Jackie Miao

Three days ago, Sin Chew Daily published a story about some of the Top 50 candidates and there was a 2 page-spread on my profile!

28th July 2009 Sin Chew Daily Bio Feature

I don’t think I highlighted the fact that the Chinese media in Malaysia has been my biggest supporter. In fact they were the first ones on the scene when I got into the Best Job Top  50 shortlist.

MY REACTION

The first thing I thought when I saw this article was, if Andy Lau is on the margin I must be doing something right! Woo! I mean we’re talking about the legendary Hong Kong superstar Lau Tak Wah here, sidelined to make space for some worm-eating blogging trotter called Miao-who?

Second thing I thought was boy I wish I was fully literate in Chinese. My half-baked kindergarten comprehension skills have caused much of the article to be lost in translation. Naturally the next thing that came to mind was that I have to rectify this annoying handicap as soon as possible. I want to embrace the Han in me but English is my first language and I’ve been brought up very western by my parents!

INSPIRATION TO CHANGE THAT

Gary Chaw - Supermarket

Nevertheless, I won’t raise my white flag just because my mom fed me chops and chips while I was growing up. I’m gonna Sinocize myself (if there is such a thing.)

Did you know that Taiwan heartthrob, composer and lyricist Gary Chaw didn’t read or write a word of Chinese before? When I asked him many years back he told me that writing English songs wasn’t going to get him anywhere near anything resembling true success. Determined to make it in the music industry, he took intensive Chinese courses.

Today he doesn’t only speak like a native Taiwanese, he writes his own songs and some more for other famous Chinese popstars as well! Watch him speak about his new album Supermarket. Look at him tackle the media! If that’s not inspiring, I don’t know what is… Google him and go get yourself a copy of Supermarket. Gary is a great songster and an awesome human being.

With Gary as inspiration, I’ll  be looking for some Chinese classes that teach reading, writing and diction. I  figured if I can speak a little bit of Mandarin and have some basic foundation to Chinese characters the battle is probably half won.

In an attempt to get used to my Chinese media presence, I googled my Chinese name 繆姮娥 yesterday and found some old articles about my Best Job campaign. Here’s three of them if you can read in Chinese.

1. 陳慧嬌‧繆姮娥，繼續加油! Sin Chew
2. 澳大堡礁哈密尔顿岛「看护员」 沙巴缪姮娥未能晋16强 See Hua
3. 澳昆士蘭砸巨金聘大堡礁看護員 兩百國三萬四千人爭夢幻職業繆姮娥成功入圍 Overseas Chinese Daily News

So I’ve been getting a few emails from people who read the Sin Chew article above. Unfortunately I don’t have your email addresses and can’t reply to you so you’ll have to email me again at jackiemiao.my at gmail dotcom.

Last but not least, to the Chinese media in Malaysia 谢谢! 我感谢您的支持 (I’m hoping Google translator is a good place to start )

Two weeks ago, I needed some new pictures for a Sin Chew Daily feature (a national Chinese daily newspaper), so I got one of our staff to do a very quick photo-snappy. We didn’t have much time so I decided to head to nearby Sutera Harbour to that little patch before the “blinging” gated community holding the bungalows that belong to the über-rich.

The clouds were grumpy but we weren’t going to let the lackluster weather deter us. Behold the quickest snappy-snaps below…

Ya I tucked it in HAHA!

The vastness in the above picture is of the South China Sea. There are no islands in plain sight but theoretically if you keep going straight, you’ll hit the Northern state of Kelantan in Peninsula Malaysia or Thailand’s Narathiwat province.

In the picture below, the waves were rolling playfully without the help of any wind (see how my hair isn’t flying like a Medusa). The sand sunk right under our feet as we tried to walk from one part of the beach to another. To balance myself I had to spread my wings and do what I do when I get knocked off-kilter… I improvise!

Yippie la la!

Seriously, do I believe I can fly… do I believe I can touch the sky?!?

Ho ho ho that was lame!

Err nope, but at least it made me laugh which always does the trick to relax me before a photo shoot! You can see how serene I am in the next shot while I show off the bumpy Tunku Abdul Rahman Parks behind me…

The froth behind was sliding up the beach!

In the end though, I respected the fact that there will be readers born between 1930 and 1999 reading Sin Chew Daily and went with a shot that didn’t magnify how short my shorts were! A much better choice for the kiddies, aunties, uncles, grandmas and grandpas below…

The shot that Sin Chew used!

So that concludes my 15 minutes of frames for yesterday’s 15 minutes of fame!

I did a bit of spring cleaning this week and found the newspaper cutting of the New York Times article I was featured in. This got me thinking about instances when the media had made a real positive impact in my life.

A Big Break with the New York Times

NYTIMES: The Streets Are Paved with PCs by Edward Wong.

If you haven’t heard how I got to be featured in The Streets Are Paved With PCs, you may be wondering how a girl from the Bornean boondocks managed to get herself into the de facto paper of the most populous city in the United States.

