Showing posts with label celebrity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label celebrity. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Fashion Statement Of A Different Kind


"Nothing too revealing" - outlaw everything from miniskirts to low-cut jeans when people walk around, is the  new dress code policy  a mayor at the seaside city in Italy wants to enforce.

In an effort to "restore urban decorum and facilitate better civil co-existence", Mayor Luigi Bobbio is planning to ban miniskirts and other revealing clothing to improve what the mayor calls standards of public decency to crack down anti-social behaviour. 
He wants to target people who are "rowdy, unruly or simply badly behaved". 

In the effort to fight crime and confront anti social behaviour, there will also be a ban on sunbathing, playing football in public places, and blasphemy. 
If the proposals are approved at a council , then it's the right decision made.
It's also a way of combating the rise in sexual harassment.

In other places they have banned sandcastles, kissing in cars, feeding stray cats, wooden clogs and the use of lawn mowers at weekends.
Offending the regulations would face fines of between €25 (US$35) and €500 (US$696).

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Meet Xi Li Ge - the so-called hottest homeless guy in Ningbo, Zhejiang, China

The 35-year-old man, Cheng Guorong, originally from Ningbao, Zhejiang province, has gone from vagrant to model.
Since the first picture of this vagrant homeless guy who had been roaming the streets of Ningbo was posted in the Internet, he had been the most searched-for-figure in early March. 
He gained a following and was elevated to the celebrity status.  

He shot to fame after an amateur photographer snapped a photo of him while testing a camera in a shop and uploaded it on the Chinese Internet site.  
Mr Cheng's life changed dramatically after the posted pictures of him. 
He had a  distinctive dress style which had him noticed. With a scraggly beard and long tousled hair, he used bright scraps of fabric as a belt and wore a grubby sheepskin-lined overcoat over a faux leather jacket.

Though he looked scruffy, his hair was carefully disarrayed and he was seen in a well- coordinated overcoat on top of a leather jacket. Soon, netizens began nicknaming him XiLi Ge (or Brother Sharp).  
The homeless guy has been hailed as "the best-looking beggar ever" by adoring netizens. 
As his fan club spread worldwide, he was given more endearing nicknames such as the Handsome Beggar, Beggar Prince and Handsome Vagabond. 
 
Cheng, whom witness had seen him laughing to himself, at times, was seen clad in female attires, suffered from minor mental problems. 

He had lost contact with his family after he arrived in Ningbo in 1996 in search of better prospects, looking for work. 
He was initially successful and was able to send money home to his wife and two sons. 

After being robbed of his savings, he was fired from a succession of jobs until he found himself on the streets. Filled with shame at not being able to provide for his children, he did not call home for years. 
Since then, he began roaming the streets and led a wandering life. He spent his days scouring the streets  for food and rummaging through rubbish for discarded plastic bottles and cigarette butts.

Chinese tramp becomes film star

Several photographs of the 34-year-old were uploaded to the Internet and the community of netizens was intrigued by the appearance of the man, who was likened to models and good-looking actors.  

His style is one that's on fashion catwalks. Netizens have gushed over his look and compared the way he dressed to the bohemian style modeled by fashion icons and celebrities. His unfocused gaze described as "deep and penetrating". 
His prominent cheekbones and bohemian clothes quickly won him a legion of fans who called him ''China's sexiest tramp''. 


It did not take long for his photographs went viral on the Internet, where sympathetic fans teamed together and have donated more than 100,000 yuan (S$20,000) to help him getting his life back on track.
His rising popularity soon drew the attention of the Chinese mainstream media.
The local authority was alerted and when they found Guorong on the streets, the helpless man burst into tears under the glaring spotlight of the media, who swarmed around him as soon as he was found. 

After his story was widely reported in China, he was later admitted to Ningbo Mental Hospital. 
With the help of the local media and efforts of the local authority, Cheng Guorong met his mother and younger brother Guosheng for the first time in more than 10 years at the hospital. 
The family last heard from him in 2003. 

They had been trying for years to locate Guorong and at one point, even went to Ningbo. 
Attempts to locate him failed and efforts were in vain. His family believed he was dead until they saw his picture on the Internet in January. 

He had became one of the most talked-about personalities on the Internet.

When Guorong returned to his village in Poyang, Shangrao, he was given celebrity treatment, as villagers surrounded him and even set off firecrackers to welcome him.

 He returned home in March to find that his father and his wife had been killed in a car accident last year in June. The trauma of his five years on the streets has left him withdrawn and shy.

