There exist a silent unspoken disease that afflicts everyone who has ever live life in a city: multi level marketing (MLM). It's like the business version of catching flu.

For some reason people who had ventured into it and failed would hardly talk about it. It's also uncommon to bring it up with them. On one hand it's like bringing up a miscarriage (a uncontrollable failure on their part), on the other it's like digging up a moral failure for having attempted to sell poison, knowingly or not.

When I was around nine, dad met a man called Chan Tang Sang. This happened when they were fixing cars in the same place. Ah Chan (that's what he went by) lived in Chow Kit street, a wife and three kids.

One day dad brought me and mom to visit. At the time I didn't know enough about Chow Kit to know how seedy it was. This zone was interesting. Despite words of it being a red light district I didn't see any call girls. Or maybe I didn't know it even when I saw it. But what I did see over the multiple times I've visited were junkies, the heroin variety apparently. They would lie at corners of back streets, half conscious, high and undead.

Ah Chan's place was two levels above shops. Stairs and hallways were tight, reminded me of flats in Hong Kong. I can only describe it as a micro flat. There were two rooms, one for the kids with a giant bed for all of them. The youngest boy was my age, I mistook him for a boyish girl. The oldest one was a girl, I thought she was a boy.

It's interesting how deep some people involve their family in business. It's rarely done in the sense of optimum person/function fit. They mostly happen as a matter of fact. It would inconceivable for me to involve family in my business, the stakes are too high.

I can't remember the specific of the first visit to Ah Chan. But Ah Chan somehow was able to convince dad that there existed a once in a lifetime opportunities, and dad brought me and mom along to find out more.

A large portion of Ah Chan's place was a shelf full of household products. He was a 'stockist'. My guess is that means customers come to his place to buy these products as opposed to convenience store. Only much later do I realize there exist no 'customer', only 'members'.

See, Ah Chan was a high performing member of a multi level marketing company called Sunsky. What Sunsky did was a copy another company called Sunrider. And Sunrider was a clone of Amway.

Years ago Ah Chan discovered Amway, it was a revelation to him. Ah Chan describe the name Amway to mean, wait for it, "A Money WAY". My mind was blown wide open. There are many proverbial cliches to come from Sunsky.

Sunsky is now the superior Amway. Ah Chan proceeded to show us why.

He displayed product catalogs, glossy colored print, we took home stacks of them. All of them were household products, things that appeal to housewives like mom, all priced premium. I distinctly remember a multipurpose cleaning liquid, an all-in-one shampoo and some supplement with lecithin.

There was a reason the company sold household products and not something edgy. That's because everyone use them, and they want to target everyone. I was like "sure that makes sense." Only much later did I realize they didn't mean wanting to serve everyone with their products (which itself is dubious enough); they really meant they wanted to recruit everyone as a member.

Ah Chan was smooth. He did products demonstrations like a stage performer. His stage was a table lined up with products. There was equal measure of information and entertainment. He would spray cleaning liquid into his mouth to prove how safe it was. He would show an old nail with rust gone after soaking in his other product.

Mahjong paper was a major staple of his demo routine. First it served as the smooth table cover to lay the products on. Secondly it worked as a whiteboard for him to scribble his messages.

All these are part of the act not to move the products, but turn audience into Sunsky members. To become members though, there has to be a minimum spending each month. So a member either consume it themselves, or recruit new members to offset the spending and make profit from it.

If one person recruits only five and that five persons recruit another five each, pretty soon dad will be be a millionaire. After all it's just five, everybody can recruit five.

So who were mom and dad going to recruit? Stay tuned for the next part.