bruneidaily: Fun but challenging.

Salam, good day. Hope abiskita stay in good shape and healthy. Of late I ate too much, heavy meal to be exact. This is not good I’m sure *lol*. A friend of mine once said, ‘...eat to live, but don’t live to eat...’. Please keep this in mind as a motivation in order to control our daily diet. Our very own Health Promotional Centre has put continuous effort and campaign in ensuring the rakyat and residences to live a healthy lifestyle.

However, the past few weeks I’m very active with badminton. Compare to football, badminton is much more fun but challenging and of course very sweating. I love serving and smashing!

During my school days, badminton came second to me after football. I still remember during that time me and my brother with couple of friends played badminton almost every night in an open court. It’s hard to play proper badminton before, we can’t afford to pay an indoor court to play in nor can’t we afford to buy a brand new shuttlecock. But only the determination we got, which urges us to play. To tell you more, we can’t even afford to buy a professional badminton racket.

To recall, we went to collect used shuttlecock at Pusat Belia, Menglait Sports Complex, JKR Sports Complex etc. Haha...maybe it sounds embarrassing but this is the only way for us to get a shuttlecock.

The determination has paid off, my brother has represents his school for the national inter-school tournament and emerged as champion, which is somewhere in 1992-1993. He is one of the best in the school back then, it is very pleasing.

During the time, the Indonesian fast hitting men’s double of Ricky Subagja and Rexy Mainaky has been my idol. I look forward to watch them playing in any tournament. In my opinion, they are the best ever men’s double I’ve ever seen. For me, Subagja is an excellent athlete. His power and stamina has been the key to his success.

Talking about my current activity, I played badminton every Friday and Sunday morning for two hours. It is my first comeback after 15 years lay-off! I have two Yonex rackets which I bought in KL in 2005 and another one in 2010 and never been used since iI bought them!

The new addition to my collection, is the Yonex Nanospeed 500 which has cost me a quite of fortune...haha. But keep it this way, to be a good player you need to have a good professional racket (which is expensive), a good pair of shoes and also a good sparring partner.

About the brand new racket, with the tension measured at 70lbs, it’s highly demanding! According to a friend, the stronger the tension the demand is higher. You need to hit stronger compare to a lower tension racket.

These days, few racket brands are on offer such as Li Ning, Gosen, Carlton, Fly Power and Ashaway. Although, a lot to choose from but so far I’m staying loyal with Yonex of Japan. With new line of Yonex brand on me, the shirt, the shoes and the rackets, now I identifies myself as a badminton player:)