24 hours: Joey Lee

The 28-year-old muay thai champion tells P.Ramakrishnan how she has never lost a fight and why kicking ass is the best way to stay in shape. Photo by David Wong. Hair and make-up Karen Yiu.


"Normally I get up at 6.30am and rush to Pure Fitness, as I have early morning clients and classes as a personal trainer. From about 7am until 10am I am booked up. In the past, though, there have been bankers who've wanted to train as early as 6am, which means I have to be up at 5am and sociable before the sun rises.

But, before I hit the gym, I eat a healthy breakfast - usually oatmeal with bananas or blueberries, or whatever's in the house. I cook for myself but I have a part-time maid who delivers lunch and dinner to the gym; she's fabulous, my lifesaver. For protein and vitamins, I stick to oatmeal and fresh fruit. Most of the time I'm on my feet, so I need the energy.

When I'm not in training, I indulge in French toast with chocolate and bananas, which my trainer [Pierre Ingrassia from The One Martial Gym] would not be happy to hear about. I have to maintain a weight range for fights and it can be a struggle to get it down.

I have a mix of men and women who train with me but, before noon, it's mostly women. They're not there to become professional kick-boxers or to compete against me in the ring; they just want to get into shape and it's the fastest way to shed kilos.

When I'm done with training others, I begin my own training and I usually go for a run around the beautiful waterfront, near the Star Ferry. Those little Nescafé cans keep me awake in the morning but the run will really kick me into gear.

For lunch my helper will source my low-carb menu.

I have chicken or stir-fried vegetables or grilled fish with vegetables. She even cuts up fresh fruit for me - like I said, I am spoiled.

During my breaks, if it's the right time, I will call my mum in Vancouver. I was born in Taiwan but brought up in Canada. When I was in school and college, I did sports - a lot of basketball - and I was always competitive. I tried muay thai for a lark. I really enjoyed it and, when I started winning matches, obviously I enjoyed it more.

Since I moved to Hong Kong in 2005, the two titles I've won have been the World Muay Thai Championship Asian women's champion and the South Pacific champion.

Even though my family's in Canada, Mum can watch the fight in Thailand, Macau or wherever [on YouTube] the next day but I report back by phone. My mother worries about me a lot but at the same time she wants all the details. I have to call her after every fight almost immediately otherwise I know she'll worry herself sick. She has come to just one of my matches but she couldn't watch someone kick the s**t out of me.

When I moved to Hong Kong, after studying, I didn't know what I wanted to do. As both my parents are originally from Hong Kong, I had residency here so I flew down to see what it was like. It's great; so many opportunities have come up. I got a job as a trainer at Pure quite quickly and Pierre saw a fight of mine somewhere, tracked me down and said he'd manage me.

I was fighting for a local gym, really underground stuff, like you would see in movies on cable TV. [Then I got] my first big fight, in Sydney. The first one was a draw - I've never lost a fight.

I've been fighting around Asia and Australia. My last fight was a big event in Macau, which I won. Fortunately, this time the media reported it correctly. Last year, I was in a fight in Macau and the Hong Kong papers misreported that I lost the fight.

I train almost every day in the afternoon at The One, which is a gym dedicated to muay thai and kick-boxing.

I really sweat it out. On Monday to Friday for about two hours I workout. On Saturday, my day off [from training others], it's about four hours. I spar with my trainer or there's a guy I train with. (There aren't many, if any, girls in Hong Kong who are at my level in muay thai so it's usually a man.) It's interesting to fight with a guy because they think it's going to be a little easier. When it turns out it's not, even if we're just training, they get a bit rough and end up hurting me and themselves. It's a pride thing, but I'm just there to train.

Kick-boxing is all about preparation and training. A fight usually lasts three to five rounds, two minutes each. I'm 'on stage' for about 15 minutes - it really is my 15 minutes of fame. Just for those few minutes I have to train for about six months. Even on my days off, I try to do some form of exercise: I run on Bowen Road or The Peak, or I play tennis. I've just started wakeboarding at Tai Tam. Most of my friends are pretty healthy and often they are my gym buddies or clients too.

