Tears of Mermaids: The Secret Story of Pearls

jerin

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Joined
Jul 16, 2005
Messages
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Hi all,

today I got confirmation from Amazon.com that the long awaited above book is on its way. So if you haven?t ordered it yet, this should be the time....:)
 
I've been trying to read the book every chance I get a minute. So far it is interesting. here are a few things that are a bit wrong, like costs and pricing, the ethnicity of my wife and the way our Web sites are run.

But the way I am reading the book, and being on location for part of it, I think he took pieces of things and added a bit of color to make the story more interesting.
 
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I've been trying to read the book every chance I get a minute. So far it is interesting. here are a few things that are a bit wrong, like costs and pricing, the ethnicity of my wife and the way our Web sites are run.

But the way I am reading the book, and being on location for part of it, I think he took pieces of things and added a bit of color to make the story more interesting.
Jeremy,

So you are not fluent in Chukese?
 
Jeremy,
Did you ever talk with Stephen Bloom? Too bad he got some of the details about you wrong. It is an interesting premise. Book is ordered.
 
Jeremy,

So you are not fluent in Chukese?

Goodness no! I wish. I didn't start studying Chinese until about four years ago.

Did you ever talk with Stephen Bloom? Too bad he got some of the details about you wrong. It is an interesting premise. Book is ordered.

Sure. We spent some time together in China. I introduced him to Faye (who got an entire chapter and professed some things to him about me that I wish she hadn't), and Mr. You. I also directed him to Zeide before Caitlin outed her as a fraud.
 
That day was THE day ZE outed herself. I was so hyper adrenalated at 7AM when I read it on the Forum. That was way above my usual energy level still, when we ate dinner together. Jeremy , me, Stephen B and others. It took me days to come down from that event! I am sorry he let her get away with with the "raised in Jakarta" stuff, and other errors.
I am only half-way through- at p 229 or so. I appreciate his journalism/narrative style, very much as he used it in "Postvale" but it is getting tedious. Hope it picks up.
 
So, Stephen has some validity to his research, but wasn't vigilant enough to check out the details. The complications with Zeide were unfortunate. It was a shocker.
 
I just finished the ZE chapter. I was not around when all of this went down and I am amazed since I know some of the back ground. It is also very odd to read about it in a book.

And Caitlin, what an impression you made. : )
 
Up to that day I was trusting everything people said on the forum. It literally blew me away when she "confessed" early that AM that her PEARLS were fraudulent. I was still all agitated at dinner with Stephen, from all the adrenalin raised first thing in the AM.

I had also found out she had sold to innocent members, who may not have loved her, but they trusted her on pearls.

That, in my opinion was a blow to the forum. Nothing to do but try to clean up her worst lies. Today a member sent me this link.

It is a brief look into how gullible I still was, though Jeremy came through at the end. That thread has had its name changed to reflect the fan-ta-zee of it all. From little to big topics, she lied about almost everything. And she defrauded people, sending CFWP to people for money and calling them abalone or pteria sterna, or placuna imbricata, etc, etc, etc. She lied to Stephen Bloom about not selling- she was in business! That's why so many pearls.

People who were defrauded have not come forward publicly, but I know she paid at least one person back and that person gave the pearls to charity, so Z was out the money and the pearls. Heh, heh.

Stephen reported she said she grew up in Jakarta. I do not believe that for a second! I still have emails from her in which she claimed her mother was a Haida shamma (shaman) She claimed that a group of Haida moved from the NW coast to Freisland (sp)! On the other hand, her Father was a direct descendant of Jesus through the Merovingian . He was a type of Jew who never cut their hair and she was his heir.

When I would try to follow up on anything, she just piled on more lies. I asked a lot of questions like how could she be the heir? Because cradle Judaism is granted through the mother's blood. She would of had to convert to Judaism and even so, she wouldn't be eligible for roles traditionally passed through the men. In fact she did not seem to be aware that zeide is Yiddish for granddad, or at least, that is what I had thought for years. (Why would a German Jew give that name to a daughter?!!) I became interested in drawing her out about her birth claims. She was making claims to me through email, not on the forum so I let her say whatever she wanted. I still believed her on pearls!

