My name is Victor and I am a former West Malaysian studying in Sarawak in an Australian University administrated by a German Doctor. Guess I fit in the Multi-National agenda somewhere.
My first introduction to yo-yo, like everyone else in Malaysia back in 1998-1999 was through the World-Wide Proyo campaign, which made it's landfall in Malaysia. I was fortunate to be at the right place and the right time to witness the first performance from Yo-Hans at 1 Utama, which I was reluctant to go to in the first place (My mom forced me to accompany her and my Aunt for a shopping trip) So I saw a stage with the words Proyo there and decided to hang around. I ended up staying there the whole day, watching Yo-Hans work that yo-yo like a wizard. Like all the kids there, I was hooked. I got my first Proyo, a red Proyo Crayon. That was one of the best days I had, ever.
I learnt some tricks real fast. I was walking the dog, throwing forward passes and even tried my hand at looping, but the best trick I could do at the time was UFO. I always wondered how the pros managed to keep their yoyos spinning so long (heard from a friend that it was because they use a "metal axle" lol) After a while, interest waned but then the second wave of the campaign was launched, and I had the fortune of watching Yo-Hans in action with Ben McPhee and Katie Miller.
So that yo-yo was my baby, I used it constantly and always carried it in my pocket, and even my baby sister got her own proyo (Which I used more than she did). At every outing or events I would never fail to bring the Proyo with me. Then, the inevitable happened.
Proyos have a fixed axle, and if I missed a trapeze or a braintwister it'll end up in a knot. I had such a knot, and when I unscrewed the yo-yo to fix it I end up over tightening it. The stress was too much for the plastic to handle and after one hard drop on the floor, the proyo broke. I tried to glue it back, but it didn't feel the same as before, and it broke again. As a kid back then, it was hard to lose something you have a strong emotional attachment to. So basically my yo-yoing days ended there.
A few years later, Malaysia was experiencing the second boom, this time in the form of SuperYo-yo, spearheaded by a Japanese cartoon series. It brought back a bit of nostalgia, but I was largely distant from it. At the playground a friend of mine showed me his SuperYo-yo and talked about him taking part in a contest. I played with it and showed some tricks, and he was impressed. He asked me why I didn't go for the contests, since I would have stood a chance of winning. I couldn't answer.
Between the years of 2004 to 2009 nothing happened in terms of yo-yoing for me. I moved on to other pursuits, and enjoying my Secondary school life. I picked up music and started learning the guitar. I seemed to have moved on, until...
One day in June 2009 I was travelling about 1 Utama, and I headed to the music shop, wanted to get some guitar strings. I heard that Guitar Collection had opened a branch in 1U, so I went to get some heavy gauge strings, since I was Heavy into Metal and used drop tunings a lot. Not finding the strings I wanted, I left, and decided to drop by the kite shop nearby. I saw it, sitting on the yellow shelf, a Duncan Proyo. I couldn't believe my eyes. Like finding a long lost friend, I bought one immediately. A black Profly.
Playing it and looping it brought back some good old memories. I dropped by the shop again and took a look at the Freehand Zero. I hadn't the faintest idea what freehand was about, until I remembered back a few years ago, in Sunway Pyramid, I had encountered a group of people playing with yo-yos at a store called RadioActive. The strongest memory was of a big, portly guy playing with a big yo-yo with a ball tied to the end of the string. Little did I know that that was the first time I saw Dimi.
I saved up and got the Freehand. I picked the skull cause it looked cool. One thing led to another and soon I was on Youtube, watching vids of Andre Boulay with his awesome tutorial vids, learning about unresponsive play and Yuuki Slacks. Yuuki Spencer was my yo-yo god, his tricks were so fast and so good I knew that something big was going on. Searching about yo-yos I stumbled upon M-yo.com. I connected with the Yo-yoers at the weekly gatherings, and made friends with great personalities like Dimi, Azrul, Arif, Hon Vee & Shakeel.
So basically this was how I started, quit and re-started yo-yoing. Part 2 of my story starts with me moving to Sarawak, but that is another story to tell.
