Word: basil
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...return," he says. "This is where I'll make my home." Increasingly, his new home looks like the one he left behind. The area around the Gubei district, where many transplants live, is crowded with Taiwan restaurant chains serving island specialties like fried oysters and clams with basil, while sidewalk vendors peddle Taiwanese favorites like betel nut and barbecued chicken sphincters on a stick. Taiwanese madams oversee karaoke bar-brothels. Bemused new arrivals can get help with acclimation from books like the bestseller Shanghai Migrants, which advises that "a few thousand yuan a month will support a second wife...
With Hafez Assad's death, the spotlight turns to his son Bashar, 34, a mild-mannered ophthalmologist and perhaps the most unlikely political heir among the new generation of Arab leaders who have started assuming power in the Middle East. Indeed, Bashar's older brother Basil, a daring, charismatic figure, had been favored to follow in their father's footsteps until he was killed in a traffic accident...
...doctor in an awkward position. "I am not seeking high posts," he told Al-Wasat, an Arabic magazine published in London. "But I will not evade my responsibilities." Bashar is, in many ways, a more impressive figure than was his brother, says British author and Assad biographer Patrick Seale. "Basil was a very physical man, very keen on dangerous sports like hang gliding, parachuting, fast cars," Seale recalls. "[Bashar] is much more reflective, much more thoughtful. Much more able to implement or pursue the political legacy of his father...
...months ago that he harbored no presidential ambitions. But in a scenario eerily reminiscent of India's Gandhi family - in which Rajiv found greatness thrust upon him after Indira's preferred heir, Sanjay, died in a plane crash - Bashar may have had no choice after his elder brother, Basil, died in a car crash. Like Rajiv Gandhi, Bashar had been educated in Britain before returning home to reluctantly fill a deceased parent's shoes. And Syria's brutal authoritarian tradition certainly offers Bashar plenty of reason to sweat over the possibility that, like Rajiv, he could be removed from...
Serenaded by a string quartet playing Dvorak's opus, the honorands dined last night in Annenberg Hall on tomato basil soup, veal scaloppini with Madeira sauce and almond tulie cups for dessert...