Usually my training starts weeks, months before a fight and I go at it pretty hard. I start my diet and running and all that jazz. I can drop about 5.5kg in six weeks. Anyone can do that if they work at it. You don't have to train for eight hours a day. All you need to do is regular workouts and cut the crap: no sugar, no alcohol, easy on the carbs, drink plenty of water - all the clichés that are so obvious. If you have a goal - and usually a big fight will goad me into it - it's easier to achieve.

Currently, there's a big fight that I'm working towards: the world title. I was promised if I won the last fight, I could fight [American kick-boxing champion] Angela Rivera-Parr or one of the other top, well-known fighters in the world. There's an Australian girl who I'll be challenging for the world title in December at the Galaxy StarWorld Hotel in Macau, so, if I don't want to get the crap kicked out of me, I've got to start training for it now. It's a huge event, with about 2,000 to 3,000 people watching and millions more on TV. There's pyrotechnics, big music, the high rollers. Tickets to my last fight cost US$3,000 per table. I get paid a certain amount to take part but I don't do it for the money and I'm not just saying that. I'm doing it for the love of the sport.

Around 6pm, I'm back at Pure, as I have clients till about 9 or 10pm. By the end of the day, I am beat. I try to eat dinner in between seeing clients and I just gulp it down. I try to eat earlier in the evening as opposed to later. I live in a small apartment, not far from the gym and I cab it home. If work ends early, then I go out to eat with my friends. I don't drink at all. Not ever, not even champagne. But I really enjoy my food. I'm a total foodie and love to try different things and new restaurants. During the heat of training season, I have a bowl of Chinese soup for dinner then I get my eight hours' sleep.

There's a list of people I'd like to fight before I retire. Until then, you know where to find me. At the gym."

Publication Date: September 16, 2007
Post Magazine,
The South China Morning Post



See earlier feature Kick the Girls and Make them Cry

24 hours: Shobhaa De: Interview with famed Indian author, editor and model, columnist Shobhaa De

The 59-year-old workaholic has written 15 novels, pens three newspaper columns weekly and Indian soap operas, and has her own fashion label. She tells P.Ramakrishnan why she has no time for writer's block.

"My day is frenzied, frantic, lunatic and s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d. I am not a lark and refuse to get up at dawn. My mornings start slowly and only after my first cuppa (preferably Darjeeling). I have no beauty regime or state secret to defy age, other than cleanliness. I've never been to the gym. I don't jog (although in my college days I was sporty). I have a 15-minute stretch routine that I've been doing since my school days and that's all.

I have a fortunate life with help - drivers, cooks and so on. My staff have been with me for years so they know just how hot I like my morning tea. I don't cook but I am a great cook - even if I say so myself. I don't follow recipes but go by instinct, flavours and aromas. I haven't made anything for years and my life would be at a standstill if we didn't have the helpers. I have 20 professional balls up in the air at any given moment. Whenever I am asked how I manage to do it all - the secret of my success - I always say: 'Behind every successful man is a woman and behind every successful woman, there's another woman.' In this case, it's my helper.

I read about eight newspapers in an obsessive-compulsive way, soak up everything, every morning, religiously. Two of the youngest kids are still in the house (the other four are adults and managing their lives and careers in Dubai, Malaysia and around India) but they're old enough to take care of themselves. My youngest is finishing school and preparing for university. I don't kiss them goodbye every morning because I don't subscribe to clichés. For the love of having my children around safe and sound, I don't drop them off at school - because I've no aptitude for driving and have crashed too many expensive cars. My children go in school buses, like others.

