Has Singapore’s badminton champion Loh Kean Yew cracked the code to Indonesian hearts?
- An Indonesian tycoon’s US$150,000 donation to 24-year-old Loh underscores his rising popularity in a nation that boasts its own top players
- Loh, who grew up in Malaysia, has been tweeting in Indonesian. In Singapore, netizens refer to him by the initials he shares with founding father Lee Kuan Yew
The Karim family comprises brothers Bachtiar, Burhan and Bahari, who run the Singapore-headquartered palm oil company Musim Mas. Bachtiar, 65, is estimated to have a net worth of US$3.5 billion, making him Indonesia’s 10th richest person last year, according to Forbes.
Loh, through his own efforts, also seems to have found the key to winning over Indonesian fans. Since November, the 24-year-old has been tweeting in Bahasa Indonesia while taking part in both the Indonesian Masters and Indonesian Open tournaments, held on the resort island of Bali. In the Masters he was defeated by Taiwanese player Chou Thien-chen in the round of 16; in the Open, he was runner up in the men’s singles.
On November 16, he tweeted a video showing him receiving a gift – a box of cake -from Indonesia’s Hendra Setiawan, the world’s number two men’s doubles player. He shared a video of him unboxing the cake – captioning it “mantap” (delicious). In the video he can be heard shouting “gila” (crazy) – in a true Indonesian accent.
A Twitter user @mijwakhalif replied: “Can you really speak Bahasa Indonesia?”, while another commented “where are you from really? How come you speak ‘gila’ so masterfully?”