I am now the champion of my college (Blekinge Institute of Technology)!
This competition really reminded me that I have bad nerves for competing. It takes a huge effort to get in the zone where I can focus and concentrate and shut out nerves and stuff. Especially in a sport with such small margins as table tennis.
There's actually a whole bunch of pretty skilled Indian students and the school, and the final was almost close. It kinda felt like my MPs sort of won many points for me, though. The guy had really huge smashes that were far too fast for me, but he landed around 2-3 in the entire match. These pips are devious, because it's very difficult to figure out how much spin they produce! They almost always reverse backspin (which won me countless points throughout the tournament), but against topspin they mostly just kill the spin. Unless of course I do a very active chop, but those were always pushed back.
Now that I've some money again I'm gonna order a VS 401 for my forehand. I've fiddled around a bit more with the TSP balsa blade, and I really like it for chopping, but I feel it really kills my forehands, unfortunately. I might try a cheap rubber with firmer, thicker sponge to kinda avoid bottoming out, but in any case I'm very divided about this blade. Not very happy about it being oversize, either. Next blade I try (down the line) is probably in the other direction - something like the 729 Bomb. That's maybe for next month's salary/student subsidies, though.
I also recruited a bunch of friends, one of whom has never played TT before. When I stuck LPs in his hands he thought it was so fun that he instantly went and bought a cheap setup for himself! So now I've also tried the LKT Stranger on a 729 Red Spirit blade. I really like it! Very, very good control. There's not a huge amount of feedback vibrations in the blade but it looks really slick and has a nice sound to it. I seem to be slowly spreading my dark side EJing to my surroundings
