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Spanish duchess gives away fortune in order to marry civil servant.

She is one of the richest women in Spain, owns a dozen castles whose walls are hung with works by Goya, Velázquez and Titian and is a distant relative of King James II, Winston Churchill and Diana, Princess of Wales. Now, however, the 18th Duchess of Alba is giving away her immense personal fortune in order to be free to marry a minor civil servant.

But the children of the duchess, 85, have until now blocked her plans to marry Alfonso Díez, 24 years her junior. The duchess and Díez, a civil servant in the department of social security who also runs a PR business, have been close friends for a number of years…

Read it in the Guardian.

George Orwell’s first book Down and Out in Paris and London is supposed to be a novel but it feels like an autobiography (bildungsroman, as first novels usually are). Orwell had moved to Paris to become a writer, but he managed to sell only a few articles and his short stories and novels were all rejected (he threw them away). Then he was robbed of his savings and he descended deeper and deeper into poverty. Down and Out is a fictionalized account of that period.

George Orwell

We’ve read a few warnings on the net—Do not read this book if you are unemployed, etc—but we take the opposite view. Read this book if you are unemployed, it might make you feel better. (Granted, if you are unemployed in the Philippines and you would think to read Orwell then you are not that down and out.) We found it oddly cheerful, harrowing but often funny, and always honest. Consolata and I agree that from Orwell’s description it was more fun to be destitute in Paris than in London.

Henry Miller has written several books (Tropic of Cancer, which Orwell praised, Black Spring, Quiet Days in Clichy) about being down and out in Paris. Tropic of Cancer has style while Down and Out is so matter of fact as to be anti-style, and plenty of sex where Orwell maintains primness and propriety. But Down and Out is still worth reading for Orwell’s clear, unsentimental, no bullshit writing. You can tell from this book that George Orwell—Eric Blair was an outstanding human being.

In the Philippines where the majority of the population is poor it is almost impossible to discuss poverty without sentimentality. Is it guilt you think? Trying too hard to show that you care? Looking forward to the next election (the poor by their numbers decide the vote)? Catholic notions about suffering and the promise of eternal reward? We have turned poverty into the stuff of telenovelas, as if to say “Yes you have nothing, but glamorous actresses will play you on TV and movies about you will screen at Cannes etc”.
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Gillian Anderson is brilliant as the Lady Dedlock in the Masterpiece Theatre adaptation of one of the finest novels about money ever written: Bleak House by Charles Dickens.

Dear Auntie Janey,

Can’t Buy Me Love

Dear Can’t Buy Me Love,

Seventy-five to ninety percent of human laws pertain to property. I guess most people think of it most of the time. Even an unborn child can receive a donation. Some of the wealthy marry within their clan to keep their property within the family. From birth to death we are concerned by property issues: legitimacy of children, property regimes in marriage, mortgages, contracts of sale and succession rights. Capitalism and communism may be opposed to each other but they still boil down to one thing: property.
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Despondent at losing William? The NY Daily News proposes the following alternatives.

HRH Carl Philip of Sweden

Juan: I can’t believe the top story in all the local news websites is the British royal wedding and not the resignation of the OMG (ombudsman).

Me: Because social-climbing is more fun than investigating corruption and the people are better-looking?

We asked our friend Carlo the pastry chef to pick the winners of our Blow 10 Million Pesos in 48 Hours contest. We said, “Use any criteria you like.” So Carlo used the following rules:

1. Sounds cute
2. Made me laugh

Yes, he picked them like a date. (He is not a charter member of Overthinkers Anonymous.)

“It was a tough job having to choose only two,” Carlo notes, “They were so hilarious. I was alone, laughing in my room.” The winners:

# 4 julesmariano. “He sounds cute, except for the name. (I’ve never had a crush on anyone named Jules.) And anyone who likes expensive watches must be cute. I wanna see his legs.”

# 21 lzlsanatomy. “This one is really witty. Made me laugh. A smart idea too, putting Willie on the spot.”

Congratulations, julesmariano and lzlsanatomy! You each get a pair of tickets to Kaos at Resorts World Manila on May 13, 2011. You can pick up your tickets any day starting Tuesday, May 3 at Wild Ginger in the basement of Power Plant Mall, Rockwell, Makati. Just give your usernames (Sorry, don’t have time to wait for your full names. Momelia, we’ll leave your Kaos tickets at the same place).

