Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Back to the badminton court

It is so cool I got to play badminton again. My company reserves two courts twice a week during lunch time for its employees. The sport center is located just 5 minutes away from the office. I won't have thought French know about this sport but to my surprise a lot of them actually know how to play. The center has 8 courts and all of them were filled with players each time we were there.



Badminton is a very popular sport in Malaysia. It is the only sport in which we managed to get medals during the Olympic games. As a kid, we would play on the road side. The house gate would serve as the net, or we would tie both end of the rope to something (like two trees on the photo) and the game would start. There were always enough kids to play during the evening. The better and the older one would teach the younger one and little by little you learn how to hold the racket, how to serve, how to be able to touch the shuttle cock, and how to smash. Since we were playing the games outdoor, you need to know how to play against the wind, how to raise the rope to let the car pass by, how to use the bamboo stick to retrieve shuttle cocks that stuck on the house roof or within a bunch of leaves. Everyone would get so disappointed when we lost all the shuttle cocks (either stuck on the roof or disappeared in between leaves) and we would get mad at the person who did that.

Those were the days when badminton was my childhood game.

2 comments:

  1. Le Framéricain's daughter and her young son play badminton in France and I had a college class in it a thousand years ago!

    I was very touched by your post as it touched upon your childhood and the reappearance of badminton in your new French daily life. I also loved the photo.

    It's nice to learn about your life in Malaysia.

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  2. are they good? you should be able to whack them.... :)

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