My Little Log Book

The excting day is almost here. We are soon going to Sanya and Kunming in China. While I was initially not too enthusiastic about the trip, I find I am look forward to it quite a lot now! The trip will be a short one with 2 days at Kunming and 3 days at Sanya. What I am having trouble planning is what to do with the luggage after checking out from the hotel. Hotels checkout seems to be at 12 pm. Our flights are mostly late evening. We can dump it in a cab while we take a final cruise around the city I guess. Are the cabs reliable? No idea. Is the luggage dispensable? I guess so! Easy way to dispose of 15 kgs of clothes I guess ... Will miss the suitcase of course :) But thats running away on a randon thought. The thing about trips is that, every trip is different! We have no idea at all what to expect from China. Having been there before with a much larger group a few years back, the trip was entirely different. We had submitted ourselves to a travel agent and every minute was pl...

Another day another cyclone. October 29th 1999. I was at XIMB. There was Xpressions (the Annual Fest) scheduled over the next few days. A perfect opportunity for me to go home to my toddler and spend a few days with him. Little did we guess the events of the next few days. Those were the days without mobile phones or constant weather reports, and analytics that have gone through 1000s of iterations to find the exact flow of a cyclone that is still 750 kms away. The wind started in the night. The rain started heavy. And it went on and on and on and some more. Over a period of 18 hours the winds over 150 km/hr, howling and the constant downpour didn't stop. The electricity was first to go, with the TV channels. Then, of course, the telephone lines and all communication. Our well-made terrace drainpipes weren't enough to keep off the rain. The stairs became a water cascade and we had a 2 storey waterfall running through the house middle of the day. At first, it was impossi...