been featured in numerous documentaries, including BBC’s
Lost Land of the Tiger
and
National Geographic’s In Search of the Jaguar;
and on TV shows including
The Colbert Report, 60 Minutes,
and CNN. Dr. Rabinowitz has dedicated his life to surveying the world’s last wild places, with the goal of preserving wild habitats and securing homes, on a large scale, for some of the world’s most endangered mammals. His focus on cats is based on conserving top predators, which affect entire ecosystems. His most recent endeavors include creating and securing biological and genetic corridors for jaguars across their entire range, from Mexico to Argentina, and for tigers in the Indo-Himalayan region of Asia. To learn more, please visit www.panthera.org.
JILLIAN LAUREN
The Prince and I
I was an eighteen-year-old NYU dropout struggling to pay my rent in New York by dancing at the Kit-Kat Club on 56th and Broadway, when a friend of mine approached me about a casting call. This casting call was supposedly to entertain rich businessmen in Singapore. It didn’t seem all that different from what I was already doing, so I went.
But when I got the job, they told me that it wasn’t in Singapore at all. In fact, I was being invited to be the personal guest of the Prince of Brunei.
Now, Brunei is a sultanate in Southeast Asia. It was a country I had only recently even heard of, and at the time the Sultan of Brunei was the richest man in the world. I was being hired to work for his youngest brother, who is Prince Jefri Bolkiah, also known in the media as the Playboy Prince.
My job description was elusive, at best. But I fantasized that I might get to Brunei and find a wild adventure, a pile of money, and an employer who was nothing less than Prince Charming. I suspected more realistically that I had signed on to be some sort of international quasi-prostitute. But even that seemed likea wild and exotic transformation for a Jewish girl from the burbs of Jersey.
And honestly, I wanted nothing less than transformation. I wanted so badly for my life to be something more exceptional than just going to usually fruitless B-movie auditions during the day and squeaking around a brass pole at night. I thought maybe this was it, and it seemed like it would be worth the risk.
When I was sixteen, and I first heard Patti Smith’s album
Easter
, I decided that Patti Smith was the absolute barometer of all things cool and right. And ever since, I would ask myself when faced with tough decisions,
What would Patti Smith do?
So I weighed my options. Should I stay? Should I go?
What would Patti Smith do?
And I decided Patti Smith would go. She would get on a plane and go to exotic lands, and she would never once look back. And that’s what I did.
When I arrived at the airport in Bandar Seri Begawan, I was greeted by two Secret Service agents who immediately took my passport, supposedly to update my visa or something. I had the first flicker of a thought that maybe I had not completely understood the implications of the decision that I had made to come here.
But all of these apprehensions were overshadowed when I saw the royal compound. It was immense. It looked like a resort in Fort Lauderdale, if it had been imagined by Aladdin. There were gold domes, swimming pools, and tennis courts. I saw all of this, and my head raced with plans.
I thought,
Is it that far out of the realm of possibility that maybe I could make a prince fall in love with me, and my life will change in dazzling and unexpected ways?
Inside, the palace was just as impressive. It was cavernous, and in the entryway there was a big fountain, and the carpets glowed because they were
actually woven with real gold
. On the walls there were Picassos and Pollocks.
This wasn’t even where the prince lived. There were other palaces where he lived. There were still other palaces where his three wives lived. This was strictly his play palace. And at this palace, every night, he threw
Lost Land of the Tiger
and
National Geographic’s In Search of the Jaguar;
and on TV shows including
The Colbert Report, 60 Minutes,
and CNN. Dr. Rabinowitz has dedicated his life to surveying the world’s last wild places, with the goal of preserving wild habitats and securing homes, on a large scale, for some of the world’s most endangered mammals. His focus on cats is based on conserving top predators, which affect entire ecosystems. His most recent endeavors include creating and securing biological and genetic corridors for jaguars across their entire range, from Mexico to Argentina, and for tigers in the Indo-Himalayan region of Asia. To learn more, please visit www.panthera.org.
JILLIAN LAUREN
The Prince and I
I was an eighteen-year-old NYU dropout struggling to pay my rent in New York by dancing at the Kit-Kat Club on 56th and Broadway, when a friend of mine approached me about a casting call. This casting call was supposedly to entertain rich businessmen in Singapore. It didn’t seem all that different from what I was already doing, so I went.
But when I got the job, they told me that it wasn’t in Singapore at all. In fact, I was being invited to be the personal guest of the Prince of Brunei.
Now, Brunei is a sultanate in Southeast Asia. It was a country I had only recently even heard of, and at the time the Sultan of Brunei was the richest man in the world. I was being hired to work for his youngest brother, who is Prince Jefri Bolkiah, also known in the media as the Playboy Prince.
My job description was elusive, at best. But I fantasized that I might get to Brunei and find a wild adventure, a pile of money, and an employer who was nothing less than Prince Charming. I suspected more realistically that I had signed on to be some sort of international quasi-prostitute. But even that seemed likea wild and exotic transformation for a Jewish girl from the burbs of Jersey.
And honestly, I wanted nothing less than transformation. I wanted so badly for my life to be something more exceptional than just going to usually fruitless B-movie auditions during the day and squeaking around a brass pole at night. I thought maybe this was it, and it seemed like it would be worth the risk.
When I was sixteen, and I first heard Patti Smith’s album
Easter
, I decided that Patti Smith was the absolute barometer of all things cool and right. And ever since, I would ask myself when faced with tough decisions,
What would Patti Smith do?
So I weighed my options. Should I stay? Should I go?
What would Patti Smith do?
And I decided Patti Smith would go. She would get on a plane and go to exotic lands, and she would never once look back. And that’s what I did.
When I arrived at the airport in Bandar Seri Begawan, I was greeted by two Secret Service agents who immediately took my passport, supposedly to update my visa or something. I had the first flicker of a thought that maybe I had not completely understood the implications of the decision that I had made to come here.
But all of these apprehensions were overshadowed when I saw the royal compound. It was immense. It looked like a resort in Fort Lauderdale, if it had been imagined by Aladdin. There were gold domes, swimming pools, and tennis courts. I saw all of this, and my head raced with plans.
I thought,
Is it that far out of the realm of possibility that maybe I could make a prince fall in love with me, and my life will change in dazzling and unexpected ways?
Inside, the palace was just as impressive. It was cavernous, and in the entryway there was a big fountain, and the carpets glowed because they were
actually woven with real gold
. On the walls there were Picassos and Pollocks.
This wasn’t even where the prince lived. There were other palaces where he lived. There were still other palaces where his three wives lived. This was strictly his play palace. And at this palace, every night, he threw
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