So there Alli and I were, watching the various men and women unload their sailing gear from their massive sail boats (I know absolutely nothing about sailing by the way, but these are the kind of sail boats you would see in America's Cup or in an advertisement for a watch I can't afford) on the beautiful Lake Geneva shore. As we had no tickets to the big party (like I want to pay money to go hang out with the yacht club crowd anyway...although they looked like they were having great fun with their glasses of bubbly. Maybe we could sneak through the fence, I'm just saying...), we stood outside the gated fiesta where the fence was low enough to allow us to see all of the post-race happenings. After spending twenty minutes or so looking around (and oddly enough, not seeing anyone we recognized), a Swiss gentleman in front of me started taking a ridiculous amount of pictures of this guy standing on the inside (he's the guy in the chapeau and grayish coat), so I did what any rational engineer would do...Now, for those of you unfamiliar with the sailing circuit, there is apparently a lot of money thrown around in this sport. Naturally, I assumed this gent to be a rich person of celebrity status. As my awareness of Swiss celebrities is limited to one person (retired Formula One driver Michael Schumacher) I figured it must be him (it wasn't until we would get home that I would be disappointed to find out my logical skills of identifying Swiss celebrities was flawed). At this point I became an obsessed paparazzi. I snapped about twenty photos over the course of five minutes hoping to catch him making an awkward hello-kiss (you know, the kind where a person kisses the air next to another person's cheek because they don't want to look silly leaving slobber on said person's cheek). Unfortunately, I didn't capture a picture People magazine would be willing to pay good money for...however I did manage a few pics that enabled a quick internet search to determine his secret identity (by secret I mean that he is Swiss, and I don't know his name; but he looked important like most über-wealthy people do. In case you've never seen someone of untold wealth, they just have this aura around them that makes one think that they bathe in hibiscus and rosewater petal baths while angelic choruses serenade and small, furry woodland creatures provide a lush carpet upon which their bare skin never touches the harsh, cold marble floor).
As it turns out he wasn't a famous race car driver, or even a movie actor. He is only Forbes Magazine's #76 most rich dude on the planet (in 2007 anyway...He probably slipped to number #83 after the stock market excitement over the last few weeks). The guy is worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $8.8 Billion US (I know, I should have asked him for a job or some money or something, but I froze...I mean, what do you say to a guy that has more money than the GDP of Malta? Seriously, Malta; a European microstate comprising an archipelago of three islands - Wikipedia). Anyway, the guy's name is Ernesto Bertarelli, and he seems like a cool dude (if you happen to read my blog Ernesto, post a comment or shoot me an email, and we'll do lunch or something).
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