Thanks to Archie Nicasio and his staff at Resorts World Manila.

By the way cochise_miz, you can pick up your prizes for the LitWit Challenge at National Bookstore in Power Plant Mall, Rockwell any day starting Tuesday, May 3. Sorry for the delay.

It can’t buy love, it can’t buy taste, but I’ll tell you one thing money can buy: Space.

One consequence of urbanization is shrinkage: new condominiums are half the size of condos built ten years ago, but twice as expensive. You work hard and save your money so you can pay millions to own what is essentially a large closet. We have so much more to do today and so much less space to do it in.

Last week we got an invitation to tour Maxims, the new six-star hotel at the Resorts World Manila complex in front of the airport. We’ve been hearing the term “six-star” a lot lately, and Burj Al Arab in Dubai is often called a seven-star hotel, but what do the extra stars mean? Apparently there is no formal hotel industry definition of hotels above the five-star (luxury) rating, but the sixth star is awarded for luxury hotels that offer intensive guest care.

In the case of Maxims Hotel, which is the only Maxims Hotel in the world at present, six stars means the accommodations are all suites, and each suite has a butler assigned to it.

When you walk into the hotel you see a huge sculpture, Ballerini by Botero, casually plonked down into a plant box. There is no reception desk. There is a cafe, Cafe au Lait, serving coffee, drinks, and an excellent mango cheesecake. We caught a whiff of cigar smoke, which reminds us that we’re not in Makati anymore. It’s been years since we smelled cigar/cigarette smoke indoors (outside of a cigar bar); must alert our smoker friends.

The butler showed us to a Signature Suite, which has a living room and dining area, a bedroom and a bathroom that is vast.

All this space, which is big enough for an evening of ballroom dancing, with the butler and a wi-fi touchscreen console for summoning service, and–Wait, we forgot the balcony.

It is nearly as large as the suite indoors. Plus it has a jacuzzi with a view.

What does all this space cost? US$500 a night.

The Signature Suites are minuscule compared to this:

The Villa. 500 square meters, US$2,000 a night. You could go skating in it. Or organize a roller derby. Apart from the huge living room and dining room a Villa has two bedrooms, a well-appointed kitchen, an audiovisual room, two toilets, a vast bath with toiletries by Bulgari. There’s also a massage room.

Out back there’s a humongous balcony with its own pool, in case you don’t feel like sharing the big pool right in front of the Villas.

For inquiries and reservations call the Resorts World hotline, (02) 8366333.

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Kaos, the Las Vegas-meets-Broadway revue at the 1,500-seat Newport Performing Arts Theatre in Resorts World Manila, has been playing to packed houses since it opened. Momelia will be reviewing the show for us next month. In the meantime, we’re giving away two pairs of tickets to the May 13 evening shows of Kaos. Each pair of tickets comes with a stuffed toy Kaos lion.

Would you like to win two tickets to Kaos? Send us a list of things you would buy if you had ten million pesos. The catch is that you have to spend it all in 48 hours while staying at a Villa in Maxims. You can not buy more than two of the same item. Post the list in comments, and we’ll announce the winners on April 25.

Thanks to Archie, Karmina, Joy and Francis of Resorts World for the tour and the tickets.

Some people look at income inequality and shrug their shoulders. So what if this person gains and that person loses? What matters, they argue, is not how the pie is divided but the size of the pie. That argument is fundamentally wrong. An economy in which most citizens are doing worse year after year—an economy like America’s—is not likely to do well over the long haul. There are several reasons for this.

First, growing inequality is the flip side of something else: shrinking opportunity. Whenever we diminish equality of opportunity, it means that we are not using some of our most valuable assets—our people—in the most productive way possible. Second, many of the distortions that lead to inequality—such as those associated with monopoly power and preferential tax treatment for special interests—undermine the efficiency of the economy. This new inequality goes on to create new distortions, undermining efficiency even further. To give just one example, far too many of our most talented young people, seeing the astronomical rewards, have gone into finance rather than into fields that would lead to a more productive and healthy economy.

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% by Joseph Stiglitz in Vanity Fair.