i dont think it is a good idea to follow through. Maybe if you met her and she wasnt involved in 141 anymore--when she is over it and dont need the money. I agree with many that have responded...
sorry to be another to bring bad news... but like sexpert says.... a whore is a whore is a whore.


I hope you will take a moment out of mongering and just look at how things really are. Set away and evaluate the situation.
Love and infatuation are different things...

You don't need to be told it bro - just look around.

I went to Cuba many years ago.The people were dirt poor, but there was music, dancing, laughter and joy just about very place I went.
I've seen the same in Asia in Thailand, Philippines, Cambodia, North and South Vietnam [also 20 years ago] Nepal, Burma and many other
places, which are considered to be 'poor'. I've seen the Carnivals in Rio and Notting Hill - ever wonder why it's always the poor and
disadvantaged who take part in carnivals, while the rich people stand and watch?

Why is it that people think rich = happy and poor = misery. The facts just don't bear it out. Take a look around Central at the guys rushing
around in their grey suits with their grey, unhealthy faces living their grey, boring lives. But hey, they're rich. They just don't laugh or smile
very much.

Poor people are conned into believeing that they'll be happier if they get rich - which is why WGs become WGs. Well, I'm sorry, but it mostly,
just won't happen. How many of us look back to our happy childhoods when we had far, far less than we have now. I look at kids in HK
trudging to school with their heavy backpacks and trudging home afterwards to spend hours on homework. Where's the joy in their lives?

Most people have totally skewed values. They spend their lives in pursuit of the almighty dollar and forget to enjoy themselves along the
way. Often they do it for the sake of their kids and just end up screwing up their kids' lives without even realising it.

Well that's my rant for day. It's a nice and sunny and I'm now gonna take my dogs out to the country park for a runaround. Sorry about you
bros stuck in your offices.  

Remember you have or had a bum knee .. so don't RUNaround !  

Money does not guarantee happiness, but poverty brings nothing but misery. Money is like oxygen, when you don't have any, life's a bitch, when there's enough of it, you can concentrate of the misery of owning only one BMW.

Yah, to forget what life's like the other 361days of the year. The wretchedness of life in the vast slums of Rio is infamous. Short, violent lives marked by poverty, crime, drugs, poor health, and despair.

Do a Google search on 'slums Rio'. Here's one I particularly like:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2247608.stm

"In the last 14 years, almost 4,000 under-18-year-olds were killed by firearms in Rio alone.That compares, with just under 500 children killed in the fighting between Palestinians and Israelis in the same period."

As for the glum faces of HK businessmen - hey! that's because they're Cantonese, and the Cantonese don't smile - either here or in Guangzhou. (The Taiwanese, on the other hand, are very quick to laugh.)

And let's not forget that HK people have one of the highest life expectancies in the world - higher than both the UK or the USA. The money bought at least that.

But yes, living only for money is to squander those few years we have on this earth. It's another of the depressing facts about people that when they finally have enough to live a decent life, they have no idea how to enjoy it. For them happiness is a new plasma TV or the latest cell phone. That's because we now concentrate all of our energy solely on the acquisition of wealth. Modern education is about nothing more than maximizing the students earning power by teaching him skills useful in the market place. Education used to be about building character. So people find themselves with good jobs and plenty of money, but they haven't the slightest idea what it means to be alive in the world. They never learned how to realize themselves by actively exploring the possibilities of life.

[ Last edited by  Marsupial at 19-2-2008 18:02 ]

when I was a little boy, my teacher taught me

"Money is the root of all evils" ;

as I grew up, my friends told me that

"The lack of Money is the root of all evils"

Wondering who's right ?

Your teacher didn't know his Bible - the actual quotation is .... the love of money is the root of all evil .....

Makes a lot more sense, ah?

This article makes no mention of poverty or misery. It's about drug wars between rival gangs. Now, if I'd written this, you'd say I was implying
that all poor people are violent, criminal, drug-addicted murderers. But, of course, I wouldn't suggest that's what you really meant.


Well that doesn't make sense. If money bought it, why is it higher than the UK or USA, both of which are richer than HK. I'm sure it was due
to the healthy, frugal diet of rice, steamed fish and vegetables. With greater affluence and more Big-Macs, I've no doubt life expectency will fall
over the next generation.

OK, final paragraph, we agree.    

If HK people owe their longevity to a healthy, frugal diet of rice, steamed fish and vegetables, then they must have always enjoyed these long lives; but how long did the average HK citizen live 100 yrs ago when they were poor? - 40-50 years, if that?

