Not one to read too many articles but...

This particular author catches my eye. I have read a handful of articles from him, and I have found it to be well thought out and more importantly, appeals to my sensibilities. I guess that explains why I like the articles.

What makes the articles very interesting is the author is French and the articles are about the subcontinent, India, Tibet, Burma etc.

Without further ado, here are two links on Francois Gautier's pages, his homepage and his page in rediff.

A word that starts with I

A little lesson about me... In my high school days, while I consistently aced the Sciences and Math subjects, I was abysmal in the languages - English, French and Arabic.

So my mom thought of a remedy, her friend, who was my English teacher in elementary school. She was enlisted to teach me the nuances of English so that I may pass (yes! I failed my first - and only - English exam at high school).

This was a conversation on one occassion:

Teacher: "You are like your father. Both of you are very smart, technically very brilliant in science. However both of you lack something. The word starts with I" (PS: I am being liberal in the use of "very brilliant" - It's my blog, my prerogative)

Me: "You mean inventive?"

Teacher: "No..."

Me: "Intelligent? Ingenuity??"

Teacher: "No... No..."

I try a few more... which was good... since I actually came up with words in English. Finally all exasperated by my incompetence in English, I say:

Me: "What is it - I give up!!!"

Teacher: "Imagination"

Me: "Ahhh... yes - I lack imagination"

Hence the brevity and lack of creativity of my blogs...

More on this later

Traveling heavy

Several of you know my opinion on traveling heavy... well this post is not about that, but more about a recent trip I took. On this trip, I had a rather long leg where I had a window seat. More recently, I have taken an aversion to sitting on the aisle rather than a window. In no event, do I want to be the 'Kebab mein haddi' and sit in the middle, unless it is in between two cute co-eds.

Anyways, on this trip, I had the misfortune of having someone rather huge (through no fault of theirs, I am sure) sitting in the middle seat. I have always prided myself being tall, heavy (not wide) and hard to push, but in this case I was slammed against the window and any attempts to center myself in my seat meant an elbow to my ribs.

What do you do in this case? Endure, I guess... and try to get some shut eye... and hope the flight leaves on time, so you don't have to endure for too long... and get some shut eye - did I say that already?

Hope you have better luck than I do on your travels...