Saturday, February 24, 2007

 

several weeks before Feb 17,2007- the hotels

ok so i get to go to my hq in indy again and as i don’t get the opportunity that often (3 times in 10 years isn’t much) decide to milk it for all it’s worth and add a week or so leave and do as many personal stop overs as i possibly can and although i get this nice biz class round the world free trip on the best airline in the world (Singapore airlines) all the side trip hotels expense had to come out of my pocket which isn’t deep at all so i decide to google and get cheapest hotels for my stop overs and i’ve done this many times over the years and discovered that it’s efficient and you can get some real good deals too and recently i discovered asiarooms.com which is very reliable and so i booked hotels in london chicago new york paris and singapore through this purely based on travellers’ comments and special rates offered . obviously can’t stay in 5 star hotels but 2 or 3 will do just fine for me so long as they are clean and in the right location with access to easy public transport especially subway and that’s the most important criteria if you ask me.

so in the end i got hotel reservations at best western grant park chicago for USD88 per night special rate (the week after rate was listed at an incredible USD264 per night!), howard johnson at woodside Queens (NY) at USD319 for 3 nights inc tax , Royal national, london 2 minutes walking distance from russel square tube station at USD 202 for 2 nights , timhotel saint george paris right in the middle of the redlight district of montmarte as described by travellers who had stayed there (we’ll see we’ll see) at USD237 for 3 nights and hotel81-star smacked in singapore’s red light area in geylang (we’ll see we’ll see) for Sing 57 .

and so i’m set to go and most of my own expense is for hotels and don’t plan to spend much on anything else except for museum tickets and may be some books and looking forward to go to the strands new york and half price bookstore in indianapolis and buy trolley load of cheap books but still can’t think how the hell i can lug them all over and flying back and how to solve the problem of luggage overweight...but i don’t like to think too far in advance and see how things go and handle things as they come...

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

 

3 novels at 11

It’s been quite a while but I don’t think more than two people ever visit this room so I can bloody well say anything I like and nobody will notice or care even if I say anything potentially libelous like saying some politicians are retarded (and almost quite literally quite true too - some anyway)…which brings me to what I really want to say and that is this: Read a fascinating article by the novelist Zoe Williams in the guardian online today about this child genius of 11 who already wrote three novels!

Three novels at 11? The article unfortunately didn’t say if any of these are published or if they are any good but still, this is mighty impressive. Yes, there are some child prodigies in other arts like paintings – Picasso for example- and there are plenty in sports but to write novels at 11? This is somehow quite different and to me more incredible than say anna kuornikova whacking tennis balls when she was a toddler or something.…I couldn’t even write a decent paragraph before I was twenty …

But I can’t really recall any books written by anybody below say 25 that I really like except one that I truly love…le grand meaulnes by alain Fournier . Read this when I was in my early twenties and it gave such an effect on me and as it was such a poignant and romantic story I gave a copy as a wedding gift to one of my friends but I didn’t get any comment from him and most likely he didn’t read it too…

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