Clean water, public health care, good public education, a developed infrastructure, good housing, on the job health protection, jobs, etc. - advantages enjoyed by those who live in wealthy countries, or the wealthy in poor countries - contribute MUCH more to longevity than diet. The healthy diet may have gained HK people a few years compared to burger-addicted Americans, but there is still a wide gap in life expectancy between rich and poor nations. As people grow richer, life expectancy increases.

Do you really think life in the Rio slums is a year round carnival? All those dead children says nothing about the quality of life there? People in slums turn to dealing drugs because it's the only way for young guys with no education or job prospects to escape poverty. The web is full of articles about the health problems, sub-standard schooling, unemployment, drug addiction and despair of the poor in Rio's slums.

I agree with what you say about the fruitless pursuit of wealth, but surely you don't think that slum dwellers should be envied their blissful lives?!

[ Last edited by  Marsupial at 20-2-2008 10:09 ]

My grandpappy that lives in HK is 86. He was poor growing up and most of his life raising my mom and her siblings. Currently he's middle class from the money his children and grand-children give him. He's actually got way more than he knows to do with since all his life he's been happy with not much money. Now that he's got it, he just like watching his children, grand-children and great-grand children grow up.

My grandpappy from my dad's side lived in Toronto in the very clean community of Scarborough(sp?). He was a businessman from Shanghai originally and was wealthy. He was very strict on his children in getting educations, which lead to one daughter with teenage pregnancy, one son who was perpetually after his money, one other son who tried everything to please him (including pharmacy school cause he couldn't get into med school), and my dad who left the family at 18 to go to the US because he couldn't stand his dad. He passed away at 80 with his younger kids still fighting over the inheritance.

I wonder if stress is a killing factor too. Which means the frowny businessmen in Central will die early of heart disease or other complications.


Why do you think I chase after WGs 1 week in the year and spend the other 359 days working.


Man... this is just depressing. Sounds like my life, except I'm considered upper middle class on my income. 6 WGs a year is all I get to look forward to? For those who say I can just get it in the US, it's just not the same to me. And in Tijuana... well, now that I've been to HK, I'm not going back there.

[ Last edited by  erix at 20-2-2008 16:06 ]

An interesting article in Feb 16 Financial Times:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/62c451 ... html?nclick_check=1

Of course I don't think they should be envied, but neither do I think they should be pitied - I'm sure they don't pity themselves.
And I've never described their lives as blissful - why would I? But, equally, who are you to describe their lives as wretched, as in:


Life in some middle class English suburbs is infamous for being so monumentally boring that it's no surprise that they can't survive
without their daily dose of Prozac. I can imagine small-town America being the same. But why should I pity them? Does anyone
really believe that the middle classes are happier than the working classes, simply because they have more money? Which do you
prefer, the sedate atmosphere of a middle-class wine bar or the more raucous bar or pub. It's a hypothetical question - the point
is, whichever one you prefer, don't automatically assume that one is better or more fun than the other.

I've never understood people who are so arrogant that they think their lives are so much better than anyone else'. And isn't
America the worst for this? Many Americans just can't undertstand why every other country don't want to be just like them.

How many of us are old enough to remember the Rock 'n' Roll mantra of the 60s and 70s - 'Live Fast, Die Young'. Now it seems
like everybody wants to live forever. As I've said before, elsewhere in this forum, I've always been drawn to the dark side, to the
fringes of acceptable society, to the desperados. Maybe these people don't live perfect, idyllic lives - but at least their lives are
not boring.


Don't you see the irony in that? We're supposed to learn about the slums of Rio by reading articles on the web? In the 1950s in
England, the government demolished most of the slums and put people in brand spanking new high-rise blocks of flats. Touble is,
entire communities were destroyed and it wasn't long before the flats became the new slums and life was 100 times worse than
it had ever been in the previous so-called slums. I admire do-gooders but, a lot of the time, they do more harm than good.

You really haven't a clue, have you?

We're not talking about ennui, cheesy decor, or the lack of bridge clubs. The issue is health - physical and mental. One has to put up with tacky wine bars and and the other with no access to clean drinking water. One has state-subsidized health care, the other never sees a doctor. A good education and the possibility of travel and work abroad for one; never getting beyond the 6th grade, or escaping the slum, for the other. How can you compare middle class boredom with the despair of poverty??!! You haven't the slightest idea what life is like for those people.

I don't see how one can downplay poverty by comparing it with the entirely different ills of affluence. Should the poor resign themselves to cholera because middle class Englishmen have to turn to prozac to fill the void within? Is watching you family suffer from malnutrition not so bad after all, given that Americans keel over with clogged arteries from eating too many burgers?