This experience made me much more wary. Thus I questioned the Pearl of Allah (POA) very early in the thread. I got a good scolding from one of my favorite members, who advocated trust in posters and in the story as it appeared in the post. She didn't change her mind until Jeremy came out on my side in about post 79 (just a wild guess on the post # since posts that were accusatory and used insults were deleted, much to the anger of one person on the entire forum.)

BTW, The author mentioned the POA in a footnote. It was the whole fraudulent story (maybe a precis from Wikipedia) in a few choice words. Grrr. He coulda read the article Kathie and I wrote and had a brilliant footnote.

So, yes, I am fierce when people start throwing the bull. It is so dang hard to delete when you have 1,500 posts full of lies, exaggerations and fantazeides.

Now that she is gone, we have attracted a large number of honest, sincere experts and professionals whose every post is an education.

I posted one comment on a thread buried in an ancient part on TPP that contains her claims to me. A few others did the same, so there is a lot of anger at her posted anonymously. It is funny but really gross, including a lot of gross comments on her pearl g-string. If you want read a lot of ZE's own words, sleuth for that on TPP comments sections. Please talk about it over there, not over here and don't ask the forum what TPP is. Ask in a PM.

Oh yes, I am "fierce";) Tankx GG, I like that.
 
Thanks Caitlin for the background. I did not mean to drudge up the past. In fact I meant to comment on the fact that you made such an impression on the author. From the post above I now see how justified it was.

I am impressed by the way you pieced everything together when most would not. And I appreciate what you do to help the novices, like me, learn about pearls honestly.

Thank you!

Oh, and keep being "fierce". :)
 
While I wouldn't support things Zeide said in general, there actually was vapor depostion treatment of pearls with metals. I know because Azotic, a vapor depostion company, said so in one of their presentations a couple of years ago. I suspect that Zeide took some facts and embellished them beyond belief so as to confuse and impress. :eek:
 
I suspect that Zeide took some facts and embellished them beyond belief so as to confuse and impress.

no way, crazy zeidi would never do such a thing...:p
 
I don't mind bringing up the past in the light of the book.

SB was too kind to Zeide and did not fact check. She also lied about Jeremy, saying he invented the term "Tahitian Black"- on eBay!!! Jeremy never sold on eBay and Zeide did not know him- she just claimed she did and she had scolded Jeremy and set him on the right path. SB believed her and didn't fact-check. She was the first, but not the last, to claim that she knew Jeremy, paired with a lie that she had lorded it over him. 'Member the one who claimed to be J's wholesale source? (No names, please).

I just read her posts on Pearl Professor. I can't believe she had the gall. I went over there to see the comments. BTW I haven't posted anything over there in a coon's age. That's other people with strong feelings about her. :D
 
maryd, the check is in the mail!

GG, you are correct. There was sometimes a nugget of truth. Sort of a vault springboard to jump off of.

(Undirected)
That thread wasn't that bad compared to some of the ones I took down. It is more about my state of mind in the "before" stage of the Big Z-day Crash. I believed her. I was genuinely trying to learn, and that was, "garbage in", don't you think? A crime in its own way, in my mind. My reaction? Use skepticism and get more info from any source possible before swallowing statements and claims.

The enormity of what I had swallowed without question, made me barf for a while. By then I had Strack to set me straight and saw where the Z-noodle grains of truth came from without the hyperbole and lies.
 
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I just read the link to Pearl Professor and Zeide's comments on that blog. I hadn't been there before and I don't think I'll go back. Zeide is sounding a little psychotic and delusional. It is hard to believe that she is still keeping up the pretext and sadder that Stephen's book has given her some validity...false validity, I guess.

There is nothing like the P-G forum for the depth of information and what, I hope, is the sincerity of the people that post here. It is painful to realize that that was violated for personal gain, either financial or fanciful.
 
Are you sure it's really Zeide on the Pearl Professor? I think it's someone "playing" ZE for kicks. ;)
 
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