....not having access to YouTube

Why is there's nothing worse than not having access to YouTube?

Is YouTube the most incredible phenomenon of the 21st Century?  Some politicians want to control it, after all, why would they want the world to see an event actually as it happened, and filmed by a person actually involved? Why can't everyone understand that in the 21st-century people can analyze situations themselves and come to their own conclusions? Why did we allow the political awareness of the 60's and early 70's to die?

Why is there no picture in this blog entry? Why am I constantly using rhetorical questions?

....a dog that won't go for a walk

There's nothing worse than a dog that won't go for a walk.

We have a King Charles Cavalier spaniel, called Charlie. He snores very loudly when he sleeps. This is manageable although troublesome, however the "I'm not that sort of dog that you can take for a long walk" attitude is not so easy to cope with. The dog we had previously, Sockie, before she became ill, could definitely be classified as a good walker. She knew Sharjah streets better than we did. Before Sockie, Duchess liked nothing more than a long but gentle stroll around the Green Valley housing compound in Dammam, often on her own. Charlie likes to go out, but regards 50 metres as being his limit, and will then stand still or turn back home. We have various ideas about how to develop him into a marathon walker, but are unlikely to implement then. We go for a walk, he stays at home, this is the new order. 

.....incorrect use of a defining clause

Mr Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London recently said in a speech announcing a project to help underachievers in government-funded schools 
“There is nothing worse than seeing pupils full of potential slowly drifting into apathy." 
We can understand from this that it is acceptable for the pupils that are not full of potential to drift into apathy. I don't think he meant this. I think he was just guilty of sloppy grammar. If he wanted to portray himself as the saver of potentially pathetic juvenile souls he should have used the non-defining clause “There is nothing worse than seeing pupils, who are all full of potential, slowly drifting into apathy."  (ps - I don't actually know what drifting into apathy means, but it sounds like something you don't want to happen to young people). Using a non-defining clause in a sentence when speaking is a bit tricky, but the British politician can generally pull it off. However, with right-wing politicians, even when they use simple and compound sentences, it's not always clear what they mean when they talk about publicly-funded education. Most of them, like Boris Johnson, went to private schools, so only have second-hand information about the state system, fed to them by assistants who themselves went to private school.  Still, Boris Johnson is regarded as a jolly decent fellow so lets hope that he can get all those slackers to shape up and learn how to conjugate their verbs.

......finding out that it's you that doesn't get the point.

I went to see the Gold Pavilion Temple in Kyoto and was surprised how well it had weathered the passage of time since it was first built in the fourteenth century.  I was then told it hadn't weathered well at all, and had been burned to the ground twice, quite recently.


"So this isn't the original building?"  I asked my Japanese guide.  
"Yes, of course it is," he insisted.
"But it's been burned down?"
"Yes."
"Twice."
"Many times."
"And rebuilt."

"Of course.  It is an important and historic building."

"With completely new materials."
"But of course.  It was burned down.  The latest technology was used to ensure it wouldn't burn down again."
"So how can it be the same building?"
"It is always the same building."

I had to admit to myself that this was in fact a perfectly rational point of view, it merely started from an unexpected premise.  The idea of the building, the intention of it, its design, are all immutable and are the essence of the building.  The intention of the original builders is what survives.  The wood of which the design is constructed decays and is replaced when necessary.  To be overly concerned with original materials, which are merely sentimental souvenirs of the past, is to fail to see the living building itself.  It wasn't an entirely comfortable viewpoint for me because it fought against my basic Western assumptions, but I did finally see the point.  However, there's nothing worse than finding out that it's you that doesn't get the point.

Bloggers Note.                          This entry was written by Mickey Gidwani.