Thank you Milo, for not containing melamine.

I'm supposed to be writing a 2000 word story entitled "The Other Me", in Chinese, for a class I haven't been going to but I went to the kitchen and fixed myself a mug of hot Milo instead.

I don't know why, I mean, I've basically sworn off chocolate and drinks with calories for the past couple of years so i shouldn't even have a tin of that stuff to begin with, but when my brother went back to KL one or two months ago and asked me what i wanted, that-along with dried guavas and curry pastes was what came into my mind.

For a large part of my life, I was under the impression that Milo was a Malaysian brand and therefore took pride in consuming that which I assumed was "buatan malaysia". You have to admit, the way messages are delivered by the media and advertisers- the Milo billboards with our national athletes, tv commercials with happy Malay kids drinking the calcium enriched stuff after playing sports, the constant appearance of the Milo logo with the Jalur Gemilang and Malaysia Boleh slogans, the color green itself being a very Malay color, any 6 year old with little awareness to marketing campaigns would have been misled.

You can't get Milo in Beijing the way you get it in KL, I've only seen Milo that comes out of Nestle dispensers once or twice.

Malaysians are creative with Milo. Milo drinks, Milo ice cream, Milo candies, Milo cereal, Milo this, Milo that. I even used to secretly eat the Milo powder straight from the tin-which I then thought was gross but eventually learned that just about everyone else had “secretly” done the same at some point of their lives.

They used to distribute small cups of machine made cold Milo during sports days when I was little and once in high school. Those were the best kind, the sweetness and milk were just right and I remember all the kids would have to squish in line at a Milo truck to get them.

I didn’t used to like homemade hot Milo and used to wonder why the Milo I made at home never tasted as good as the ones they had at mamak stalls and the "Mee-Looh Beng" at the canteen until I figured out that they used evaporated milk and other ultra fattening ingredients whose nutritional contents I didn’t used to care about.
I’m trying to remember the last cup of Milo I’ve had in Malaysia, I think it was with my dad one morning the last time I was home, when we were waiting for my visa at the mamak stall outside the immigration office-or was it a teh tarik?- I can’t quite remember.

It’s funny how thinking about Milo itself is nostalgic for me and yet it’s not quite the taste that triggers it. I think it’s one of those things that has been in the background all your life, that you never really have to pause to think about because it’s just there: the commercials with the swimmers, the logo appearing at sponsored events, the “Milo Ais” wording on the stained, laminated menus… The logo alone can be associated with thoughts of childhood, family, warmth, good for you etc. I mean, come on, THAT is what you call 58 years of successful branding.




Random facts from the Milo website:
-MILO® Tonic Food Drink was introduced in Malaysia as a Tonic Food Drink in the year 1950.
-Malaysia can be rightfully called ‘Land of MILO®’ because it is the world’s largest consumer of the beverage.
-Malaysians drink more MILO® than any soft drink and Malaysia has the largest MILO® factory in the world located at Chembong, Negeri Sembilan.

Rock on Milo, rock on...

I Have To Deal With Flab

Ramadan is not making me any thinner, I think it's because I consume food at night and it's slowed down my metabolism.
Also, I am not exercising as feverishly as I used to.
I finally started to go back to the gym yesterday after two weeks of being a lazy bum, it was for pilates and I highly doubt that it will help me burn much fat.
I think I must be reaching that point of womanhood where I lose control of my body and everything starts to sag and grow thick and fat and cellulite just multiply all over.
By the time my 20th birthday rolls around I will probably become some massive monstrosity that children will cry at the sight of.
I suppose that's what age does to a person.
Pretty soon all I will be is an overstretched waistline, mounds of flab and a gazillion chins.
My god, at this rate I will resemble Jabba the friggin' hut by age 30.

If Victoria Beckham and Nicole Ritchie can fight age and stay hot, then BY GOD so will I.
No more goddamned peanuts.

Time for a diet.

thinspiration..if she can then so can I

I Don't Always Get Art

Here's a little known fact about me:
When I was little, the big, gold framed and brightly colored Marilyn Monroe Warhol picture in my brother's room used to scare the living shit out of me.

Some people grew up terrorized by clowns, I grew up terrorized by her

Thinking back back, I have to question whether my big brother bought that picture as an appreciation for pop art or simply to ward off pesky little sisters such as myself.

My big brother has always been quite a fan of contemporary art.
It comes naturally with his built in attraction to all things valuable, collectible and limited-he gets it from my dad-the antique collectors-side.

We spent Saturday afternoon at the 798 art district, a labyrinth of art studios, galleries and coffee shops in Beijing. It used to be a bunch of old factory buildings during the Communist era but was reconstructed into an art center in the 90s (I'm thinking because it was cheap).

