Rich People Problems (Crazy Rich Asians #3)(44)
And it was pointed straight at Astrid and Charlie.
PART TWO
I made my money the old-fashioned way. I was very nice to a wealthy relative right before he died.
-MALCOLM FORBES
CHAPTER ONE
LONDON, ENGLAND
Wandi Meggaharto Widjawa was in London with her mother, Adeline Salim Meggaharto, supposedly to watch her nephew Kristian compete in a fencing tournament, but secretly they were both there for their triannual visits to the clinic of Dr. Ben Stork on Harley Street, who was considered by the most discerning filler addicts to be the Michelangelo of Botox. So deft were his hands at plunging needles into fine lines, fragile cheekbones, and delicate nasolabial folds, even his patients with the thinnest skins never bruised, and so subtle was his artistry that every patient visiting his clinic departed with the guarantee that they would be able to close both eyelids completely should they ever choose to blink.*1
As Wandi sat in the elegant Hollywood Regency –style waiting room of the clinic in her floral embroidered Simone Rocha dress, waiting for her mother to get her usual combo of Botox®, Juvéderm Voluma®, Belotero Balance®, Restylane Lyft®, and Juvéderm Volbella® injections, she paged through the latest issue of British Tattle. She always flipped to the back of the magazine first to look at the Spectator section, which featured party pictures from the only parties that mattered throughout the realm. She loved scrutinizing all the English socialites from head to toe-the women looked like either chic swans or unmade beds (there was no middle ground).
This month's Spectator section was quite disappointing-nothing but photos from the twenty-first birthday bash of yet another kid named Hugo, the launch party for yet another Simon Sebag Montefiore book, and some boring country wedding. She could never understand why all these aristocrats loved getting married in decrepit little English country churches when they could have the most lavish nuptials at Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's Cathedral.*2 Suddenly Wandi's eyes zeroed in on the obligatory photo of the bride and groom. As was the custom with all the wedding shots in British Tattle, the couple was pictured posing underneath the stone archway of the modest rectory festooned with a few anemic sprigs of roses, sporting painful grins as rice was being pelted at them. But the thing that stood out to Wandi was that the bride was Asian, and this immediately triggered an alert.
Wandi was part of a particular breed of Chindocrat*3 that had been raised in a very specific manner-the only daughter of an Indonesian Chinese oligarch, she was a typical third-culture kid who had grown up all over the world. Born in Honolulu (for the American passport), her early childhood was divided between her family's hospital-wing-size house in Singapore and the historic family joglo in Jakarta, where she attended kindergarten at the exclusive Jakarta International School (JIS). In the second grade, she was sent to the elite Singapore American School (SAS) before an unfortunate fake-Prada-backpack-trafficking incident in eighth grade led to her expulsion and swift enrollment into Aiglon, the boarding school of choice for privileged rebels in Chesières-Villars, Switzerland. After Aiglon, Wandi spent two years majoring in marketing at the University of California at Santa Barbara before dropping out and marrying the son of another Indonesian Chinese oligarch, shuttling between homes in Singapore and Jakarta, having her baby at Kapiolani Medical Center in Honolulu, and going through the existential crisis of trying to decide whether to send her firstborn son to JIS, SAS, or ACS.*4
Like most of the women who made up Asia's jet set, Wandi had an innate radar for OAWS-Other Asians in Western Settings. Whenever she was traveling outside of Asia and happened to be, say, lunching at Tetsuya's in Sydney, attending the International Red Cross Ball in Monaco, or hanging out at 5 Hertford Street in London, and another person of Asian descent happened to enter the room, Wandi would notice that Asian well before any non-Asian did, and their face would immediately be run through the ten-point social-placement scanner in her brain:
1. What kind of Asian is this? In descending order of importance: Chindo, Singaporean, Hong Konger, Malaysian Chinese, Eurasian, Asian American living in New York or Los Angeles, Asian American working in private equity in Connecticut, Canadian Asian from Vancouver or Toronto, Australian Chinese from Sydney or Melbourne, Thai, Filipino from Forbes Park, American-Born Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Mainland Chinese, common Indonesian.*5
2. Do I know this OAWS? Specifically, is this a famous actor/pop singer/politician/social figure/social media star/doctor/celebrity without portfolio/billionaire/magazine editor. Add 50 points if royalty or Joe Taslim. If Joe Taslim, have bodyguard slip him my room key.