WATCH WHAT HE WATCHES

Sexy Strong Bare Wrist 

Besides how to tell a man by his shoes, a book written by a Hollywood friend, Kathryn Eisman, there’s one more secret into the world of decoding men.

Now not for a minute should you, the reader think, that this diatribe is meant for women readers, it’s actually meant for men.  It’s a way in to a women’s head, privy to her thoughts then perhaps you would be privy to her soul and her body and whatever else you may wish to enter.

Over the fashion decades, there’s very little a man can adorn himself to project his style, his riches, or his taste. His masculinity propels forward, through body language, body image (visualize those abs).  But sometimes he needs to show a little more, if God wasn’t so kind with his looks, height or  baldness.   A suit is a suit, albeit an Armani one or off the Marks & Spencers peg. A pair of jeans, is a pair of jeans, no more no less.  Understood that some of the brands are a yard or two over the marker but nevertheless jeans reveal nothing of the man. 

But his watch does.

His lack of taste or flashy style  is not dependent on the thickness of his wallet. What’s on his wrist says a multitude of things on how he sees himself.  It also attracts a certain type of lady. 

Imagine a  Board room.   All suited, sitting along a board room table  discussing the next quarter’s strategy .  It would probably range from the intern straight out of Harvard, or the Party lobbyist against the President.

The CEO reveals a well cut dark double breasted pinstripe suit, white shirt with gold cufflinks and peaking very subtly a Patek Phillipe  Calatrava yellow gold from his shirtsleeve. It depicts the “I have arrived”  classically classy connotation.   Vanity mark high on the scale states, “This is my daily wear, I change for the evening”.  If he is magically single, his ex wife did not get much from the divorce proceeds.    Most likely married, he looks for other opportunities, as he does in business and in personal ventures. 

Sportsman, athletes, have their black Tissot or  Tourbillon  with lots of different dials.   A competitor in everything, whether at school, in the gym, and in the work force. He’ll try and beat the other guy to a woman’s heart.   He’s the intern, after the meeting, he goes for a mile swim, 20 miles bike ride and then run a 10K – finishes his report before anyone else and gets the chick in time for the office party.  An ADHD profile, be rest assured being with this kind of man requires an active woman by is side.

The Cool Dude generally will display a wide band design watch.  It just says “hey look at me  -  I am cool”.   As vain as the Chairman of the company, only he has less money to spend.   Armani Exchange clothes, not quite the real McCoy but nonetheless does the trick.   He scores well with women, because of his coolness, glides effortlessly into the chat.   The mysteriousness of black is where interesting women clings for want of more.  

The Spy Watch (like William Baldwin in Sliver) is the one to look out for.   He is the type that is clean cut,  neat, in fact baby faced, naivity spewing out of his persona. What he has on his wrist is the ultimate in today's wristband.  Its the Spy Watch.   It does everything: an incredible piece of technology that puts a video camera, a microphone, and a digital video recording into a working men's watch.  It also has a usb outlet to transfer everything onto your computer.   Yes, this device is used by Law Enforcement, private investigators.  Or a very quirky guy hell bent on peeping, voyeuristic that   need to gather video evidence for one scary reason or another, and yet remain incogneto and discrete.   Or he likes to take video clips of his lovemaking - always goes for high profile, difficult to attain, almost always married women.

The man with a fancy Gold Rolex is crass, showing off that he's  successful. Sales people love to wear gold Rolexes. Makes them feel superior to other sales guys who can’t afford them. It says “I’m good at what I do. Look at my expensive Rolex.”  Ladies who love to gold dig, digs this kind of guy. He maybe a Sheik, or a Vegas Car salesman, a Hollywood actor, it's just a  vulgar statement  -  "I can buy you - just name your price."

The No Watch guy : He is saying, "I’m organic. I don’t need a watch to tell the time, my iPhone does that for me."  He's never without his Iphone.   On the minus side, when he does not to pick up the phone, and says he left it in the car, you know he's a liar, basically he's lost interest .    On the plus side, he is never late.   I like this kind of guy.   No frills.   He's good at texting under the table and with lightening speed, only to receive another message before you've even sent the first reply.

Leave the Patek Phillipe, the Swatch, The Spy Watch and whatever horological design on the foyer.  Plug the Iphone, turn it on "airplane" mode and forget being connected.  

I like a bare wrist 

- being with me  - 

there's absolutely no hurry.

SEX , MONEY, POWER = DIVORCE, PRENUPS, POSTNUPS

Rupert Murdoch divorces Wendi Deng.   Did she not see it coming?  

 What has caused Rupert to strike first?

