Recently The Star carried an article regarding the social stereotype known as Ah Beng. For those of you not in the know, Ah Bengs are to Malaysian Chinese like how rednecks are to Americans (white ones at least).
Depending on who you hang out with, Ah Bengs are either much derided or celebrated. The typical Ah Beng would drive cars fitted with loud stereos and even louder exhaust pipes, much like America rice boys, but on a lower budget. Blond hair (platinum or dirty, it doesn’t matter) is a must, along with garish outfits and if you are all that WITH a tendency to holler and refer to yourself in third person (in the Hokkien dialect), you are pretty much Ah Beng personified.
With the spotlight, or rather street light, cast strongly on Ah Bengs, I was thinking of a project to pay homage to this popular subset of Chinese culture. It didn’t take long to come up with a vehicle for this, the Xbox 360. Like a majority of Ah Beng rides, the Xbox 360 has plenty of potential of crashing and burning, with the 3ROD and E74 problems on this maligned console.
And like an Ah Beng’s car, the 360 is suprisingly quite modification-friendly. Imagine what water cooling with flourescent tubes (glow-in-the-dark, no less) and neon lights can do to the consoles street cred. Add in a few custom drilled holes into the case and some plexi-glass and you’ll get something that would impress even the local night market DVD seller.
I reckon that given the right tools, this would be a weekend project, no more no less. For my international readers, if you feel a little out of the loop reading the preceding paragraphs, don’t worry, I’m just embarking on modding project involving the Xbox 360.
Now, can someone donate an Xbox 360 to kickstart this? 🙂
P/S: I initially wanted to mod a Wii, but the name “Project Beng My Wii” didn’t sound quite right.
