FLIP + CHING

10 Years as a Rotarian

Posted on April 21, 2024 by Ching under Community, Things to Do.

This year marks my 10th year as a Rotarian. I joined in 2014 when I was looking to be more involved in the community. At the time my office was located at Douglas and Broadway so I was originally looking at the Rotary Club of Wichita which meets on Mondays at Botanica. However, they already had 400 members (and a few from my company) so my joining wasn’t likely to make much of a difference.

Living in Southeast Wichita, I was close to the Andover branch of the Greater Wichita YMCA so I was working there as a group fitness instructor in my off time. I also had a coworker David Austin, who was a member of the Rotary Club of Andover, and he invited me to visit. It was a small club consisting of only twenty or so members. Anyway, I ended up joining the Andover club because I felt like I would make much more of an impact there.

For such a small club, the Andover Rotary does a lot. We’ve contributed to so many things in the Andover community and internationally. We’ve also partnered with other Rotary clubs in the Wichita area on several initiatives. You can find out more about our club’s current and past projects here

Last month we sponsored food packing at Christ Church – East in partnership with the Outreach Program. Club members, along with volunteers from the church, Boy Scouts of America, and National Honors Society, participated in this community service project. The boxes of food packaged were donated to the Andover Community Food Pantry, Butler Community College Food Pantry, and Christ Church’s own ministry with North High School.

Last week Rotary Club of Andover school mini grant recipients for the 2023-2024 school year (five teachers from the Andover school district along with their students) presented their community service projects to the club.

I am so grateful to be part of a club that makes an impact in our community both directly (through our own community service projects) and indirectly by supporting and funding the projects of others. The school mini grant program is particularly meaningful because it encourages our youth to get involved in their community.

If you would like to learn more about our club, and/or support our projects and initiatives, we have a fundraising event next month at Crestview Country Club. It’s our annual team pickleball tournament. Spectator tickets (which cover lunch and drinks) are available for purchase here. We will also be raffling off some awesome prizes at the event. I hope you can make it.

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Not Playing, Running Tournaments Instead

Posted on April 18, 2024 by Ching under Community, Pickleball.

I’ve been having all sorts of issues (pickleball elbow, yips, monovision issues, etc.) since the start of the year so I am kind of glad that I’m on a self-imposed break from tournaments. I can’t imagine how frustrated I would be if I were competing and had all the problems I’ve been having.

Anyway, I’m not playing as much because of (a) the issues I’ve been having with my arm and (b) I’m not really training for any upcoming tournaments (since I don’t have any this year) but I’m still around pickleball because I’m still organizing tournaments and facilitating events of iPickle Nation and the Pickle Club.

Here are a few pictures from the St. Patty’s Day team pickleball tournament we had at the Pickle Club last month…

We had six teams compete:

Wu-Tang Clan: Julie Pauly, Michelle Belew, Micah Jacques, and Matt Dutton

Kitchen Killers: Jonathan Thorne, David Thorne, Leila Loomis, and Isabela Bifano

Smarties: Amanda Ades, Jared Smart, Lyle Smart, and Kendra Wicks

The Young and the Ruthless: Derek Pruett, Janelle Lindeman, Susie Ternes, and Devon Fuller

Clover Gs: Brandon Tran, Bee Bandasack, Karen Fox, and Reiko Trigo

Better with Vetter: Steve Vetter, Jen Tiano, Monica McGehee, and Fin Tatum

The tournament was MLP-style with pool play consisting of matches against every other team followed by a single-elimination bracket. The winners ended up being:

1st Place: Wu-Tang Clan
2nd Place: Better with Vetter
3rd Place: The Young and the Ruthless

It was really fun to watch the matches. I’m grateful that even if I can’t play, I can still be around pickleball. Our community is the best!

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Goodbye, Grandma

Posted on April 5, 2024 by Ching under Family, Life.

Brian picked up grandma’s ashes from the funeral home yesterday. It reminded me of how I haven’t written about her passing. Honestly, it feels weird writing on here knowing she won’t be reading it. Grandma was literally the only person who ever read this blog. At least until the last year or so when Brian decided it wasn’t worth fixing her computer anymore each time she messed it up because she couldn’t see, anyway. I actually think that’s why her computer would get messed up. Brian had set it up so she had large icons on the desktop that she could just click on and easily open things like her email and our blog, etc. I think it got to the point where she could barely see and was clicking on the wrong things and then she would get lost and couldn’t figure out how to get back to where she needed to be. Every time this happened, she would call Brian in a panic because she thinks she’s “broken” her computer. Brian would be there almost every other day just resetting everything back to normal so he finally was just like that’s it – time to let the computer go. He was like, “I’m just going to tell her it’s broken to the point it can’t be fixed.”

Grandma loved sending (and receiving) emails. And she enjoyed reading this blog. Her face would be an inch away from the screen just to read the text but she did it anyway. She liked to keep up with what Brian and I were doing – what fancy parties (before COVID) we were attending, what food we were eating at various restaurants – and I think it helped her stay connected with the outside world given that, due to her age and frailty, we couldn’t just take her out to a restaurant on a whim. We could only take her out on special occasions. And, when I would post her pictures and write about things we did together, she really enjoyed reading those recaps. When I get completely immersed in pickleball and mostly wrote about tournaments and games and other pickleball-related things, she would tell Brian that she felt that I played pickleball too much. Grandma was never one to beat around the bush and she always would tell you what she was thinking.

