Valene goes for the World via China

Six-feet-worth of Valene Maharaj strode in. Four inches courtesy stilettos. Glossy black hair, polished brown skin and skinny jeans accounted for the rest. With her departure for the Miss World Pageant in China just days away, the 21-year-old is anxious to play the game of beauty meet

strategy.

"The biggest lesson throughout all of this has been that little things make a big difference," she told me over a steaming cup of Chai tea (just one sugar). "Thank you notes for chaperones; being punctual, friendly, positive. I'm so happy. Someone would have to beat me for me to be sad. What is the point of being negative? Having a positive attitude gets me through lots of long days."

And she expects the combination of positive attitude and preparation to get her through her first real pageant experience. She was the teenaged runner-up to Kenisha Thom and Tineke De Freitas when Peter Elias and Company held one of their open-calls-and-final-decisions-in-one-day-flat two years ago.

Before that her only beauty-meet-competition experience was at the 2003 Caribbean Model Search with its finale at Jamaica Fashion Week. Still, that's not quite a pageant. She's yet to experience the psychological warfare that a month of estrogen-fuelled competition in the lead up to one crowning night must be.