I love my big brother to bits. Ignore my fat face.

I'd been there on two previous occasions, one on which the weather was too cold and the exhibitions too few, another in which I was in the company of one very bored and grumpy 6 year old. Neither were too pleasant and I got dizzy going around with no sense of direction.

The weather on Saturday was hot and sunny and the art district was filled with tourists, photographers and art browsers-after all, my brother said, not everyone can take a 500,000,000 yuan piece of art to go.

The place was prettier than I remembered it to be, and cleaner-though that might be on account of the Olympics. We wandered in and out of the many art exhibitions, my brother asking for the price of the occasional piece of art or getting excited to see the original work of some artist he knew. I wandered around pondering the how the bolts and clogs in the twisted mind of artists and sculptures turned-can't have looked very pretty with lines across my forehead trying to figure out what the guy who had made a giant doughnut (or wheel) out of black clothing (including a pair of CK boxers which caught my eye) was really trying to say.

Or the person who made towns and cities out of cloth and suitcases.
Or the one who painted crying people in front of Chinese landmarks, like the Birds Nest.

And then there was the guy who pretty much makes dinosaur sculptures for a living. Big T-Rexes, small T-Rexes, black T-Rexes, bright pink T-Rexes.

A million bucks for a little, glossy dinosaur, that my friends, is the power of branding.

It was very Alice in Wonderland, very peculiar.

My brother repeatedly remarked about how great the art galleries in Beijing were compared to the crappy Shanghai ones- which was alot coming from him. He has, in his 3 visits to see me, criticized everything from the transportation to the Grand Hyatt buffet in Beijing.

It was certainly more fun to walk around the place with him because he'd been reading about this sort of thing and knew which ones were a big deal.

My brother's favorite artist is this guy named Yue Min Jun, who's trademark is painting these deliriously happy looking people, with the same face, same squinted eyes and same wide-open, laughing mouths- he figured his paintings looked cheerful.

How is this not disturbing!?

I kind found their happy expressions more or less disturbing, call me paranoid but their laughter looks forced and phoney, I mean for god's sake, what are they so freakishly happy about?! Is this the artist's way of saying Don't take Life seriously?!

Shudders

I suppose it's like writing, everything amounts to nothing until someone discovers and recognizes you.
Then the money and copyrights just comes rolling in, and the tissue you wiped your snot with becomes a collectors item.

5 Days of Moving

Day One: August 24th
4.10 a.m.
It is 4 a.m., there's a thunder storm outside and Snow Patrol is playing on my laptop.
I binged from 5 to 8 but somehow I don't feel full now- but I don't feel so good either.
I can't sleep so I'm up packing.
It feel's strange taking my room apart.
Today's the Olympic closing.
Today will be my moving day.

1.40 p.m.
I wake up to the sound of the phone in my dormitory ringing.
It is Roxie and she is irritated, we only have one key to the new apartment and it's with me. I was supposed to be in the apartment moving my things in. She comes over and I hand it over.

2.30 p.m.
I need boxes to move my stuff with so I set out to the supermarket to ask for some.
Once outside the dorm, I step almost automatically into a non-licensed cab (or "black car" -the car was green but that's not the point) and found myself calling up the nail salon in Wudaokou to make a quick appointment.
10 minutes later, I am in the basement nail salon with a Starbucks Coffee of the Day.
2 hours later,I walk out rigidly with my finger and toe nails painted a matching shimmery black.

5p.m.
The landlord is late.

I decide to move my stuff over myself instead of paying RMB 300 to a moving company and take a taxi back to the university and haul three quarters of my kitchenware over and up four flights of stairs.
The taxi driver bitches all the way about not wanting his precious car to be treated like some kind of truck. I thank him quickly and repeatedly to shut him up.
The landlord brought over another guy to fix up the wireless system for us. He watches me unload my 15++ bottles of herbs and spices and eyes my oven curiously. I suppose he thinks I'm quite a freak, but he doesn't say anything. I am given my set of keys-or rather-one key- to my new home and a ride back to my dorm.

7.40p.m.
My room looks like a hurricane hit it and I don't feel like staying in it.
I head down 5 floors to Mil's room to use her internet.
The closing ceremony didn't sound very interesting and the only time I glanced at the TV I saw tons of happy smiling athletes and irrelevant Chinese kids, each more un-cute than the other.

11.20p.m.
At Lush with Mil, a little tipsy from a Corona and some Tsingtaos, but nowhere near as drunk as the guy on stage for the Open Mic. It appears that he was getting free Coronas, the lucky bastard. Too bad I can't sing.
I don't feel like going to work tomorrow. Nor do I feel like moving.
The two of us walk and ramble back to the dorm.

