On 7 September 2014 15:49, John Gardner wrote: > ...He's been thrown out of nicer places than this! > > No doubt... :) > > I was wondering how many places I'd been thrown out of. Not too too many as I recall - memory may be selective re such things. I have a slide show of about 6500 semi-selected photos of mine from all over. One just appeared that showed an Eastern looking market street. Memory of where was not instantaneous - often enough it is, essentially. Ah yes. Street behind large impressive Mosque in Urumqi. Took me some while to find the entrance. Almost the whole ground floor is about as junky a market as I've seen anywhere. Cheap trinkets and bling and ... . Somewhat surprising. Finally find entrance at rear. Not large or evident . Maybe would help if I read either Urghur or Arabic. Tentatively sticks head in door. Staircase leads up. Small group appears. Young man 'gets in my face' very loud & angry. Speaks English well enough. I only know one person within a 1500 km or so radius of here. Tactical retreat is indicated. I'd consider than a throwing out. Whether a nicer place than PICList, who can say ? :-). Note: I was surprised. Some mosques are closed to infidel access full stop. Polite but definite. Others allow only access along a carpeted walk to an internal viewing point (eg older of two large mosques in Brunei). Some provide special garments to wear and may allow less restricted access once suitably clothed. Some very few allow access and politely ignore you completely while they get on with their business. This is rare. One such is the mosque on the city-side edge of Little India in Singapore. Inside there on one occasion I found a group of very boisterous Japanese young people - maybe 6 men and 2 women - in their early 20's maybe. Guys were larger than the average Japanese - quite an impressive group. They were loud, impolite, inconsiderate and profane. They were behaving in a manner which would have bordered on obscene in 'polite company' in most places and which was definitely out of place in anyone's hopuse of worship. I threw them out :-). Functionally anyway. I suggested that there were better places to do what they were doing, why not leave these people in peace, isn't it lovely outside [tm], these are not the ones you want .... .We wandered outside and they posed for photos for me and we went our separate ways. I may have had some idea of how the young man in Urumqi felt, for whatever reason. Russell --=20 http://www.piclist.com/techref/piclist PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .