A pair of how-do-i-say-it's

["Mark E. Shoulson" <cbmvax!uunet!CTR.COLUMBIA.EDU!shoulson>]

I've been playing around with some more Lojban phrases in my head, and have
a pair of concepts that I'd like to ask about.

The first is the use of {cei} and the {bu'a} series.  I know that {cei}
somehow fills the bill of {goi} and {poi/noi} (really {po'u/no'u}) for
selbri, but I've nearly never seen it used.  And the {bu'a} series is like
the {da/de/di} series (while {brodX} is like {ko'a/fo'a}).  So far so good.
Here's an example of a sentence I was plying with:

George Bush is to the United States what John Major is to Great Britain.

(apologies if this steps on anyone's political toes).  You can use assorted
circumlocutions to get this, but I think you ought to be able to use
{bu'a}, since this is really what it's for.  Just like {da} asserts "There
is some sumti/object/concept/whatever that fills this place", {bu'a} should
assert "There is some selbri/relationship that relates these sumti".  I had
been looking at stuff with {cei}, but near as I can tell nothing works the
way I wanted it too, and besides you can do at least as well without it.
Tell me: does this work for you?:

la djordj. buc. bu'a le merko gugde .i la djan. meidjr. bu'a le brito
gugde

G.B. is-in-relationship-1-with the american country.  J.M.
is-in-relationship-1-with the british country.

Maybe {.ije} or something?  This looks decent to me.  Note that it says
nothing about the relationship, merely that it's the same for both.  Any
other ideas?  I'd like to avoid circumlocutions that do away with the need
for {bu'a}; that's really what I'm interested in learning about.  And some
examples with {cei}?  Anyone have an idea?

The other came up in a translation I was thinking about.  We have relative
clauses to specify sumti, but they only attach to sumti at a fairly low
syntactic level.  So let's say I mean to say "I meet the man and the woman
wbout whom you talked with me." (meaning you talked about *both* of them.
And for the sake of argument, I met them separately and unrelatedly, so
{.e} would be a reasonable conjunction).  This is wrong:

mi penmi le nanmu .e le ninmu poi do tavla mi ke'a

I meet the man and the woman who-is-such-that you talk [to] me [about]
her[the woman]

since the {poi} attaches only to the {le ninmu}.  I tried using termsets,
but

*mi penmi nu'i le nanmu nu'u .e le ninmu nu'u poi do tavla mi ke'a

I meet (begin termset) the man (end-termset) and the woman (end-termset)
which-is-such-that etc...
(the two "end termsets" are simply the way termsets work, I don't make it
up.)

is ungrammatical.  The solution I found was with LUhI:

mi penmi lu'a le nanmu .e le ninmu lu'u poi do tavla mi ke'a
I meet the-individuals-of: the man and the woman (close-LUhI) which-are...

Presumably I'd use other members of LUhI and other connectives for meeting
them together, etc.  Note that the {lu'u} is not elidable here.  Is this
the best answer?

~mark