Youtube hearted comments of John Warner (@johncrwarner).

  1. As a Briton who was taught to make a simnel cake by my mother It was the same as her fruit cake (yes, there is that much fruit in a British fruit cake) but with a layer of marzipan and marzipan on top So it was a "Bury style" simnel cake but I was brought up in Huddersfield not too far from Bury (about 30 miles away but culturally very distant LOL) and my mother was from Liverpool originally.
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  2. The only time I have seen logs being hauled in the water was on a ferry trip from Kuopio to Savonlinna in Finland They were moving the logs through the lakes and we spent a long long time passing them. Our reward beyond going on a fabulous ferry journey was going to the opera festival in the castle at Savonlinna the following evening.
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  3. I believe there is a governing body called Snooker USA and it might be worth searching for their website I suspect Chicago will have Snooker tables somewhere.
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  4. Only going for a North Korea plus model of international isolation would overcome that carefully constructed ruling
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  5. In my classical Chinese class only after working through Hanfeizi and others were we allowed to work on Zhuangzi His writing is VERY difficult to understand even after I had done five years of an evening degree course in Modern Chinese and a year of Classical Chinese He is however very witty and challenging I had done earlier an exploration of Buddhism in the Tang Dynasty explicitly looking at the rise of Southern Chan Buddhism over Northern Chan Buddhism. When I read the Daoist classics I realised how strong the influence Daoist thought had on Buddhism in China Southern Chan Buddhism - being termed in Japan by the more familiar name Zen Buddhism. At the school I taught at at the end of the school year the teachers offered classes for a week in a topic other than our profession and I did an introduction to Chinese Language and Culture. I mention this as one of the sounds many Westerners have problems with is represented by the pinyin "zh" It is a retroflex sound so the tongue is curled back when it is pronounced. I had a girl in the class who said: "this sound is impossible to say" to which my colleague in the room said I replied: "a quarter of the world's population can say it, so may be you need to try a little harder"
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  6. Interestingly The Telegraph and The Daily Mail both had YouTube clips of the audible booing with no commentary except for the titles of the video.
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  7. Fascinating video which like a good book I stopped at several points to reflect on and in my case explain something to my partner who was not watching There was so much in this video I will likely watch this again as it has given me several ideas points of departure in thinking.
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  8. My partner and I did Raumabanen in the other direction we got the Hurtigruten service to Aalesund the town that burnt down in 1904 and was rebuilt in Art Noveau style which is fascinating to visit Then we got a bus at 06:00 in the morning to Aandalsnes and took the train up the Rauma valley to Dombaas station then on to Trondheim.
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  9. The best pizza experience I've had was a pizza restaurant in Tana Bru in Northern Norway about 70° N It was run by a Turkish family and they made the nicest garlic bread because it was basically Turkish flatbread with garlic. Pizza is better when the temperatures are low outside!
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