Lesbianism vs. $65 million dowry?

Lesbian heiress Gigi Chao is on "loving terms" with father despite $65 million dowry offer

(fanpop.com)

   

Gigi has a flood of offers (Bobby Yip/Reuters)

HONG KONG (AP) - The daughter of a flamboyant Hong Kong tycoon -- who has offered $65 million to any man who can woo her away from her lesbian partner -- said she's not upset with her father.

  

But it's unlikely she will be accepting any of the marriage proposals flooding in.
  

I'm not a feminist, but... (inourwordsblog.com)

 

Tycoon Cecil Chao made world headlines this week when he offered the unusual marriage bounty after learning that his daughter, Gigi Chao, had eloped with her lesbian partner to France.

  

"I'm actually on very, very loving terms with my father. We speak on a daily basis. He just has a very interesting way of expressing his fatherly love," the 33-year-old told The Associated Press.

  
CNBC's Robert Frank has all the details on the story about Gigi Chao's father who is offering $65 million to any man able to marry her.
  

She said her father offered the reward because he was upset after learning she had "a church blessing in Paris" with her girlfriend of the past several years. 

"What this whole episode really highlights is that perhaps still, the Chinese -- or in fact the Hong Kong mentality -- can perhaps tolerate the 'don't ask, don't tell' view of sexuality," she said. "But as a social statement, it's still very much a sensitive issue."

Hong Kong decriminalized homosexuality in 1991 without yet legally recognizing same-sex marriage. More + Video

Comedy fodder

Ashley Wells and Seven, Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)

This story will never die because it is being immortalized by Sacha Baron Cohen ("Borat," "Bruno," "Ali G"). He plans to make his next movie, which may be a comedy for a change, imagining how this dowry offer could turn out.

  

To give men a fighting chance, professional pickup artists are coming to the rescue: What can ordinary men learn from them? (And what can women learn from the lengths men have to go to to find their ideal dating/predation style?) Effeminate Southern California Public Radio (SCPR.org) personality Larry Mantle gets to the bottom of the matter: The Game: Penetrating the Society of Pickup Artists. 

  

Many men might be interested anyway, but when $65 million is hanging in the balance, there are some who would learn Chinese, move to Hong Kong, and hang around the worlds of HK high finance and Parisian fashion... all just to score. Good luck, players, but consider that Gigi might be happy now and ask yourself, Would you make her any happier?

• Hong Kong "playboy tycoon" offers $65 million to find husband for lesbian daughter
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• Giants under Athens (etupdates.com)
• The Biology, Psychology, and Sociology of Sex
  Why do men and women feel the way they do about the opposite sex? Who is hot and who is not? And do we actually makes decisions about sexual attraction, or is it all beyond our control? In his new book, How Sex Works, Dr. Sharon Moalem explores the unique dynamic between biological imperatives, societal standards, and individual choice. Larry Mantle talks with him about these provocative issues. (And later in the week he discusses the new book  The Game and asks, Does the pickup artist's playbook still work?)

Broker turned Monk offers truths on crisis

AsiaOneBusiness (Reuters, 10/02/08)

TSURNOGORSKI MONASTERY -- Brother Nikanor, a Nasdaq broker turned monk, advises former colleagues to put a jar with soil on their desks to remind them where we are all heading and what matters in life.

As Western banks fold into each other like crumpled tickets and commentators portray the current crisis as the last gasp of modern capitalism, Hristo Mishkov, 32, shares the pain -- and offers home truths.

His story partly resembles that of Brother Ty, the monk-tycoon protagonist of the 1998 satire "God is my Broker" by U.S. writers Christopher Buckley and John Tierney -- who failed on Wall Street and became a monk.

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But ten years later, the similarities are superficial: the Bulgarian had a successful broking career, does not write self-help manuals, and aims to get happy, not rich. His interest in financial markets began under communism in the 1980s when he and other children created their own play stock exchange in their apartment block's basement in Sofia.

• Moneyman-turned-monk: the ex-Nasdaq broker says crisis needed to remind people to get happy not rich.
• » Watch video (1:59)

Five years ago, after failing to find happiness in the life he lived, the Christian [Eastern] Orthodox who hadn't practiced as a child quit the New York-based market for a dilapidated Bulgarian monastery that once served as a communist labor camp. Retaining one luxury -- a mobile phone, which connects him with both potential donors and former trading colleagues -- he has brought the rigor of his broking experience to his faith.

He has helped to raise hundreds of thousands of levs ("dollars") to rebuild the monastery -- a hard task in a country where charity is not part of the mentality and building shopping malls and golf courses is a priority. "Many people...in the world do not realize that they have not earned the food they eat, that they take without giving," Mishkov told Reuters. "But if someone consumes more than they have earned, it means someone else is starving.

"It is right to see people who consume more than they deserve shattered by a financial crisis from time to time, to suffer so that they can become more reasonable."

Being a trader has seldom been more traumatic: placing bets on political decisions about billion-dollar bank bailouts which, if they fail, could mean much more than a bad day for yourself or colleagues, but also jeopardize livelihoods. Some have found solace in religion, others in humor, but a few fall. Surveys show traders reporting more stress and every news report of a trader suicide is accompanied by suggestions the pressure may have been too much.

HAPPINESS
"We always search for happiness in the outside world, in material things, which makes us constantly unsatisfied, angry with ourselves and the world," said Mishkov, who exudes a sense of tranquility, intelligence, and humor.

Greed and the marketization of our lives have reached the point where people have been turned into a commodity -- even their health can be traded like a stock, he said. "We have so quickly lost our human appearance, we have become beasts...There's no-one to count on and say 'hey neighbor come help me.' He will come but demand a payment."

His monastery, tucked among hills 31 miles west of Sofia, was founded in the 12th century. The communist regime which banned religion turned it into a labor camp, then a children's pioneer camp and a livestock farm.

Now Mishkov works hard every day milking buffalo cows and building stone walls. He says he is not against rich people but can only respect those who contribute to the good of society -- pointing to Microsoft founder Bill Gates as an example. As a younger man working for more than two years for Karoll, one of Bulgaria's leading brokerages, Mishkov was good at his job, former colleagues say.

"He was a religious person and that annoyed me sometimes," said Alexander Nikolov, head of international capital markets at Karoll. "There were occasions when he would not show up at work because of some religious holiday." His colleagues were stunned when he decided to become a monk, but Mishkov felt the time had come to look after people's souls.

"Everybody can be a good broker but this does not bring much benefit for the world," he said. Religion can help people cope in today's stressful times and find answers, Mishkov added. Churches in New York's financial district reported last month increased attendance at lunchtime meetings, with many more people in business attire than usual, when some of the world's biggest investment banks collapsed.

Steven Bell, chief economist of London hedge fund GLC, said keeping a sense of reality is what traders needed. "It is very important to just remind yourself that there is a real world out there. In any job but particularly in financial markets, you need to try and keep your feet on the ground," Bell told Reuters by phone.

Mishkov says the crash should also help correct a dangerous global trend of an excessive outflow of labor to the service sectors, by people attracted by high pay and an easy life. "Milk is not produced by computers, bread doesn't come from a good company PR. It is necessary to plow, sow and harvest before that," says the monk.