insomniac

Corinna, you read my mind. I travelled quite a bit in Oman in the days when you needed a no objection certificate to get in, i.e. had to know someone there. Would definitely recommend going there Rona, it is quite different from the rest of the Gulf

Toliver I would have NEVER come to that conclusion What I love about this game are the infinite paths that lead from A to B. Only once has someone come up with the solution I was thinking of and some beautiful solutions are so convoluted and clever that serious brainpower has been expended

I was wondering what the government was doing with post-leper colony Molokai

My son is home for a few days and tells me he recently cooked scallops for Matt Damon and Daniel Craig and G/F, and the Michelin man (if he's considered famous )

I, too, have just noticed this thread. Have to agree totally with M. Lucia, especially as Yemen has now closed its sea borders with Somalia because of armed Islamists escaping from the present Somalia conflict. A friend was recently there and said the Somali refugee situation is alarming. Have not been there for several years; in fact I stopped going to dangerous places when I became a mother, however I did find that wearing an abba or similar took a lot of the heat off walking around as I was blonde and stood out like dogs balls and was continually accosted. I could also speak reasonable Arabic then. Having said that Yemen is an amazing country and I would love to return, just not right now.

Grand ayatollah al Sistani is the mullah lite (sorry) of Iran Ayatollah Khomeini was the revolutionary fundamentalist mullah whose actions caused thousands to flee Iran Included among those who fled was the 15 year old Anousheh Ansari, whose father ran a wine business In 2006 Iranian American Ansari became the first woman space tourist, being shot into space from Star City Earlier, in 2004 Chinese American astronaut Leroy Chiao was launched into space from the same Russian Star City site in Kazakhstan Bizarrely, on his return to earth McDonalds, not a company to miss a marketing opportunity, was there at Star City to present to Chiao his first meal back on earth.....a big mac and fries. (I was a tad dubious about whether Chiao actually ate the meal but judging by a photo of Leroy I think it's a fairly safe bet ) Michiko Kakutani and kippers

my daughter thinks that the fact that the french for faggot is gayette is hilarious.....I must have raised her wrong

what I miss here about the Thai condiment array is the ubiquitous toilet paper roll in handy plastic dispenser

aah, tuyumansi

I used to always smile at 'battered fish' and 'battery hens' altho I guess the hens aint smilin

Andy Roddick is a young, successful American tennis player who has appeared at Wimbledon for several years now Wimbledon is a strange time of the year for the British who become temporarily injected with unusually large levels of optimism resulting in the mistaken belief that their Tim Henman can actually win a tennis cup Symptoms of Henmania include: getting confused and saying Hen Tinman or Tin Hatman, shouting come on Tim at totally inappropriate times during November, buying 600 Union Jacks for your extended family, and looking decidedly unenthusiastic when winning a set inevitably disappointed fans end up retiring to a nearby pub and drowning their sorrows with a pint and a packet of pork scratchings, which is the quaint term reserved for chicharonnes in the UK Donald Tsang and fish eggs

My husb. used to fly to SA all the time and when the kids were small our cupboards were groaning with biltong from every animal imaginable (seriously, if you opened one of the cupboards it hailed biltong) I did take it for snacks for my daughter when she was playing rugby (unfortunately in Hong Kong and for the FRENCH ) anyway she has sacrificed her nose to the game broken twice and I did get to meet that hottie Thomas Castagnaide I believe I owe a game Archimedes and foul mesdames

Andy Hardy was played by Mickey Rooney when extremely youthful and then when extremely old became the voice of the evil clown in the movie 'Babe, Pig in the City' and you know the rest, chitlins being ...shield children's eyes NOW sadly, I remember watching the original Andy Hardy series when it reached TV c.f. Wayne Rooney, youthful scouse English footballer with more than a passing resemblance to a pig

Piet Retief was a leader of the Voortrekkers who set off on the Great Trek eastwards from the British colony at the Cape after a series of reforms that angered many Boers One of the foodstuffs taken along was boerewors, a mixed meat sausage containing speck or sheeps tail fat or tallow and hung and dried to last on the trek Pemmican, similarly, is a foodstuff containing a high proportion of fat and dried meat and used as a high energy, long lasting food originally by the native peoples of North America Robert Burns and poppyseeds

Well, chef from clarens, not only do I have a minibus in Maputo but I am a rugby girl of the all black variety so Francois Pienaar, brilliant Springbok rugby captain is probably most famous for the iconic photograph of him posing with Nelson Mandela after their 1995 World Cup victory over a much better side (they was robbed) As a young man Nelson Mandela used to eat in an Indian curry restaurant called Kapitan's in Johannesburg, and 5 months before he was to be released from Robben Island Mandela wrote to the restaurant when he heard it was to close expressing his sadness that he would not be able to eat their curry again ps. haven't missed a HK 7's Andrew Mehrtens and castle beer

I was not long ago at my brother's beach house at Culburra beach south of Sydney and the freshly caught fish from the fish and chips shop at Greenwell Point, (small fishing village on the Crookhaven river near Nowra) was the most incredible, fragrant, fresh, succulent fish I have tasted in a blue moon. It had literally crossed the road from the boat to the fryer. Fish and chips in the UK is a sad sad sad and sorry cardboard caricature of the real thing and I had forgotten what the taste of fresh fish was (unless in a michelin starred resto)

Hey Jen, normally glutinous rice is the one that is used in laab and I must admit I have never toasted any other but I have seen some western sites using normal rice, i.e. jasmine or basmati, but it will not puff up, just toast in a dry pan until it looks slightly golden and smells fragrant and then pound or grind it in a processer

once again

chef from clarens....I feel reluctant to tackle the Bishop Tutu conundrum; am I being too sensitive?

may I say as an aside that Haruki Murakami's books contain superb cooking and food vignettes and are as different a read as you will ever get....if you trust me I recommend them highly, but you need to be a bit weird

Marie Curie discovered that rays emitted from uranium have an electrical effect as do electric eels which make great pets for those who do not have enough space for an electric cat or dog. Potential European electric eels owners should be aware that most eels are imported from South America, and will require modification or a transformer to drop the 220-240V mains supply in their homes down to the 120V required by the eels. The eel will need to be connected to an earthed outlet, and connected with a fuse of appropriate rating (the UL-rated power requirements of an individual eel can be found stamped on the eel's underbelly). Care must be taken to ensure that the eel has an ample power supply at all times Should you forget to plug your eel back in after vacuuming or in case of power failure the electric eel can be skinned and sliced through the backbone, lightly dusted in seaoned flour and sauted in olive oil/butter Vladimir Putin and high tea

Donald Fagen is one half of Steely Dan (named after the steel dildo in the Naked Lunch ) on their album Aja the song Black Cow tells the story of a husband seeing his cheating wife sitting in a NY bar (Rudy's) drinking a black cow which is a soda with icecream on the top, (I thought it was with coke but apparently root beer can be used instead) Sacha Baron Cohen and kudu steak

Nelson Mandela's wife, Graca is from Mozambique, the widow of Samora Machel LM prawns are named from the old capital of Mozambique, Lorenzo Marques sorry chef from clarens, my Maputo minibus gives me the inside info Haruki Murakami and roast lamb