The first shot, in anger, fired by Murdoch himself, in a sudden filing of divorce action against his third wife may have been a reflex reaction to the releasing of rumors of Wendi’s friendship with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. 

Blair Murdoch & Deng Triangle

Murdoch known for striking first, punches harder after being struck, apparently had a black eye the day before the filing.  Wendi, notorious for her famous left hook to a pie thrower two years ago could have been the cause, for she has been known as a home-wrecker.

Wendi, a fast learner had become more competent, perhaps more than he bargained for.  Upstaged by her, he regarded her as a hyper-social irritation with a challenging Chinese accent.  Murdoch grew tired of hearing how Wendi is an excellent networker.

This is a story about a man, while devoting his life to being indestructible, seems to be more beset by emotional turmoil and confusion with great angst and an unrequited quest for happiness.  Murdoch’s first wife, Patricia Booker, a flight attendant were married for 11 years and had a daughter Prudence.   He divorced Booker in 1967 and within months Murdoch married his second wife Anna Murdoch, a journalist working in his Sydney  newspaper, The Daily Telegraph.

Murdoch with Anna

Now tired of Anna after 34 years, mother to his three children, who had been ill for several years.   They lived in this big house in Hollywood.  Lonely, he was known to have wandered down Fox offices in Los Angeles, every night desperately looking for people to have dinner with, Murdoch executives learned to have the excuses ready. He promised to retire but what he was really looking for was to up his game

Murdoch has always put his business interests first and has taken huge gambles and created whole new industries.  In the process, his opponents claimed, he manipulated governments, lowered standards and sidestepped regulations, to become the world's first truly global media mogul.

Then, on a trip to Star TV, his Hong Kong based television company, he met Wendi Deng 28, a graduate of Yale business school and already the mascot and heartthrob of the Star office.  Patterns in life are a key to understanding a man’s regular manner of performance.  It seems he mixes staff with pleasure.

His marriage to Wendi within months of divorcing Anna celebrated in his yacht “Morning Glory” in New York, invigorated him.  At 68 when they got married, he felt rejuvenated by the youthfulness, the freshness and energy plus the excitement perhaps turned him on. And of course she became an adoring audience that could spar with him on an equal basis.   Besides the fact that he was pushing business in China, he needed her connections.

Her hyper neurotic personality of fast talking, fast acting with her strong Chinese accent in broken sentences were hard to follow but captivating.  Murdoch allegedly told a friend in 2009, “I don’t understand a word she says”. 

Born with a fiery ambition, cunning mind, a home wrecker, brash, and like a tigress who snares her prey with great executional skills.  She has been branded as a “gold digger” “trophy wife” and lately “tiger wife”.  Whatever that has been thrown at Wendi Deng Murdoch, she has shown exceptional skills at leapfrogging when cornered. 

In contrast, Murdoch inherited his newspaper business from his father, the Sunday Mail and the News and continued to purchase other media outlets over the years.   He bought The Sun and News of the World in the UK and prior to his election invited Tony Blair to Australia. The Sun to the surprise of many, endorsed Blair at the 1997 election. Murdoch only backed winners and made it ruthlessly clear that once the Labour Party's fortunes declined, it would switch allegiance.

He had a tendency to fall out with his editors and interfered too much.  His papers have been frequently accused of political manipulation, distorting news to ensure his political allies won elections.   He has been called vulgar and a cynic who has degraded standards of journalism by pandering to a sensation seeking public.

But his papers were frequently accused of political manipulation, distorting the news to ensure his political allies won elections.

Wendi Deng circled in red

Whereas Wendi, the low level factory worker’s daughter, had her beginnings in Shandong, China as a Subei ren, a vernacular term for the robust, rosy cheeked folk of northern Jiangsu, known for being blunt, blithe and uncouth. These traits are still there, just polished by beautiful homes, fine clothes and her powerful and jet set friends, which mask the true motivation lurking behind her personality make-up.

“Emotional sadness builds character.”  She was quoted about the trying times the family are going through right now with Murdoch’ s  News Corp phone hacking scandal involving top echelons of parliament, the police and the newspaper industry.   Those words are very telling of her own childhood.   Being the youngest of three girls, her family was very tough on her.  Rigorously disciplined, her parents made her study a whole textbook during the summer holidays so that she would be ahead in class for the following school year.   They pushed her very hard to work both at home doing chores and at school.  The oppression, the strictness and harsh enforcement on girls in China and at home, is the key to her consuming desire to claw to the top.