And poverty is much more than just a degraded physical environment, it's also the unhealthy social environment the shapes the child, who then passes on his problems to his children in a vicious circle that is almost impossible to eradicate. Why do you think the effects of racism linger on for so long?

3rd-world slum dwellers would consider your working-class neighborhoods paradise. That is if they had the choice, for the really poor, even choice is a luxury denied them.

Live life with passion - tell that to some poor guy who can't feed his family.

Do you? Have you been there, lived there. Have you asked them what they want? Or do you just assume they want
what you want? You don't know anything about those people. So maybe you're the one who really doesn't have a
clue. Ever think about that?

You got me there. I really wanted to go with you on your last fact-finding mission to the Calcutta slums, but the thought of seeing just how happy those carefree souls are, was too threatening.

I overheard this conversation the other day when I was taking afternoon tea at the Peninsula - swear to God.

"Jeeze honey, life's a real bitch, I can't decide whether to buy the 65" plasma TV or go with the 80" LCD model - it's times like this that I really wish I were living in some 3rd-world slum. Man, those guys have really got it made in the shade! Ah the simple life of the humble slum dweller. No work, just lying around the old hacienda drinking pina coladas, practicing your dance steps, and watching life pass you by. So what if the floor turns to mud when it rains, and the insects come out of the walls at night to suck your blood, they've got the true joie de vivre that only hopelessness can kindle in the heart of man. None of those material distractions like running water or medicine"

"Thats so true dear, and they just don't appreciate it, do they?! All that whining about not having enough to eat - why my plastic surgeon is booked solid through the end of the month!! And they have carnival and those darling costumes. It just isn't fair! Sometimes I wonder why God hates us so? Mmmm, these scones are sinfully delicious aren't they. Careful dear, you're dripping jam on your new Armani tie."

"Damm! Can my life get any worse!"

[ Last edited by  Marsupial at 23-2-2008 15:40 ]

OK, so you tell me - the 65" plasma or the 80" LCD? Tough choice.    

Ok, giving in... One experience amongst many: I have been 6 months in Nicaragua, living with a family there, sharing their condition. Along the extreme poverty of these people, I have witnessed with my eyes the massacre of farmers by militia hired by US companies to overthrown the government. In fact, I was supposed to be there one year, but our group was recalled for safety reasons. I was thinking I was poor in my childhood, with my father working 3 jobs at the same time and my mother working at home while keeping care of 4 children. Forget it, that's not even close. The words you speak are what I hear from people who would puke at the sight of where they will have to sleep over there.

When I travel to somewhere, I make a point of seeing both ends of the scale. You think HK is a miracle thanks to the great British empire? Ah! For who? Wanna live with 10 other people in an appart smaller than yours? Mars is right, you got no clue or at least, do not show any sign you have. Sorry for being blunt.

No need to apologise bro. Blunt is good - I like blunt. Much better that Mars' idea of .... "teasing out what people really mean".

Everybody has their own idea. But just what has this quote got to do with how people cope with poverty:


There's no doubt whatsoever that US activities around the world have made huge contributions to poverty; both in the past and
in the present, the list is almost endless. And it's always to do with US greed, rather than a desire to actually help anybody [except
themselves of course]. So I don't really see what your point is.

People don't live in poverty because they want to or because they're lazy or stupid or uneducated. Usually it's either external influences
such as interference by the USA or other countries or it's due to internal corruption and the failure of their own government to provide
the conditions whereby people can help themselves.

Yes, people want to escape poverty. But most of them don't want to do it at the expense of escaping from their homes, their family,
friends, their traditions, culture and everything that they've known since the day they were born. Mostly, they want to work together
to change their own environment so that they and the people around them are no longer poor. Of course, there will always be some,
such as some WGs, who can just walk away. But, in the long run, is that really the best choice? You seem to think it is - escape from
poverty ANY way you can. That's what I don't agree with.

Well looks like I'm going to have to tease out the meaning of another one of Jake's comments. But no, that shouldn't be necessary. Jake has told us to take his words at face value, because he never implies anything other than what he says. If Jake says 'ANY', he means 'ANY'.

So it seems that Cherry_picker places NO limits on what he thinks the poor may rightly do to escape poverty? If that's the case CP, I must strongly disagree. You should be ashamed of yourself for encouraging the poor to murder, kidnap, grave rob, steal human organs, and sell their children, just to name a few.

And I also want to agree with Jakes point that we should never leave our own communities to seek opportunity elsewhere.