Well, it’s been ages since the last time I wrote about something I’m obsessed about. The last thing I remembered was that potential departure of Tom Thorpe two seasons ago. For months, I’ve lost my obsession since thesis struck me, plus, Thorpe is no longer as prominent as he used to be. I’ve been thinking hard how I would get something to be inspired of when I had nothing to fangirl over. Thorpe might sometimes appear on instagram with his pathetic self-photos but it just didn’t suffice to fill the emptiness in my obsession box.
On May 20th 2016, I discovered a new bae from different branch of sport. An ABSOLUTELY GOOD-LOOKING HIGH-CHEEKBONED Danish badminton player called Hans-Kristian Vittinghus. No, no. I don’t think he has a family connection with a Danish story-creator, Hans-Christian Andersen. His parents named after the older him, perhaps. At that evening, in a Thomas Cup semi final round, he was playing against a Malaysian, Iskandar Zainuddin, where Danish team was down 2-0 to them. Vittinghus incredibly defeat Zainuddin in a straight game, until Danish team countered them to 3-2 victory. At that moment, it was only a moderate attraction because it’s his cheekbones that captivated me (not to mention his well-built torso).
The following hours, I started doing my guerrilla to research Vittinghus. Beginning with typing his name on google images search engine, I picked some of his best shots in the middle of a game. Setting his image as my display picture and getting remarks from my fellas that he looked a lot like Thorpe. Even someone asked if Thorpe plays badminton besides football. What the actual fuck?!
Denmark defeated my country, Indonesia, in the final also with 3-2 victory, and it was Vittinghus who determined the first ever Thomas Cup title for his country. Just because I started to fangirl over him, doesn’t mean I was also relief when my favourite athlete beat my country! So many feelings were ground into obnoxious mixture. I felt so upset yet I was also happy to see his brightest smile ever whilst being hugged by Jan Ø. Jørgensen.
I was leisurely reposting Vittinghus’ photo on his instagram and connected it to twitter. His twitter username was also mentioned in my post. Strangely…he liked that tweet. Next, I attempted to ask him whether he would let me if I intended to make a sketch of him, and HE FREAKING REPLIED: @LalaJoseph07 sure – go for it 🙂 (y). I nearly died.
I spared one night to decide whether I would really do it or not, because I was kinda occupied last week. The following day after his reply, I got a big event: a small graduation. And thinking after thinking, it’s decided that I would definitely do it. I looked up for his best HQ portrait so that it eased me to do zooming in, zooming out, and scaling. Inch after inch were traced on the sketch paper. Starting with his beautiful sparkling wide brown eyes up to the shading. It had drained my blood from head to toe. No matter how many times I tried to fix it, there were still something that just didn’t match the original. My best friend who is quite more skillful than me gave some suggestions about the shading, its boldness, and the proportion of several lines.
In the evening (Indonesian time), I tweeted Vittinghus the MOST FINAL result of my sketch. I didn’t necessitate to wait for hours and…BOOM!!! “@LalaJoseph07 wauw that’s impressive! Well done (clap) (clap)”.
The next tweet was a retweet:
and replies after replies:
and he didn’t break his promise:
I questioned myself after this beautiful sudden tragedy hit me, what I had done that God had given me such immense happiness in exactly ONE WEEK?! My happiness was quite indescribable. I was afraid to overreact, yet I couldn’t stay frozen in my room, surrounded with pile of failed sketches of him. Because I knew that this sketch was far from resembling the original Vittinghus. But the gorgeous warm-hearted Dane responded it more that I could’ve deserved. His retweet and instagram repost had gone viral. Several friends of mine went wild, mentioning me here and there and everywhere. Congratulating me, shouting at me, and some crazy sayings that they delivered.
However, I still had this misfortune hanging upon me. I’ve missed the chance to meet him face to face and give him the framed version of my sketch just because it was too late for me to go to Jakarta. If only I had known Vittinghus long long time ago, I would’ve worked harder to see him :(.
Photos of him with Indonesian fans scattered in every side of social media. I just couldn’t stand it. But whom would I be angry with? There’s no one to blame here! It just happened too fast for me. Of course I envied those who made it to meet n greet with Danish team. I’ve liked him too soon, haven’t I? *rolls, tries not to cry, cries harder*
I shouldn’t ask for more because having my artwork and my name plagued on his OWN instagram is such a big honour for this pathetic young woman who just graduated from English Literature Department. I never happened to be a sketcher, for your information. My first passion is and always will be a writer, a novelist, or something like that.
I’ve over-written, haven’t I? Now, just let’s be grateful with what God has blessed upon me. Anyone has been given their own happiness, and it was just to be mine even though the pain of not meeting him was adequately unbearable.
And him losing in his early game in Indonesia Open despairs me even more.
Hans-Kristian Vittinghus, you’ve just happened to be one of the brightest moonbeams in my darkest night. 🙂
Companion of The Defender 