Wendi Deng’s arrival in the US in 1988 was carefully orchestrated.  Initially wanting to improve her English, she attached herself to the Cherry family.  Jake Cherry, then 50, was an engineer for a Sino-American joint venture in Guangzhou.  His wife Joyce at 42, tutored Wendi before returning to Los Angeles with the couple’s two children.  Jake stayed on to finish his contract.   Wendi, as Jake’s interpreter became close and as 19 year olds do, leveraged her youth on an unsuspecting lonely older married man.  She abandoned her medical studies and seized the opportunity by asking Joyce to apply to local US colleges on her behalf.   The Cherry’s sponsored her student visa and  upon arrival shared a room with their daughter in California.    Two years down the line Joyce discovered that Jake and Wendi were having an affair so she kicked them both out of the house.  In 1990, the two got married.  Two years seven months into the marriage, Jake turfed her out when he discovered Wendi was having an affair with a younger David Wolf. Jake became disposable after having obtained her a Green Card seven months earlier.

Just like a predator waiting patiently for the kill, she goes about finding the most susceptible areas in high-powered men, generally despised by others.  Much like the qualities of a Honey Badger, that has a ferocious reputation reflecting its tendency to attack animals larger than itself and is seldom preyed upon.

As an intern at Sky News in Hong Kong, she took advantage of people’s naiveté and niceness.  Her English was limited so she schmoozed off colleagues playing up the unworldly mainlander making her way up .  To get noticed, she needed a way in, and would poke her head at Management doors, and say “Hi., I’m Wendi, who are you?”  It was excruciating, it made some people uncomfortable but she would get away with it, in fact she perfected it. Before long, she figured that her target was now Murdoch.  Wendi wormed her way in by showing her capabilities in interpreting China. 

The country and culture intrigued him and in the process he fell in love with her.  Murdoch needed her straightforwardness, her daring and challenging business savvy ways.   Courtship ensued and within a few weeks divorced Anna.

Wedding aboard "The Morning Glory" with Charlotte Church

Their wedding ceremony aboard the “Morning Glory” his yacht in New York harbor was performed  by Jacqueline Silbermann then New York’s Supreme Court Justice  attended by 82 guests including singer Charlotte Church who performed three ballads for the couple. 

An insight to his media-might behavior over a 13 year old upcoming singer. Over the Leveson Inquiry into press standards, it revealed that Murdoch unbelievably offered a fee of £100,000 for Charlotte Church to sing at his wedding,  then said, if she waived it, his newspapers would look upon her favourably.  She took the favour under duress of her Manager.  Murdoch insisted she sang his favorite, Pie Jesu, regardless of its funereal overtures, because he liked it. She felt betrayed when the press later printed unfavorable stories about her.

To find another dimension of this tigress, Wendi is known to protect her family fiercely, and takes parenting her two daughters Grace and Chloe seriously. Wendi and Rupert are incredibly family orientated, a strict mother, she brings them up to take nothing for granted.  She wants them to have a spiritual life, insomuch as Blair became Grace’s Godfather, she takes them to Church and Sunday school regularly, some thing she did not have in her early childhood.     On weekends she makes dumplings with her girls, they way she was taught to make them as a child.

She has said, “Rupert did such a good job with his big children, I really make sure that my girls understand the importance of education.   I don’t want them to be spoilt, I want them to behave well by example.  I believe if you are nice to people, children will follow.”

Interviewed together on TV Wendi admitted to being very strict at home. "In Chinese culture, if I am strict to you and criticise you, it means I love you."

To which Murdoch replied: "Oh yes, she is very tough, very tough, she has taught our two little girls to speak perfect mandarin, everybody at home speaks mandarin except me. So they only tell me what they think I need to know."

With the pre-nup and post nup, and the addition of two children, a deal was struck between his other children in exchange for cash to divide the trust six ways instead of four but refused Wendi’s two children to vote.   Scared of Wendi’s uproar, he kept silent and only mentioned it during an interview on Charlie Rose, provoking an expulsion from his house with a domestic row. Returned home pleading this was not the case, and now has a new plan for Grace and Chloe to inherit power in the company. It seems that both Wendi and Murdoch are two nasty people incapable of niceness in their marriage.

Marriages are doomed when the very core ingredient of love and respect gets damaged.   Love can re-appear but respect once trampled on, can never be retrieved.  Playing with his ageing vanity, dyeing his orange hair, new Prada suits promising youthfulness, she also put him on kooky diets, and mocked Rupert’s Viagra in Vanity Fair. Her mimicry, albeit with a Chinese accent at other Murdoch family members, is testament to impertinency that has crept into their relationship.   Murdoch did not want to appear that his marriage was falling apart, it was an issue of pride, and also important for him not to fail at what everyone said would fail.

