Many of you wouldn’t bad an eyelid at the name, but I was actually pretty excited about interviewing this guy. Choong Tan Fook is one of the veterans of the Malaysian badminton squad, having formed a successful doubles partnership with Lee Wan Wah over the years, and for someone who grew up watching the sport – I was watching live when Malaysia won the Thomas Cup in 1992 – it was kind of cool to be seeing these guys, not to mention current national head coach and former champion doubles player Rexy Mainaky, in the flesh.
The team are currently gearing up for the Olympic Games in August, but that wasn’t the only thing I wanted to talk to Tan Fook about. To be honest, we also wanted to talk about his girlfriend who is a badminton player from China. They’re reportedly getting married.
The interview was set up the day before and I was told to arrive at 11am “because training finishes at 11.30am”. I didn’t know why I had to get there 30 minutes early but I figured I could always watch the training. I didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot, especially when I had no clue what these people were like. For all I knew, he could have been forced to do the interview by upper management and could be really annoyed at me already.
So I got there on time, found my way around the not-very-big stadium, and headed for the sound of sneakers squeaking on parquet floors – a sure sign that training was ongoing. I pushed open the doors – and realised I had barged straight into the physio/massage corner, complete with a massage table and topless male players. Oops.
When training was finally over, I made my move. Rexy was really polite. Tan Fook asked what I wanted to talk about. Err, your preparations for the Olympic Games, your plans after, I said. I’m a lousy liar. He asked if we could do the interview in Cantonese. I preferred Mandarin. I can’t say I’ve ever had to conduct an entire interview in Mandarin before, but we did our best. And he was supremely nice. It probably had something to do with the fact that I was media and that I spoke Mandarin but I had a great time. I came away really wanting the guy to medal in the Olympics.
Even if he called my bluff towards the end of the interview: “I think you only really wanted to ask me about my girlfriend, didn’t you?”
