Happiness for Bhutan Olympians is not golden
THIMPHU, Bhutan (Reuters) – In a remote Himalayan valley, an archer and a shooter are calmly preparing for a trip of a lifetime to represent Bhutan at the London Olympics, but winning is not the main target.
Archer Sherab Zam and shooter Kunzang Choden, both 28-year-old women, are the only two athletes to represent the remote kingdom at the 2012 Games, competing on wildcard entries allocated to ensure all 204 National Olympic Committees can take part even if no athletes have qualified.
Neither Sherab nor Kunzang expect to win medals for Bhutan, an impoverished, largely Buddhist country between India and China which only opened up to foreigners in 1974, banned television until 1999, and uses happiness to measure its success.
However, they head to London carrying a nation’s pride and will join thousands of other dedicated athletes at the Olympics who go largely unnoticed except by their own country.
Competing against highly-funded athletes with state-of-the-art equipment from richer countries is tough, but Sherab and Kunzang – who do not own a bow or rifle — are both realistic and their aim is to try to beat their personal best.
“Participation is more important than winning a medal,” Sherab told Reuters over coffee in Thimphu, which claims to be the only world capital without a traffic light.
Kunzang added: “Bhutan is just a small country of just 700,000. There is a lot of pressure on us but we must be realistic about our chances. We just want to do well.”
Olympics-Happiness for Bhutan Olympians is not golden
THIMPHU, Bhutan May 25 (Reuters) – In a remote Himalayan valley, an archer and a shooter are calmly preparing for a trip of a lifetime to represent Bhutan at the London Olympics, but winning is not the main target.
Archer Sherab Zam and shooter Kunzang Choden, both 28-year-old women, are the only two athletes to represent the remote kingdom at the 2012 Games, competing on wildcard entries allocated to ensure all 204 National Olympic Committees can take part even if no athletes have qualified.
Neither Sherab nor Kunzang expect to win medals for Bhutan, an impoverished, largely Buddhist country between India and China which only opened up to foreigners in 1974, banned television until 1999, and uses happiness to measure its success.
However, they head to London carrying a nation’s pride and will join thousands of other dedicated athletes at the Olympics who go largely unnoticed except by their own country.
Competing against highly-funded athletes with state-of-the-art equipment from richer countries is tough, but Sherab and Kunzang – who do not own a bow or rifle — are both realistic and their aim is to try to beat their personal best.
“Participation is more important than winning a medal,” Sherab told Reuters over coffee in Thimphu, which claims to be the only world capital without a traffic light.
Kunzang added: “Bhutan is just a small country of just 700,000. There is a lot of pressure on us but we must be realistic about our chances. We just want to do well.”
Bhutan counts the cost of trying to buy happiness
THIMPHU, Bhutan (Reuters) – They say you can’t buy happiness – and it’s something Bhutan is finding out the hard way.
The tiny, mostly-Buddhist Himalayan kingdom won a world voice for adopting a happiness index to measure its economy. But its prime minister says it promptly forgot its own lesson, and let a sudden rush of prosperity go to its head.
“Wealth creates increased desire,” Prime Minister Jigmi Thinley told Reuters in an interview in the capital Thimphu, surrounded by tree covered mountains dotted with prayer flags.
“There are families with four or five cars. There are luxury vehicles being imported that can hardly drive on our roads and are made for far better roads than we have here.”
A country that was closed to foreigners until 1974 and only recently opened up to the forces of globalization lacked the tools to cope with new-found economic growth and the wealth it brought.
Debt-fuelled consumerism that far outpaced economic output has now led, inevitably, to a rude awakening.
The government has cut expenditure and is considering raising taxes on imported vehicles. The central bank, the Royal Monetary Authority of Bhutan, has rationed the main trading currency, the Indian rupee, squeezing private businesses.
Capri, Geneva, NY most expensive for hotels as prices rise
CANBERRA, Sept 14 (Reuters Life!) – Capri, Geneva and New York top the list for the most expensive hotel rooms, according to a global survey that showed hotel rates rising for the first time in three years as the global economy picks up.
Hotel provider Hotels.com’s bi-annual hotel price index, released on Tuesday, found that although average hotel room rates are at low levels seen six years ago, there are hints of a recovery.
“We’re seeing travel bookings pick up around the world,” Hotels.com spokesman Victor Owens said in a statement.
Overall, prices rose about 2 percent in the second quarter of 2010 from a year ago, the first increase since the end of 2007, as business travellers and tourists started packing their bags again and heading out.
The index, now in its seventh year and based on a sample of about 91,500 properties in 15,750 locations, found second-quarter room rates rose 1 percent in Europe and the Caribbean, 3 percent in the Americas and stabilised in Asia.
Prices on the Italian island of Capri rose 7 percent, making it the most expensive destination for hotels and uprooting Monte Carlo from the top slot in 2009.
Book Talk: Rebecca Johns tackles first female serial killer
SYDNEY, Oct 13 (Reuters Life!) – Rebecca Johns had always been fascinated by female killers so she found it irresistible when offered the chance to write about the woman known as history’s first female serial killer, Countess Erzsebet Bathory.
Her novel, “The Countess: A Novel,” is a fascinating tale of the woman known as the Blood Countess, who was born around 1560 into the Hungarian nobility and accused of torturing and killing scores of women and girls, mostly Slovak servants in her staff.
She was never tried or convicted, but in 1610 she was walled inside a castle tower and imprisoned for the rest of her life.
Johns, who lives in Chicago, said she was fascinated by Bathory with so many different stories and even vampire tales.
