Just in case you are wondering.

I haven’t gone missing. I haven’t been travelling this week either. Instead, I was busy with this.

My favourite use of the Singapore Indoor Stadium

My annual sports journalism stint at Singapore Open Superseries was brought forward this year from the usual timing in June to April. Lots and lots of fun as usual and I always find this to be the perfect marriage between my passion for writing and badminton.

It was a week-long of endless speed writing, so much so that sometimes I felt that I ran out of words to use! But as always, words will magically appear, even though after hours of staring at the same paragraph or getting distracted by Facebook every now and then.

One discovery I made last week was that too much pork could cause writer’s block! I had steamboat with some friends on Saturday and after that I could not write a single word for the longest time.

Anyway, here is a little glimpse into how my badminton journalism life is like.

Again, I always start with the food. Seriously, everyone, and I mean everyone, is extremely pampered in Singapore. Nowhere else in the world would you get served a buffet spread at the media room from a high end seafood restaurant. In Denmark, you get apples and tea/coffee. In Indonesia, you get lunch box and some water. In Malaysia, you get nothing. So you can say that I was very well fed last week = happy girl.

With my media pass, I was given VIP seats, generally very close to the badminton court and reserved especially for journalists. Again, in Singapore you seriously get the special treatment as the media. With my lightweight and awesome laptop this year plus special access to WiFi all over the Stadium, working has never been so easy. The only other time the experience came close was in Bukit Jalil Stadium in Kuala Lumpur when there were actually desks outside so we could watch and write at the same time. Slightly made up for the lack of food there I would say.

This was one of my favourite pictures from this year, with my favourite Thai doubles player Sudket Prapakamoul. There seems to be a trend of taking selfies with him. Here is our picture from last year.

And sometimes when I’m lucky, he and his partner Saralee might give us his winning flowers too, just like in Copenhagen Masters 2012. That made me and my friend the happiest girl in the stadium.

Should have taken picture WITH them as well but oh well.

You know I am thiiiiiis close of talking about my encounter with the Prince of Denmark during this badminton tournament, but I shall be good and refrain myself from talking about it this time.

And enough about pictures with famous people, I think you have got my point. Before I forget about stating the obvious, I definitely caught some awesome badminton actions throughout the week. It’s made me miss playing badminton so much, but I could only play in a few weeks’ time since I would have back-to-back travels from this weekend onwards (not that I’m complaining).

There were of course interviews after interviews to be done. But I have got myself a new assistant this year, my ever reliable sister. And as you can see below, she was the one in yellow doing all the work while I was busy posing for pictures.

I was clearly free enough to take pictures of the backstage of the Singapore Indoor Stadium, something that I have never done in the past seven years. So in case you are wondering how the backstage of a stadium looks like, here it is.

SO2014 10 — Nothing interesting, really.

And if you are lucky, you might bump into some lion mascot walking around (which I found out later on that this was the mascot for SEA Games 2015 which will be held in Singapore).

Being in the presence of sports celebrity and famous people may sometimes have their fame rub off on you. I was apparently spotted by a friend making a cameo appearance in Star Sports, and someone even took a paparazzi shot of me. This was how I looked like during my said few seconds of fame.

Note to self: find a better idle/non-smiling look.

At least I did improve my look a little bit the very next day when I was under the spotlight once again, this time acting as the official translator for Simon Santoso, the men’s singles champion for Singapore Open Superseries 2014. Seriously, for a moment, I think I may have known how it feels like to be famous. 😉