Every year since grandpa passed away, there would be whispers of “I think this might be grandma’s last Christmas with us” or “we need to make this X-holiday special because it might be her last one” and every year she would prove us wrong and make it to another holiday and another. This last year was a little different, though. Grandma fell and hurt herself around Thanksgiving and spent the weeks leading up to Christmas in rehab. Her only goal was to recover in time so she could spend Christmas at our house. While she achieved this goal, we were all very concerned that this would be her last Christmas with us – more so than ever. She barely had enough strength to hold herself up in the chair while we exchanged gifts. Brian and his dad struggled to get her in and out of the car when they picked her up from the home to bring her to our house. In fact, they both made a point to say that we wouldn’t be taking grandma out anymore. Instead, we would come to her for the holidays so she wouldn’t have to be transported (which proved to be quite an ordeal, specially this last time).

Our next holiday would have been Easter. I was already thinking of how we would bring Easter to grandma this year instead of our usual brunch buffet at YaYa’s. Alas, it was not meant to be.

A few weeks before Easter Sunday, Brian got a call from Victoria Falls requesting hospice care. They said grandma was fine but they just didn’t have the staffing to fully provide the care she needed. Hospice would provide that additional assistance (to move her from the bed to her chair and bathe her stuff like that).

When Brian went to visit grandma on St. Patty’s Day, she was still talking and everything. On Monday hospice told Brian that grandma didn’t get out of bed so they requested that a medical bed be ordered so she could be moved to it instead. The medical bed was delivered on Wednesday and Brian went over there on his lunch hour to get the bed situated. At that point, grandma could no longer form words or communicate. Brian said hospice told him she hasn’t been able to speak to anyone since Monday.

On March 21, Thursday, hospice called and asked us to come because they didn’t think grandma would make it through the night. So we skipped dinner and spent most of the evening there. The soonest Brian’s dad could come up is Saturday so I told Brian I hoped that grandma would be able to hang in there at least until his dad could say goodbye.

The next day, I asked Brian for an update and he said there was no change to her vitals. Later that day, the hospice nurses said she started talking again. It was the darnedest thing. I was thinking, wow — she really is hanging in there, waiting for Brian’s dad to come. On Saturday afternoon, March 23, at around 1 pm, we got a call that she was gone.

Grandma would have been 102 had she made it to her birthday in June this year. It feels so strange now that she’s gone. She used to asked me to end all my posts with GNG for “Good Night, Grandma” and I don’t know if you’ve noticed that I hadn’t been doing that of late. I stopped shortly after Brian took her computer away so you won’t see GNGs at the end of posts going forward. She’s no longer here to say good night to, so I guess it’s time to bid her farewell. Goodbye, grandma.

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Back in the Zumba Groove

Posted on April 4, 2024 by Ching under Zumba.

I rejoined the YMCA team back in December and since then I’ve been trying to grow my Wednesday night class attendance by providing prizes on the fourth Wednesday of each month. Right now class consists mainly of Zumba enthusiasts most of which are women. Occasionally, I will see Efrain or another guy in class but it’s almost all women 100% of the time. I am trying to get more of my pickleball friends into Zumba but right now it’s just mostly Zumba people so my giveaways are mostly Zumba swag and goodies.

This water bottle is what the winner got last month. I do have more pickleball-oriented prizes because I tend to host a bunch of pickleball events so I’ve amassed some prizes for that. I think as I have more pickleball people come and try class, I might give away some pickleball swag too. Our special prize day this month is on Wednesday, April 24.

April is a big month for me. Initially, I started with only one Zumba class a week on Wednesdays at West YMCA. However, my friend Jessie Silva who is the coordinator at the Downtown Wichita YMCA recently reached out to me about helping her cover some of her classes while she recovers from foot surgery this month. While we were chatting about covering her classes, she mentioned that she would like to add an Aqua Zumba class in the evenings. Voila! Just like that I picked up my second class — Aqua Zumba at the Downtown YMCA on Tuesday evenings. My first class was just the other day, April 2.

You’re probably wondering what possessed me to pick up another class. Well, a couple of months ago, I volunteered to host a Zumba party as one of the silent auction items at West YMCA (to raise money for the Greater Wichita YMCA’s annual strong community campaign). The winner wanted an Aqua Zumba party instead of party in the studio.

Rather than having to scramble a few days before the party (which is on April 20), I figured having a weekly class would help me prepare by refreshing my Aqua Zumba choreography ahead of time. Plus, I’ll get weekly practice. Besides that, I have an abundance of free time right now because I am unable to play pickleball everyday.

Although, my free time will considerably be restricted once Jessie has her surgery because I’m picking up her Sunday afternoon and Monday evening Zumba classes so, starting next week, I’ll be teaching Sunday through Wednesday.

Here’s my new schedule effective April 14:

Sunday 1:00 PM – Zumba at Downtown YMCA
Monday 6:30 PM – Zumba at Downtown YMCA
Tuesday 5:30 PM – Aqua Zumba at Downtown YMCA
Wednesday 6:30 PM – Zumba at West YMCA

The Sundays and Mondays are temporary. I’m only covering them until Jessie returns. The Tuesdays and Wednesdays are my own permanent classes. I hope to see you soon at one of these!

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CNP Ambassadors Sip N Play

Posted on April 3, 2024 by Ching under Community, Pickleball.

Once a month, Chicken N Pickle reserves a couple of pickleball courts at local CNP locations all over the nation for CNP ambassadors to get together. Here are some pics from our “sip n play” event last month.