Tagged Christmas gift for teenager
Crossword Compiler Reveals her Secrets
Barbara Gettinby has been compiling cryptic crosswords for more than 20 years.
Frustrated when compilers would not reveal how they arrived at their answers, she decided to compile crosswords herself. Thus Finnegan’s Cryptic Crosswords was born. Finnegan’s Cryptic Crosswords solver was the first cryptic crossword book to contain all solutions fully explained. Barbara released 10 volumes in magazine format throughout newsagents in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
In 2005 Barbara released two books entitled Cryptics Made Easy, a blue and a purple edition (now out of print).
Read more
How to Do Cryptic Crosswords – Free e-book
Barbara Gettinby, author of Cryptic Crossword Secrets: Where Every Answer is Fully Explained has put together a free e-book to help you learn how to do cryptic crosswords. From double-leadings to back-flips, omissions to jumbled letters, cryptic crosswords use all manner of tricks to trip you up, but with Barbara’s help you will be on your way to deciphering cryptic clues in no time.
Read more
Recipe for Budget Travel
Budget Travel Secrets – SE Asia
What Tour Operators Don’t Want You to Know
By Des Gettinby
Recipe for budget travel
Take:
6 kilos of clothes
1 small onboard size backpack
$25 a day
Return air ticket
Add a good mate
Mix with a healthy dose of humour
Bake for 4 months in SE Asia
Read more
Travel SouthEast Asia – Places we Visited
Des Gettinby outlines the places he and his wife, Barb, travelled on their journey through SouthEast Asia. Des wrote about his adventures in his humorous travelogue, Budget Travel Secrets – SE Asia
Bangkok You must have an onward ticket before you enter Thailand. Thirty day visas are issued at no charge on arrival. Extensions are available or just cross a border and reenter Thailand to get another thirty day visa.
Most popular areas for budget travellers to stay in Bangkok are either Siam Square (close to the Sky Rail) or the even less expensive Banglamphu (Khao San Road), which is further out of the city centre.
How to Bargain – A Traveller’s Guide
Bargaining should be done with goodwill so that neither party feels put upon. Use smiles and good humour. But beware: the business of bargaining can be brutal!
Adventurers will gauge their own comfort level of balanced, fair barter. A street seller starts at, let’s say, $20. I say ‘No, too much.’ (Often I don’t even want it!)
They say ‘OK, $15.’
I say, ‘It’s quite cute but it’s too much.’ (I still don’t want it.)
‘OK. How much you give?’
I say something stupid like ‘$5’.
Read more