Later writings had the Countess bathing in the blood of virgins to retain her youth and added to the belief that she was one of Bram Stoker’s two inspirations for Dracula.
Johns, whose 2006 debut novel, “Icebergs,” was about the families of two men who survived a plane crash, spoke to Reuters about her writing and female killers:
Book Talk: Derek Landy lauds the skeleton who stormed his life
CANBERRA (Reuters Life!) – As a fan of horror movies, martial arts and detective stories, Derek Landy thought he was set for a career writing screenplays until a skeleton detective stormed his imagination — and children’s bookshelves.
The snappily dressed Skulduggery Pleasant popped into Landy’s mind while he was traveling, and within months was down on paper in the first of the Irish writer’s best-selling fantasy novels, “Skulduggery Pleasant,” that was published in 2007 and was this year voted Irish Book of The Decade.
Landy, from County Dublin, has just released the fifth book in the series, “Skulduggery Pleasant: Mortal Coil,” which follows Pleasant and his teenage sidekick Valkyrie Cain as they try to protect a known killer from an unstoppable assassin.
Turning his hand to children’s books was quite a shift for Landy, who had written two films since being thrown out of art college, one about zombies called “Boy Eat Girls” and the other a thriller in which everyone dies called “Dead Bodies.”
Landy spoke to Reuters about his life with a skeleton:
Q: You released both the fourth and fifth books in the series this year. How did you fit it all in?
Capri, Geneva, NY most expensive for hotels as prices rise
(Reuters) – Capri, Geneva and New York top the list for the most expensive hotel rooms, according to a global survey that showed hotel rates rising for the first time in three years as the global economy picks up.
Hotel provider Hotels.com’s bi-annual hotel price index, released on Tuesday, found that although average hotel room rates are at low levels seen six years ago, there are hints of a recovery.
“We’re seeing travel bookings pick up around the world,” Hotels.com spokesman Victor Owens said in a statement.
Overall, prices rose about 2 percent in the second quarter of 2010 from a year ago, the first increase since the end of 2007, as business travellers and tourists started packing their bags again and heading out.
The index, now in its seventh year and based on a sample of about 91,500 properties in 15,750 locations, found second-quarter room rates rose 1 percent in Europe and the Caribbean, 3 percent in the Americas and stabilised in Asia.
Prices on the Italian island of Capri rose 7 percent, making it the most expensive destination for hotels and uprooting Monte Carlo from the top slot in 2009.
Ken Follett tackles the 20th Century
MEBLOURNE (Reuters) – Author Ken Follett decided he wanted to take on a massive project — so he embarked on a trilogy following five families across the entire 20th century and the major historical events of that period.
The first novel in “The Century Triology,” “Fall of Giants,” is released this month at about 1,000 pages.
Follett, 61, known for writing over 30 thrillers and historical novels including “Eye of the Needle” and “World Without End,” said he believed people still had an appetite for long books, if they were well written and engaging.
Follett started out as a journalist and then publisher and is a prominent supporter and fundraiser for the Labour party. He recently joined 54 other public figures in an open letter opposing Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain.
Follett spoke to Reuters about his writing:
Q: “Fall of Giants” was quite a project.
A: “It took me 2-1/2 years which was about six months of planning and 15 months on the first draft.”
Book Talk: Ken Follett tackles the 20th Century
MEBLOURNE (Reuters Life!) – British author Ken Follett decided he wanted to take on a massive project — so he embarked on a trilogy following five families across the entire 20th century and the major historical events of that period.
The first novel in “The Century Triology,” “Fall of Giants,” is released this month at about 1,000 pages.
Follett, 61, known for writing over 30 thrillers and historical novels including “Eye of the Needle” and “World Without End,” said he believed people still had an appetite for long books, if they were well written and engaging.
Follett started out as a journalist and then publisher and is a prominent supporter and fundraiser for Britain’s Labour party. He recently joined 54 other public figures in an open letter opposing Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain.
Follett spoke to Reuters about his writing:
Q: “Fall of Giants” was quite a project.
“Owls of Ga’Hoole” swoop into movie with Aussie accents
CANBERRA (Reuters) – When American writer Kathryn Lasky created a world of good and evil owls, she didn’t envisage them with Australian accents but somehow it fit the movie screen adaptation of her “Guardians of Ga’Hoole” books.
The 3D animated movie “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole,” which hits U.S. theaters on Friday, is based on the first three of the 15 books in the fantasy series written by Lasky between 2003 and 2008 about a post-human world of owls.
The movie, described as a cross between “Watership Down” and “The Lord of the Rings,” was directed by Zack Snyder of “300″ and “Watchmen” fame and produced by Oscar-winning Sydney-based animation house, Animal Logic, as well as Australia’s Village Roadshow production company, which also collaborated on the 2006 dancing penguin film “Happy Feet.”
The film features a list of top Australian actors voicing the owls including Geoffrey Rush, Hugo Weaving, Anthony LaPaglia, Sam Neill and Abbie Cornish. U.S. actor Jim Sturgess voices the hero, Soren, and Britain’s Helen Mirren is the evil owl Nyra.
Lasky, 66, a prolific writer with over 100 fiction and non-fiction books to her name, said she was happy with Snyder’s decision to cast Australians in the majority of the roles.
“I didn’t envisage the owls having Australian accents but it is fine with me,” Lasky told Reuters in a telephone interview from her Boston home.
“It gives a certain ‘je ne sais quoi.’ Harry Potter had these British accents. For American filmgoers, I think particularly with fantasy, it is a little value adding to have a different accent as it adds something exotic.”
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