What's more, the most damaging results of the hacking scandal for Murdoch had been an increasing breach with his children and an urgency, on his part, to calm the internecine feuding. Wendi, again, was the odd person out, even the expendable one in the Murdoch clan.

With his media empire under siege from the phone bugging scandal, one can only add to the cantankerous, irritating, argumentative and difficult octogenarian having to come out with  “We are Sorry” Ad campaign,  “for the serious wrongdoing that occurred." 

One critic said, “Remorse and repentance are not the same thing and there is not much sign of the latter”

The satirical magazine Private Eye predicts the likely scenario of  Wendi screaming “What plee-nup? I don't lemember anything. Just like you, Lupert, I lemember nothing!' Her ironic cackle of laughter resounded around the panelled walls like the cry of a triumphant banshee across the wild Mongolian plains.'"

The Honey Badger Queen has just devoured her victim, spat out the bones, and is now on to her next bigger prey.  

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VIRGIN TERRITORY

                                                           UNTOUCHED, UNTRIED, UNTAINTED

THE BLUE LAGOON - BROOKE SHIELDS & CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

The title already shows the reader I am not messing about with the subject matter.  These are things I do for the first time, probably the only time for the indulgence of having tried.  It is a complex challenge with opposite mixed sensations of pleasure and triumph, disgust and triumph or all three together.   It is most definitely “virgin territory” for me.

Ingesting lambs eye, chewing on bat stew, and drinking cow’s blood is virginal territory for me. Driving on a racetrack at 200mph in a Porche, or becoming the member of the Mile High Club just pumps up more adrenalin than my body has ever produced in anyone’s lifetime.

THE HANGING GARDENS OF BABYLON

Culinary speaking, I am very shy and reticent in being courageous at different foods. So when faced with a situation in the deepest and darkest of Baghdad  of being honored with lambs eye, the squeamishness was not the factor, but the excitement of taste and texture. If you studied biology, the whole optic nerve is part of the brain that protrudes outside the skull. In some beliefs, it is the key to the soul.  There was no avoiding this delicacy as there was only two eyes, one for my father, the guest of honor, and one for me. Our hosts had the delight of testing our resolve.  The two of us were visiting the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in Hillah, 100 km south of Baghdad.  One of the seven wonders of the world, I was standing in this dusty area described as the so-called “Hanging Gardens.”   Plants are grown above ground, and are cultivated in the air, with the roots of the trees above the (normal) tilled earth, forming a roof. To date, no archaeological evidence has been found at Babylon for the Hanging Gardens. It is possible that evidence exists beneath the Euphrates, which cannot be excavated safely at present.  

Back to the banquet dinner by the Euphrates River, I was served boiled sheep’s eye. It was smaller than I had imagined and black.  Gelatinous and chewy, the centre was distinctly creamy.  A hint of cumin masked the dank aroma.  Heart pounding, I was unsure and fantasizing if I didn’t chew it completely, the  eye would find its way through my alimentary canal peeking into my every orifice and capturing my soul.  (The vivid imagination I possess – no one should wonder why I write.) I decided that gulping down the bitter Iraqi tea would wash any lingering after-taste that had begun to clog my tongue.   Every gland I possessed went into alert mode.  All black beady Iraqi eyes waiting for any reaction.   I made it and so did my alliance increase with these Iraqis. Strange what constitutes friendship bonding. 

Ornithophobia, the fear of birds alive and flapping extends to even dead ones.  I suffer from this phobia and the thought of  swallowing bat stew just gives me anxiety, and shake with the flight or fight syndrome.   Any psychiatrist would say to alleviate phobias is to jump right in and face the fear.  I cajole myself that at worst I would upchuck, but that thought was not pleasant.  So logic has it, that if you are hungry enough, gratifying the stomach would alleviate the pain of starvation.  Therefore whatever the gratification, it would satisfy the frontal lobe that connects to the stomach.     I decided not to eat for 2 days prior to this feast.

FRUIT BAT SOUP

Pacific islanders generally eat whatever they can capture.  And bats do circle caves rising above the ocean.  The dish has a strong aroma and flavor influenced by whatever the bats had been eating.  Hungry and actually ravenous, I took a spoonful and was pleasantly surprised.   It did not taste like chicken, it was gamey, different and oddly fragrant, perhaps my bat was a fruit bat and possibly ingested some guava.  The wing still intact in the stew has given a gelatinous texture but I couldn’t quite bring it up to suck on the meat as my dining mates were deliciously pulling it from the wings. And triumphantly my anxiety, surge of adrenalin, overcame the fear and was able to finish what was on my plate. 