There's a large, antique circular dining table in the middle of the house where I sit and work like a demon. It's a huge mess of papers, magazines, articles I've cut out, ideas penned, notepads, stationery. You can't find the table under all the papers and [my family] threaten to bin it all. My mess and I bond. I know exactly where everything is and it frustrates my family no end. Fortunately, they all leave the house in the morning and I can sit uninterrupted.

I hardly break for lunch, it's my peak productive zone.

I get a lot of work done in a non-stop, focused way from about 10.30am to 2.30pm. I don't believe in writer's block. It's a lazy excuse and people just have to get up and get on with it.

I wrote each of my novels by hand but my articles were typed up - until about six months ago [when], in a state of panic, I caught up with technology out of necessity. I used to hand-write my columns too and fax them at noon. One of my daughters would type it up and send it off to the editors. With all the girls getting out of the house, I have taken a quantum leap into e-mail and computers - which I hate. I miss my penmanship. I hope to die with a cheap ballpoint pen at hand - cheap because I've lost too many pens, including a beautiful Dupont in Hong Kong recently.

I have never approached a paper or magazine for work. I say it not with arrogance but with pride that people have been interested in my opinion. Apart from the four regular gigs [for Indian newspapers and magazines], I also write guest columns for various publications. I treat my day like chewing gum - stretch it and stretch it till it's 36 hours long.

I have meetings and brainstorming sessions all afternoon: there are the two TV shows scripted by me on air, the fashion line, another book in the works, a new TV project, film ideas. I never leave the house. Mumbai traffic is hideous. I always ask people to come to my home in Cuff Parade. If someone really wants to meet me then they can sit in traffic for two hours, otherwise it's not worth their trouble or mine.

Fortunately, as a freelance writer, I can travel the world. I have a stock of features banked up in advance. I've been a journalist for nearly 40 years and I've never missed a deadline. And filing from my travels is just not done. It's too hectic. Like the time I was last in Hong Kong four, five years ago for the literary festival: there was this mad dash, trying to find a fax and send a feature across to The Times of India - I hated that chaos.

This weekend, I'm off to Italy to promote the third book being released there. My writings are translated and published around the world and my columns are syndicated in various languages around India.

My late afternoons are even more frazzled. The children are back, we take a lassi or coffee break over hot, buttered toast and even hotter gossip. That's my big indulgence for the day. We enjoy those light-hearted moments.

I love being with my children. I'm so happy they are such complex, interesting, amusing people. I'd rather hang with them - don't ask me if the reverse is true - than any socialite or celebrity. And they are my harshest critics. When Elle magazine listed me as one of the most fashionable women in India, my daughter laughed and reeled in horror, 'This gypsy look is in?' she asked. They don't understand it and roll their eyes.

I await the arrival of Mr De about 6.30pm. I put my pen down, shut down - or try to - and watch him at his elaborate tea ritual. Early evenings at home are also spent chatting with the children, discussing their work, emotional tangles and other anxieties.

Contrary to the [Indian society column] Page 3 myth, I don't attend every event - but I get photographed at the ones I do. We stay at home six nights of the week and accept just one invitation, if that, preferably on a Saturday night. We are making an exception to this rule as there's a dinner with Indian Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram. He's an amazing mind, a very engaging conversationalist and for exceptional people, we make exceptions.

My big treat, normally on Friday or Saturday evenings, is watching a Hindi film at the nearest multiplex. I recommend a Hindi movie to anyone looking for an instant stress buster.

We eat a late-ish dinner, about 10pm. I read till 2am and keep the light on, much to my husband's grievance. We've been married for so long but even now, when he reads with me, he chats and it drives me up the wall.

My work is not about reporting. It's about observation and I'm acutely alive to change. I'm excited by newness. There is always far more material than columns and books and that's a good place to be in. The source of inspiration has not turned dry. I've never run out of ideas. My work speaks for itself. Every book is a best-seller and no critic or other author has been able to stop it from being a success."

Photo, courtesy of Gautam Rajadhyaksha


Also see: Brand it like Mumbai.