unanswered

You know, staying at home makes me bored and I start daydreaming. Not dreaming about which girl I would date, who would I marry, how many kids I would have, but what would it be like if I were on the road to stardom.

Call me pathetic, but I know each and everyone of you may have had the same dream being popular, standing on stage, in court or wherever it is, performing, playing or doing anything you may have dreamt of in front of thousands of people. But I’ve never dreamt of myself being a singer. We’ve got lots of them in Malaysia, and most of ‘em are wannabes and can’t sing anyway. We’ve got loads of reality shows now. If one gets rejected in one show, he can try in another. And being one, you must not only can ’sing’, but people want the whole package. Yeah, good looks as well. If you ain’t from a ‘mixed’ family, you ain’t gonna get noticed. Even if you were from a family of Java, Bugis or probably a slight mix of Chinese blood and Malay, you’re probably in. If you’re pure Malay, pure Chinese, pure Indian or whatever, you’re just like anybody else who most probably wont get a chance to be noticed. But if you had parents or grandparents that are not Asian (as in white, caucasian), now that’s a grand package! Even if your great, great, great, great grandfather was a Brit, and eventhough you roughly look like some plain ol Malay from Kampung Lalang, Baling, now that’s something!

Anyway I wont be talking about this today, maybe some other time.

Back to topic, I dream myself of being a tennis superstar. Not like Paradorn Srichapan popular, but Roger Federer popular. I see myself playing against Rafael Nadal - locked in a tight competition to win the Grand Slam titles - with me winning eventually, and Nadal standing beside me, looking sad and dissapointed while I raise the winning trophy for the world to see, smiling with proud and joy to every photographers pressing the shutter non stop, with my face in tomorrow’s newspaper front page.

And during the Beijing Olypics last month, I see myself playing in the finals against Nadal struggling for the gold medal. All I can think of is ”A gold medal in the Olympics, the first one for me and the first one for my country”.  After 4 hours of playing non stop, I was playing in the gold medal match point game. It was 40-40 deuce with me having the advantage. It was my turn to serve. I had to win this set to win this whole game, and take home the gold medal. I see Nadal from across the court sweating heavily, trying to win this set so he could get us to deuce again. He doesn’t look even tired. I see him mumbling something to himself, maybe a prayer or something but it was inaudible from across the court. The sun was right above my head, the hot scorching rays burning on my back. It was a disadvantage for me because if I serve and look upwards to the ball, the sun will definitely shine in my eyes. And that would probably blind me and cost me the gold medal.

I looked towards the crowd. Everybody had their eyes on me, waiting for me to serve. The ball girl gave me 2 balls. I took one by my racquet as the other one I slipped it in my pocket shorts. I bounced the ball repeatedly with the racquet as I walked towards the baseline, hoping that I would not have to use the second ball if I screwed this first serve. Usually the second serve would be slower than the first serve, to a point that you don’t want to screw the serve but hoping that it would most likely just get inside the court. And that would be a total advantage for my opponnent.

Everything seemed to be in slow motion. I saw the umpire nodding, a sign for me to serve. And Nadal was ready in his position, bent down, his eyes aiming right towards me while swinging right and left, waiting to return my serve. I said a few prayers and bent down, lowering my left arm with the ball in the hand, looking at it for a while and looking back at Nadal across the court. Everything kinda seemed blurry at the moment. Sweat dripping from my face onto the court and flowing on my arms. Everything felt slippery. I raised my right arm with the racquet and syncronisedly raised my left arm to let the ball fly upwards right out of my hand. I bent down a bit to get the momentum and with all the might from my body, and every tiny bit of it flowing to my right arm, I smashed the ball right in the centre of the racquet.

I saw everything in slow motion. The ball flew right towards the other side of the court, missing the net a few inches above it and I saw Nadal running towards the ball with his racquet in his left hand reaching with all his might to hit the ball. The ball smashed right into the court and unpredictably the ball flew off course swinging towards the outside. I could see Nadal’s expression feeling shocked there at the moment as the ball projectile wasn’t predicted. He sprang and flew with his arm reaching out as far as he could but it was no match for him. He could only watch the ball as he landed straight onto the court chest first. He couldn’t return the ball.

And with an instant, I hear the crowd cheering so loudly as everybody started to stand, clapping and cheering, and those things that were slow motion at first became real again. I stood there in awe and shock. My heart kinda stopped beating. Blood wasn’t rushing through my body. I felt weak all of a sudden. I let go of my racquet as it fell to the ground and I let myself fall knee first as tears were starting to come out. I cried for a moment, a cry of joy and lifted my head to the crowd, seeing everybody smiling, cheering and clapping. I smiled. I stood up and felt the rush of blood running again in my arms and legs. The whole court was filled with camera flashes. I waved to the crowd, still feeling shocked and looked back at Nadal who was pretty dissapointed. I walked to him to the centre of the court and shook his hand, while tapping his back. “Good game, congrats” was all he said. And that was all I wanted to hear. I went towards the umpire and smiled and shook his hands, as I gave the last wave to the cheering crowd.