator. While I do like watching some games I didn't watch it as much as I did basketball. After I stopped playing, I didn't watch as much. I only watched those marquee games like Nadal and Federer and unless it was close I never watched it intently.

Lately though, because some of my friends became passionate about the sport I started watching some games again. During Wimbledon, Coco Gauff caught the worlds attention including mine. She was this 15 year old girl who beat one of the greatest women's tennis players of all time and one of the players that probably paved the way for her - Venus Williams. More than her skill on the court what made me follow her was her poise and eloquence when being interviewed. She seemed wise beyond her years and she was very level headed during interviews.

When I watch basketball, I also like watching post game interviews because I feel you get a lot of insights on the mindset of these elite athletes as they compete in the biggest stages of sport. And so as I followed the US Open a very sweet and viral moment happened as the world's number 1 Naomi Osaka beat Coco. As the victor she asked Coco to join her in the post match on court interview. Being the elder but not by much, Naomi is 21 and Coco is 15 she was giving her younger competitor a chance address the crowd who came to watch her and appreciate the competition between two up coming athletes. See the video below.

 

In the formal post match interview Coco defined what an athlete and what competition is all about. It's being the worst enemy on the court but your best friend off the court. She says this in the 1st minute of the video below.

I'll also include Naomi Osaka's interview.



 With these interviews you can see how their mindset is an how they approach the game. For any athlete I feel that watching these post game interview will help their mindset. With the way these women carry themselves on and off the court I'm hoping for the coming of the golden age of women's tennis (unless it already happened when I wasn't watching).

What is GDP? (CNBC on YouTube and their explainer videos)

I find myself watching a lot of these interesting videos on the YouTube channel of CNBC. In this video it explains what GDP is. If you finished college you probably had this lesson already but if you didn't go in the field of finance or marketing you probably wouldn't care much about this. Truth is I still don't and it does seem lacking in terms of tracking the real growth of the regular citizen in a country. I'll talk in general because I'm not smart enough to really understand this but while 3rd world countries in Asia seem to be growing in GDP the poverty gap is also growing. This might just be a measurement of those people affected by these numbers. It doesn't look at those people in the gray area of the economy those below the poverty line and those who are unemployed. I think Bhutan even measure the gross happiness of it's citizens as part of its economic data. I believe this is the more important statistic to measure.

Solving Problems Through Connected Minds

It's always easier to see the bad over the good, black over white. For the older generation especially, the internet seems to bring so much negativity these days especially with the proliferation of fake stuff - fake news and fake lives on Instagram. But we forget to look at how these new connections via the internet and social media has created a pace of innovation we have never seen before. A lot of opportunities have been created just by being adept on being on the internet and social media - thus the creation of the nomadic lifestyle giving a lot of people the life of travel and mobility that can only be imagined a few decades ago.

Below is a video of sample where people over the internet solved problems together.