Day Two: August 25th
9 a.m.
I call in sick from work, hop out of bed and wander around downstairs looking for an unlicensed car that's big enough for moving things with. The van that I see sometimes is nowhere to be found.
I curse the odd-even number road system and settle for a medium sized car.
I pay the guy RMB20 to help me move the stuff, but I have to haul it all up to the fourth floor myself.
I don't know why I don't call someone up to come and help me.
It's one of my defects, I never really figured out one ask for help.
Come to think about it, the only time I've ever asked for help from friends was last summer when I got my leg so badly cut that I couldn't really walk and needed someone to take me to the hospital for stitches.
I guess I burn more calories this way.

7p.m.
I've traveled back and forth the apartment and my dorm, hauling all sorts of things up the godforsaken stairs for the third time now.
There's still a whole bunch of odds and ends left in my dorm room, and some big items.
I have no idea how to pack that stuff.
I start tossing things I'm not taking with me underneath the bed.
I can't believe how much papers and junk I was keeping.
And notes from classes that I forgot I ever took.
Perhaps I am skipping a little too much.

Day Three: August 26th
7.30p.m.
I go back to the dorm after work and I've got all my stuff lined up near the doorway and ready to go.
I stuck a colored poster advertising the sale of my fridge, bookcase,bedside table, tv bench and curtains.
The fridge looks dirty and I start to clean it.
The freezer shelf has a thick layer of ice over it and I don't feel like waiting for it to melt in case a prospective buyer wanted it right away.
With a pair of scissors I start to stab at the ice but don't really make much of a dent in the ice block.
The floor beneath the fridge is getting wet.

8.00p.m.
I get my first customer.
And he's interested in the bedside table. After some thoughts about whether it would fit into his room, he fetches a skateboard and wheels it away.
Later, he returns with cash and a table knife and shows me the right way to hack off the freezer ice in chunks.
He's nice and pretty interesting. We chat a bit and hack away more ice.
I decide that French Canadians are okay.
It is nice to have company at any rate.

8.30p.m.
It's pouring outside. I suppose this is a message from a higher power telling me that I need to stay in the dorm for one more night. So I do.

Day Four: August 27th
7.20p.m.
Return to room from work to greet two customers.
The first is a middle aged Japanese guy who takes the bookcase.
The second is a group of young French speakers-an Asian girl, a blonde guy and a brunette.
They haggle with me for the fridge in Chinese.
There's something really unnatural about being haggled with in Chinese by someone who is blonde and blue eyed. I feel ruffled and insecure.
The guy obviously wanted the fridge but insisted on pushing for 10 kuai less, which pissed me off and brought out the competitive part of me.
I do not end up selling the fridge and am stuck with it for yet another day.

8.30p.m.
I get the unlicensed car driver that drove me to the apartment on Monday to come over and help me move again.
This move was easy because I didn't have as much stuff and the heaviest thing I had to carry was the water cooler.

10.00p.m.
Roxie tells me she's spending the night at her parent's house so it looks like I've got the place to myself for the night.

11.30p.m.
I am unreasonably hungry and there is nothing to eat.
I venture out to the convenience store and buy yogurt and almonds.
It occurs to me that I have grown too comfortable with campus life and am ignorant of the dangers of the outside world.
My steps quicken when I walk past a perceivably shifty looking guy.
I eat my food while watching Hillary's endorsement speech on youtube.
The speech is amazing and she's a fantastic woman.
I shouldn't have eaten in the middle of the night.

2a.m.
It appears that the shower water comes only in Too Hot or Too Cold.

Day Five: August 28th
5p.m.
I decide to hell with it and text the French speakers to tell them that they can have the fridge if they're still interested.

7.20p.m.
The fridge is moved away and I empty the dorm room of all the things I want to take with me.
The TV bench is the only furniture left, and I take it to Ivy's room,which is two buildings away.

8.00p.m.
I am pissed off with the central housing management in Building 19.
I learn that I need to fill in a form to state that I am moving out of school and it needs to have a stamp from the foreign students office-which closed hours ago.
No one informed me of this throughout my 4days of hauling things around.
I get into a heated argument with the bitchy woman at the counter who refused to take any responsibility for their neglect to inform me.
A bunch of Korean students who were obviously just moving in stare at me in bewilderment.
I don't know why I got so uptight about it. I guess I'm just sick of moving, I wanted it to be over with and now I have to wait yet another day.


10p.m.
Drinks at Propaganda with a new friend. Propaganda's reopening signals the fact that things are getting back to normal in Beijing again. Clubs are reopening, beggars and peddlers resppearing, it feels good to know that.