Blood drinking is not a usual cuisine.   Generally used in cooking with other meats to make sausages, or congealed and put into soups. But I am looking at slurping some hemoglobin sans HIV positive!  I am in Nairobi visiting my English aunt-in-law, whose life spans nine decades.  She reprimands me for not being as adventurous and suggests that I follow the Maasai tribe in the Tanzanian dessert doing what they do, eat what they eat….. basically living like a nomad for a spell.  Real virgin territory.

THE MAASAI TRIBE

The 30 year old Land Rover jeep with my reliable Kenyan guide, trusted bodyguard, friend and mentor called Kafil.  His name in Arabic means Protector, in Swahili means Responsible, he’s definitely the perfect person taking me on this odyssey.  A noble and dignified people, the Maasai have proudly maintained their traditional lifestyle and cultural identity despite pressures of the modern world.  I caught up with them in the depth of Tanzania.  Among the Maasai people, drinking blood from cattle is a part of the traditional diet, especially after special occasions such as a ritual circumcision or birth of a child.  My worry was whether it would be a thimble slug, or a pint size drinking session.     It is the celebration of  Emuratare, the circumcision of Meejoli, a strong tall boy of 15.   As I talked to Meejoli, his father Obie is giving Meejoli a speech on how to be a Maasai before the circumcision ceremony.

"Meejoli, circumcision means a sharp knife cutting into the skin of the most sensitive part of your body. You must not budge; don' t move a muscle or even blink. The slightest movement on your part will mean you are a coward, incompetent and unworthy to be a Maasai man. Ours has always been a proud family and we will not tolerate unnecessary embarrassment, so you had better be ready. Imagine yourself alone remaining uncircumcised like the water youth (white man). I hear they are not circumcised. Such a thing is not known in Maasailand."

After that very somber and scary speech, you can be sure that the cow’s blood drink (champagne to them) thimble size or pint size seems a lot easier to down after that lecture.

I’m digressing because describing the drink in its horror is difficult enough. Finding the words, even for a blogger, so you could envisage the memory of the taste,  would be a triumph for me as a writer.  Warm, fresh straight from the cow, the blood is mixed with equal parts of milk, reminiscence of a strawberry milkshake.  I was given a 4oz cup.  In the cold dessert night, any warming drink was welcoming.   The smell reeked of raw, iron or cooper like taste.  A very slight hint of saltiness, and reminds me of medium rare veal’s liver with a creamed sauce.   With that in mind, I downed it one go.  There was a moment where I thought it would come up, but I want that pride Obei was talking about, no flinching no blinking and certainly no regurgitating. I felt rejuvenated and energized as the elixir filled me up for days.

PORCHE 911 TURBO

In my driving span of a few decades, I have always driven according to the law of the land.  I pride in my chauffeur-like smooth ride, never jerking at stops or whizzing to overtake on the inside; always leaving at least three car lengths in between me the guy in front.  In other words, I am a safe driver but incredibly boring.   So to ante up my life a notch or two, going on a circuit in a Porche 911 Turbo would just  bring on the wobbly knees, the shakes, with a lurch of my heart into my mouth.   The Porche, kindly loaned to me by an admirer in the car business, does things no other car, man, alien can do.   The roar of power behind the wheel, within seconds I was doing 120mph round the Abingdon circuit in Oxfordshire.  It is fast.  The rear wheel steering is phenomenal and it revs up to 7000 rpm.  After half an hour, I am soaking in sweat, and the outside temperature was 10°C in mid February.   The steering was so agile, I just let go.  The surge of adrenalin rushed into my system, keeping me alert and all the while focused but then I went round the corner too fast and almost doubled on myself.   When I returned to the start of the track, my nerves cracked and shook all over from sheer fright.  What a machine, the engineering is impressive but can’t wait for the GT3 to come out.  

THE MILE HIGH CLUB

Now we come to the virgin territory of the High Mile Club.  We won’t mention airline and we won’t mention route but it was a long haul trip.  It involved the upper deck of a 747 with my long time partner.  Let me add that the plane was reasonably empty as it was New Year’s eve, and any sensible human being was out partying and celebrating 2010 down below ground.  Food service done, drink service done, lights dimmed, fellow passengers donned sleeping masks and the cabin went into sleep mode.  Nothing moved other than the slight motion of the plane. 

THE MANUAL IN CASE OF EMERGENCY

As New Year followed the plane en route, we celebrated in our own way, in our own time within the constraints of limited privacy, limited space, limiting our pleasurable noise and lowering our speed, maintaining pace so that when we both culminated at our highest peak, it warmly enveloped us quietly and as gracefully as possible. The New Year’s revelry sipping Veuve Clicquot was most special after our own private yet very public celebration.

Cheers!