Hunger for Travel

“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” - Miriam Beard

Many people I know travel to have a break from work and from the everyday humdrum of life’s demands. Relaxing by the pool or hanging on the beach often seems to be the priority. For me, travel is one of life’s true purposes. I travel not merely to see a new place and experience a new culture, but also to search for self. It is a journey to seek knowledge – knowledge of a nation, knowledge of humanity, but above all – knowledge of life.

It is immensely elating feeling to stand on the streets of Pompeii and imagine toga clad people who would have lived there once upon a time, or to envision the Statue of Liberty being transformed across the ocean from France to America. Knowing something exists is nearly not as good as seeing that it does.

It is always difficult for me to decide where to travel because I want to go everywhere at once. Unfortunately, not being a millionaire or a British asylum seeker, I have limited time and resources and therefore difficult choices must be made. I pick and choose, and hope that I live long enough to see the rest of the world – or that the nuclear war, glacier floods, tsunamis and earthquakes don’t destroy the world just yet.

Security Gone Bonkers?

We went over to USA just couple of days after Christmas, while the attempted terrorist attack was still fresh in everyone's mind. Higher security was expected. Fair enough.

At Heathrow, the only difference passengers felt was that everyone was being checked and handbags opened before sitting down by the gate. No big deal.

But the weird stuff was once we got onto the flight to Chicago. People weren't allowed to get up from their seats in the last hour of the flight, and even more strangely, you couldn't look at the flight path. Now really, if you were a terrorist, intent on blowing up a plane, especially an American plane, surely you could manage without knowing the exact location? Or you might have done your research and have a fair idea of where you might be after a certain period of time.

And what's even more crazy is that on the flight back from Chicago to UK, you can see the flight path. Now I am wondering, whether it's because those security measures have been lifted in a mere week, or whether American Airline isn't too fussed about a flight going out of America?

Personally, I have no problem with tight security measures. It's not exactly difficult to be sensible and know what you can take and what you can't. And if you haven't got awkward stuff in your bags, you don't get held up. At least I don't. Okay occassionally there is beeping through security gate, but hey, little frisking didn't hurt anyone. It's not the security measures I mind, but just wondering whether airlines could just stop bringing in things just to show they are doing something, as oppose to actually doing something productive.

Anyone else had flight paths blocked?

Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year

All my wonderful blog readers,

Wish you a very Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Let it Snow!

I am having a beautiful Monday. That is extremely rare because Mondays are usually annoying, having to come to work after weekends, getting up early in cold and usually grey weather. But today is special because I woke up to a snowy landscape.

Just before I went to bed yesterday, the snow was already settled and thick, fat snowflakes were still falling, so this morning, I walked out in the bright, white snow - making my own trail at least for a little while on the residential streets where the snow was still undisturbed.

Bristol isn't exactly known for getting snow in the winter, but last year we had some snow that settled for about 3 days, and this year is looking promising. So hurray for that :-)

Of course England is not equipped to handle snow so traffic becomes a nightmare, buses stop running, trains don't work ---but what the hell....it's gorgeous.

10 Days to Go

Ten more days and then I will be in Arkansas. Granted, at first, I wasn’t too excited about it, because in USA, I prefer East Coast. Having lived in America, it’s also not on the top of my places to visit list. But since my parents have moved to Arkansas, I had to go.

However, a new place is a new place, and as the time for departure gets closer, I find myself getting excited about it anyway. I have looked up things I can do in the area. With family visit, I don’t know how much of sightseeing I will actually accomplish, but it’s always good to have a list handy, just in case there is an opportunity.

But most importantly, at least I should be able to snow during Christmas period, since here in Bristol that’s a rarity.

So forget about Christmas Day…it’s the 27th that I am looking forward to.

Off preparing for NaNo

Sorry, haven't blogged regularly lately. But currently, I am focusing on outlining my book for NaNo challenge that begins in November. For those of you who may not know, it's National November Novel Writing Month. Thousands of crazy people, like me, sign up to write 50000 words from November 1 to November 30.

The rules are simple
You have to start a new project. You can't work on a half completed book, because the idea is to let your creativity flow, and not get bogged down by editing.

You can outline, but not writing anything before November. And that's it.

I am hoping to complete 80000 which would be a full length of a novel, so let's see how it goes.
So blogging might be bit slow until end of November.

One of my favourite places in Bristol

(c)photo by D.G.

This is the beautiful central library. In Bristol almost every area has a local library, and even though these do provide good selection of books to borrow, they are not very good for sitting around. They are quite small and feel like one open room. I prefer libraries to be big, with lots of little rows to roam through, and tons of books all around me. That's what the central library is good for. And it's in one of the old buildings, so the architecture is gorgeous.