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Public offers had since poured in for him to appear in advertisements and he did a stint as a catwalk model.
This 35-year old man is recognised for his great fashion sense and has been offered a 3,000 yuan (S$600) a month job as the Fashion Show manager in Shunde near Guangzhou - a far cry from his days as a vagrant where he was seen walking aimlessly in tattered but well-coordinated clothes with a cigarette in hand. 

“I am just a normal pathetic person. It was the Internet that rescued me from the streets and I am grateful to the netizens who had lent their helping hand.
“I do not know anything about fashion and don’t understand why people said I am fashionable,” he said.




Now the story of Cheng Guoron's life will be made into a film.

''It will be a sad story, but at the end there will be the happiness of a family reunion.''


 






Sunday, June 6, 2010

The Opposite Sides Of Luck

The Unlucky Malaysians

Four girls, 6 to 10 years of age, ate stones collected from the compound of their house in Kampung Padang Lembu, some 20km from Sungai Petani, Kedah.

They ate them to stave off hunger but are now under hospital observation after undergoing treatment at the intensive care unit of Sultan Abdul Halim hospital here on May 30.
The children were given blood transfusion as their haemoglobin level was too low as they had been eating stones for a week. All are in stable condition but have to be warded for a week.

The eldest, Yogeswari said the soil tasted like chocolate to her. She had been eating stones since last year, adding that it was very crunchy and tasted like chocolate.
Admitting that she was the one who had introduced the stones to the 3 girls, the schoolgirl from SJK (T) Kalaivani in Kampung Padang Lembu said they secretly ate the stones behind their parents’ back.
She will collect the stones and hid them in her schoolbag and would eat them in her room.
The 3 sisters, Yogeswary, 10, Nageswari, 8, Ganggadevi, 6, and their cousin N. Vikneswary, 9, are never full after eating food prepared by the mother.
They will only feel full after eating the stones.

Her father had caught her eating the stones few months back and was punished but soon she was back to the habit.

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They had vomited and complained of stomach pain earlier.
The matter came to light when their 70 year old grandfather, Supramaniam, was about to send the eldest girl to a medical camp when she told him her 2 younger sisters and the cousin at home were also in pain. He visited their house and found the girls groaning. They were weak and could barely move.

The stones they ate contained worm eggs, which had hatched inside their stomach. The worm consumed blood in their bodies, As a result, it makes them weaker, suffer from stomach pain and vomit.
Although it was uncommon for people to die from such illnesses, however, if the victim had other health complications, the condition could be fatal.
The children’s parents were at home then. The mother had just given birth 10 days earlier.


Not for eating - The mother, Sarojini with one of her daughters while her only son, I. Sentilativan, 5, is holding up a handful of stones found in the compound of her home in Kedah yesterday.
 
Accompanying them at the hospital was their 61-year-old grandmother N. Bathumalai.
The mother V. Sarojini, 27, was unable to visit the daughters and niece as she has 2 other daughters and a son to take care of, at home.
The girls were admitted to the hospital after her husband, R. Inderan, 43, searched their room and found plastic packages containing stones hidden in their schoolbags and closet.
They had been warned several times about it but they denied doing it.
Ganggadevi and Nageswari were admitted to the hospital for the same problem last June and in January this year.

The father may earn a small salary working as a labourer but they are never out of food.
Inderan and his wife had been branded as unfit parents by their neighbours after the media highlighted the matter. The father said the accusations were unjust as they had done their best for the children.

The 4 girls will be referred to child psychologists if their acts are proven to be habitual and not driven by hunger. Doctors treating the children  would conduct an evaluation on the case.




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The Lucky Chinese

A girl from north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region had set a new Guiness World Record after eating nothing but dirt for 2 months. The 19 year-old Chinese girl Bao Bao has a very weird habit of eating soil.

eating dirt Dirt Eating Girl May Set Guiness Record picture

She became a minor celebrity after the media broadcast stories about her curious eating habits in 2006. TV stations in China, Japan and South Korea picked up her story.

It started when she was 7 years old, at a play ground. She felt the urge to taste the soil on the ground and since the first taste, she could not stop eating soil.

030 China Girl Eats Pounds of Dirt Daily picture

It gives her energy.
The girl said she feels no need to eat normal food now that she has discovered how much she likes to eat soil. If given the choice, she'd rather live without rice but not soil and it has to be yellowish, soft, and powdery.
Her daily portion is usually half pound to two pounds a day to keep her going - And she has eaten over 3,000 pounds (1360 kg).

Friends often joke her boyfriend is having a “cheap-date”.