In 1998, the Asian Economic Crisis was threatening my studies with a Forex meltdown that sent the Malaysian Ringgit down to a frightening low. To avoid packing my bags for home I applied and was granted a work permit designed by the INS to help existing students from countries affected by the crisis.

With a license-to-work in hand, I went scouting for a job in New York City. Brushed off by most interviewers for an unattractive profile (I was an undergrad and worse, an unknown international student with no string-pulling option), I must have gone to about 40 interviews before succeeding in landing a job. Eventually my persistence (fueled by a hunger akin to a lioness in the Serengeti) got me a job as a Web Designer at Maestro Technologies, a small Internet Service Provider in the Financial District.

While I was working at Maestro, Edward Wong, a reporter for the New York Times walked into our office one morning to interview my boss for an article he was working on about immigrant high tech workers. When he had heard that I was a Malaysian student slaving away to subsidize my education-under-threat, he wanted to use my profile to complete his story.

That’s basically the short version of how I got on the New York Times.

HOW IT CHANGED MY LIFE
Growing up in a small place like Kota Kinabalu, I never imagined that I would be featured in the New York Times, let alone at 20 years old! This article gave new meaning to the song “New York, New York” and validated my own romantic notion of a triumphant break in the Big Apple made popular by songs and films. It boosted me out of financial desperation and became the break I needed for a serious career in technology. Shortly after the feature, I went on to build websites that would power global businesses and this continued over the course of my career.

This experience taught me that it didn’t matter how young or old I was, where I’m at in life, where I come from, what color my skin is, and what gender I am, as long as I have faith, a good attitude and steadfastness the universe will take me where I want to be.

Appearing on Teenage Magazine

Teenage Magazine today.

In an earlier instance, when I was a teenager I wrote a letter to the Editor of a popular Singaporean teen publication called Teenage Magazine to express my delight in the magazine. Two months later, my photo and note came out in the “Letters to the Editor” section of the magazine. Consequentially, I got hundreds of letters in the mail seeking for friendship, which created a pen-paling hobby that lasted a few years.

Introduced by the then Editor-in-Chief, I became pen pals with two of their cover boys. One was a national treasure whose achievements inspired, and the other a free-spirited adventurer who fanned my desire to travel the world. This was arguably the best time of my life because I was allowed to dream and share my thoughts without worrying about being judged or getting laughed at since they were older boys of substance.

HOW IT CHANGED MY LIFE
Having heart throbs as snail mail pen pals was a giddy-ing experience, but more importantly our correspondences created a literary ecosystem for inquiry, introspection and creative expressionism. The more we wrote, the better I got. My imagination was allowed to roam free and so my confidence in communicative writing really took form as a result.

Perhaps one day I will look back and see the effects of the media exposure I got from the Best Job in the World. For now, I’m just glad to share these reflections of yesteryear glories with a little bit of help from the media. Hopefully it will inspire you to follow your heart and chase your dreams, whatever they may be!

Finally the BBC ‘Best Job in the World’ documentary is out and if you are in the U.K. you can watch the replay on BBC iPlayer for the next 5 days.

For me, it was especially fun to see what the other candidates were up to as we were all being really secretive with our plans while we were campaigning for votes!

Here’s a quick screenshot for your enjoyment if you’re not in the U.K. There isn’t a lot about me in there since the documentary focuses on the British candidates. There is however a flashing of my face and a quick mention of my name along the lines of “Up in the big wheel there are other candidates with an eye on the 70k prize. There’s Jackie from Malaysia…”

Despite a small cameo, I am pretty happy I managed to get myself on the Beeb for “happy-feel-good” reasons while I was in the U.K. I wish my mom could have been around to see this (God bless her soul)! She would have been delighted to see her daughter on British T.V.

It’s official! Tourism Queensland has chosen Ben Southall as their Island Caretaker.

Ben is the hardiest and most impressive candidate as far as extreme adventurism goes. It is very hard to top the Land Rover roaring, tough-as-nails man who climbed 5 mountains and ran 5 marathons in the same year in some of the toughest conditions in Africa. I know he’ll be able to hack this job because of the physical and mental requirements of the role. He’s as tough as they come and so is his toughbook (which he showed to us the last time we met up)!

I’m sure he’s inundated with media requests at the moment and I’ll wait till this dies down to congratulate him privately. I would however like to congratulate everyone from the Top 50 to the Top 16 for all their achievements and I thank Tourism Queensland for the amazing experience. I’ve made good contacts from this campaign and have a renewed sense of purpose because of the Best Job in the World. Money can be made in many ways but the experience is something money cannot buy.

I hope that the Top 15 who didn’t make it will know that you’re all winners. I remember how disappointed some of the Top 50s were when we didn’t make it to Hamilton Island but look up because the opportunities for other things have just begun and I hope to get to meet the rest of you one day.