Shandong by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2026-09-12
Literally: East of the Mountain.
Oxford by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
The city clearly exists because it is in the confluence of the river Thames and the River Cherwell. In such confluences, terrain tends to be flat, and fords are also common, with crossings wide and shallow, and so it was an important crossing place.
Notably, the River Cherwell is a natural link between London and the North towards Coventry, and then Birmingham, as it, and then the Thames in which it goes into, puncture through both the Chilterns, then North Essex Downs and the Cotswolds hills. The M40.
Thali by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2026-08-21
Indian vegetarian thali is the best thing ever! The Southern version in particular. Also do watch a video on how to eat it.
A good place to have it abroad is Saravana Bhavan. The founder killed a dude to marry his wife, but failed and was sentenced to life prison. But he died in 2019 so we're all fine eating there now.
Figure 1. Source. This Wikipedia image of Thali is fundamentally wrong: you have to have a banana leaf on the bottom of the tray!
Tabla by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Video 1.
Jugalbandi in Chartaal-Ki-Sawari from album Together (1990)
Source. Background?
Video 2.
Taal Pancham Sawaari by Zakir Hussain
. Source. The top YouTube commend mentions:
This video was made in 1970, on Zakir's first visit to the USA. He and Aashish Khan (keeping taal next to him) had a guest residency at UW Seattle, under the ethnomusicology dept. set up by Robert Garfias.
Another notable reference is in Lost Horse LLC, MacKenzie Bezos's charity instrument.
Breakdown:
  • 塞翁 sai4 weng1: TODO his name?
  • 失马 shi1 ma3: lost horse
  • 焉知 yan1 zhi1: who knows, literary
  • 非福 fei1 fu2: bad (or) good
Video 1.
Zen master and the little boy scene from Charlie Wilson's War
. Source. This is how Ciro Santilli first heard the old man lost his horse! The scene happens after the Americans seem to have had sucess in arming the Taliban in the 1980s to fight the Soviets, and then they decide to stop all monetary help to rebuild the country, which then leads to a terrorism threat many years later.
Video 2.
The Blessing of Bad Luck by Pursuit of Wonder (2022)
Source. A bit too long. But worth it.
London by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Video 1.
Yung Professional Move to London by Sans Beanstalk
. Source.
The sad thing is that the same author also has another accurate video criticizing British suburbia, so there's no escape basically in the UK: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIJuZbXLZeY.
Video 2.
Werk by Sans Beanstalk
. Source.
Tokyo by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Literally: "capital of the East". Note that the Chinese term 东京 (dong1 jing1) is highly ambiguous in historical contexts, as many places throughout history have been known as "the capital of the East".Of of those other places is the Kaifeng, which is the Capital in Water Margin and in real life during the Song dynasty. The novel is also likely highly popular in Japan apparently as well BTW, e.g. it merited a well funded adaptation: The Water Margin.

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