THE ORANGEMAN SAYS: Proton Malaysian Open Photo shoot and Roundtable interview

29 Sep 2009
Mandarin Oriental

On Monday, 28th Sep, I get a surpirse. I was invited to be part of the round table interview with Davydenko, Verdasco, Gonzales and Soderling by Ghaz Ramli, the Media Director for the tournament at the Mandarin Oriental. Beautiful hotel. Manchester United stayed there when they were in KL recently.

Ghaz was a sports writer himself for Malay Mail. An avid Motosports fan, now runs Grid Gossip (a PR company). I must say he is doing a great job. Very nice guy because he let me in as media at a last minute request.

Special thanks to Stefan Pertz of LaunchPad (Marketing Firm), Syereen Sengari of ZoCards (A&P company) and Ghaz for making my dream come through.

I was there like flash gordon. I took the LRT to KLCC because the the interview was Mandorin Oriental.
The official hotel for tournament.

This is where a whole new world opened up to me.

The first person I saw was Jason Dasey of the Four Four Two show on Astro. I just went up to him and introduced myself. To my delight he was quite friendly and got on well. He introduced me to Jai his producer.

We had a good chat on BPL. Jason says he is fond of Arsenal and Liverpool. During our chat he agreed that Graham Souness was great as a captain and midfielder but not as a manager.

I said to him that I dont Like what Benitez is doing and he seem to agree. Long story short, I am on his Four Four Two show on Tuesday (6th Oct).

Long story short.. Jason invited me to be on the show with 2 other friends of mine. They are doing a piece on Liverpool fans.

Then I saw Paula Malai Ali. I went up to her and just said hello to Paula. My surprise she said hello back. Immediately I took a photo of her.

I also took videos on how an interview is done.

I also met Lisa Wong of Sportscentre Malaysia.

I spoke with her and took some photos of her interviewing the players.

I had first hand experience on what happens during a Press Conference of the players and interviews.

How the media prepares and ask questions to the players. How they interact with the players.

Well... I have taken a lot photos and videos of these.

I asked Fernando Gonzales " How has tennis made him a better person?" he looked at me for awhile. Probably surprised at the question and this is what he had to say.

It gave me better self discipline. I do not need others to push to train and practice.

I always wants to win. I always want to better myself. Gives inner strength to overcome problems in the court and off the court. I have been playing since 4 to 5 years old."

(see if you can read the above with a Chilean accent.. very similar to Spanish... OOOkhey)

He also commented that he find Malaysians friendly. Like the place. Tired because just flew in from Chile.

To me he comes across as very self relient guy. He is also friendly and fun guy.