Turning Entertainment Into A Career

Turning Entertainment Into A Career
By Sandheep Nair

If two words could sum up my life it would be ‘Long Story’. My name is Sandheep Nair, just your average 17 year-old who finds himself as interesting as watching paint dry. Like every other teenager I’ve had my ups and downs in the past 17 years but what makes my story dissimilar to others is what I hope will lead me to an eventful, lucrative career- football.

How do I talk about myself? My name’s Sandheep Nair and come August I’ll be 18 years of age. I was born in Ipoh, grew up in Langkawi and currently reside in Putrajaya. I’m a laid back person who’s philosophy on life is “Always go with the flow”. My sarcastic personality has its advantages and its flaws. It’s a great ice-breaker but may offend people sometimes. I enjoy surfing the internet and playing football. I sat for UPSR and PMR and I’m currently waiting for my SPM results. I love football and hope to become a sports writer one day. Hopefully I’ll start a trend and we will see more sports writers come from Malaysia. At school I’m known as the guy that never comes to school yet manages to still keep up with studies. In 2007, I represented Putrajaya at the National Debate Competition, it was a fun experience.

I live with my single mother and 3 sisters. Seema is the eldest who is 26, Sangeetha is 22 and my younger sister Shobana is 16. Like all families we have our fights but we love each other just the same. My father left the family when I was 9 and I have rarely seen him since. Seema is a sub-editor for a publishing company and Sangeetha is working for the same company. Shobana studies at SMK Putrajaya Presint 9 (1). Im not going to leave out my partner in love and crime, Nurul Alia’a who has been so instrumental in my life that she does feel like family to me. We met at the National Debate Competition and never looked back.

I love football more than I love food. Arsenal are my inspiration to write but football is not the only thing I write about. Most sports trigger my interest, I show strong interests in tennis, badminton, rugby, basketball and futsal. Another thing I love is gaming as I find it both stress relieving and fun at the same time. I am a tech-geek and proud of it. I spend hours a day trying to find new ways to upgrade my computer. I am also an ‘audiophile’ at heart. I love music and love all kinds of different genres. Current favourites on my music playlist is Nickelback, The Killers and Maroon 5. I dislike cartoons excluding The Simpsons which is about the best creation of mankind! I also find history a great replacement for sleeping pills. Reality TV shows are almost my most hated things on earth, right behind Manchester United.

Being the only boy in the family, I found myself playing with Barbie more than that Red Fire Truck as a kid. If it wasn’t for my eldest sister I may have never gotten interested in football. When I was 6, my sister introduced me to football. I soon decided that I would support Arsenal. It wasn’t a bad decision, that year Arsenal won their first Premiership title. I thought I was Arsenal’s good luck charm only for them to go the next three years without winning a single cup. Despite this, I loved how no matter what was happening, no matter how busy you are, everyone finds the time to watch football. I never knew that I could make a career out of football. When I was in my teens my love for Arsenal grew greater. I began to read about their history from managerial greats such as Herbert Chapman and George Graham to cult heroes like Liam Brady and Perry Groves. Although these legends were involved with Arsenal long before I was even born, I felt a bond with them. I felt like I was part of a family, the Arsenal family.

My eldest sister would have an impact of my life again when I was 15. Her love for journalism had rubbed off on me. I enjoyed how she managed to translate her thoughts into words. So I wondered, what can I write about that’s even remotely interesting? Global warming? Not very fun to write about. Politics? Too scary. What about football? ARSENAL! Without thinking twice I needed to find a way to share my thoughts on the football team that I love with a fair amount of people. In January 2006, “Highbury 1913 – An Arsenal Blog” was born. I created a blog and used the name of the stadium that Arsenal were about to leave as Arsene Wenger revolutionized Arsenal. The “1913” stands for the year Highbury was built. And so I began writing, I started out with about 10 hits a day but before long I had hundreds of readers wanting to know my thoughts on how The Gunners were performing. As the months went on, with feedback from my readers I managed to improve my writing skills. It wasn’t long before I realised that I wanted to make a career out of this. I started doing research on sports writing. It took 2 minutes for me to realised that Malaysia needed one. A quick look at the back pages of the Star and I knew one day I could be working for “The People’s Paper”. At the end of every article I saw hope in short names like ‘AFP’, ‘Reuters’ and ‘AP’. I could revitalize the sports section of Malaysian media. Like Tim Allen once said, “How do men the read the paper? From back to front. First the sports section, then the comics then whatever is on the front page.”

All in all, joining the BRATs workshop is an opportunity I do not want to miss out on. I hope my essay can convince you to give this average boy a chance. I promise you wont regret it.