Outdo Yourself
The best beverage on earth is 100 Plus. Tragically, it is only available in Singapore and Malaysia. I could say 100 Plus tastes like carbonated grapefruit Gatorade, but to do so would be like trying to describe Shakespeare’s genius by listing the alphabet. 100 Plus and The Tempest are more than the sum of their parts. 100 Plus is better described as deep sleep, the second day of being in love, throwing a puppy high into the air and catching it, laughing at its terrified expression.
100 Plus is delicious at all times but especially after running for too long. In Singapore, it is ill-advised to do any running outside at all, since it’s about a billion degrees, but if you’re going to do it, and if you’re attending the American school in the late 90s and you’re in PE classes for second period, you’d better have a 100 Plus handy after class. Even if your face is embarrassingly purple for the rest of the day, and unlucky experiments with foundation in the girl’s bathroom mirror have resulted in an awkward brick hue, 100 Plus will wash away all of your adolescent angst. (At least until journalism class, which is when you have to sit next to your crush, and then you’re on your own.)
Some people might object to the very notion of a carbonated isotonic beverage. Such people might say that after extreme physical exertion one should drink water rather than a sugary artificial soda. These are the kind of people who scoffed at the Internet and who called fanny packs a “passing fad.” The slow burn of 100 Plus going down is what makes it so sublime, as any Scotch drinker worth their salt would quickly affirm.
As this video shows, 100 Plus even spices up bummer activities like being at a crowded mall in Johor Bahru on a Saturday afternoon. With the promise of a 100 Plus at the end of their stationery bike ride, these local shoppers are having a blast!
The official slogan for 100 Plus, as I discovered on their website today, is “Outdo Yourself.” This phrase calls to mind 1950s housewives cooing over an iced lemon cake at a luncheon: “Why Susanne, you’ve truly outdone yourself.” I’m not sure what the 100 Plus marketing team is urging in its consumer base: how does one outdo oneself, exactly? Is it the same as overdoing it? If so, I’m glad to know 100 Plus has my back. I always turned to 100 Plus in the past for mere refreshment, but it’s only now, much too late, 6,000 miles from the nearest 100 Plus vending machine, that I realize 100 Plus’s secret ingredient: reassurance. True, others may say that spray-painting poems to your ex on the sidewalk outside their apartment might be over the top. But the folks at 100 Plus realize you’re just outdoing yourself, which always works up a thirst. A thirst that a German Apfelschorle, or an American Vitamin Water, no matter how refreshing, is never going to quench.