*The Guest House Surrey, BC is a private residence with 3 Bedrooms used for B&B / Room & Board*
We currently have 2 bedrooms available. Both of these bedrooms has a double bed, dresser, desk, chair, Color Cable TV, closet. The house has W/L internet.
Our Rates ARE:
~~ OUR STANDARD RATES – Non Peak Season (March,April & May)~~

Daily: $45.00 / NIGHT
Weekly (1 Week PRE-PAID): $275.00
Weekly (2 – 3 Week stay PRE-PAID): $250/Week
MASTER SUITE WEEKLY: $350 (7 day minimum for master suite)
Monthly (4 Weeks PRE-PAID): $900.00 (OUR BEST rate $30 / Night )
WE INCLUDE 2 MEALS PER DAY!** See Below for 3 month rate special
Additional Guest - $10.00/night ($200 / Month for Second Guest)
CHILDREN under 10 yrs sleeping in same room as parents – NO CHARGE
Wish to invite a guest for dinner while staying with us? - $10

**** SPRING 2010 SPECIAL – BOOK A ROOM FOR 3 MONTHS (MARCH, APRIL & MAY 2010 AND PRE-PAY UP FRONT AND RECEIVE A $100 DISCOUNT PER MONTH)

THE FOLLOWING IS ALL INCLUSIVE WHILE STAYING AT THE GUEST HOUSE:

· Breakfast/Dinner - Served Daily (Yes... it's included)
· Wireless Internet
· Local/North American Phone Coverage
· Fax Services
· Complimentary Coffee and/or Tea
· 3 - Fully furnished Bedrooms (Single or Double occupancy)
· Monitored Smoke/Burglary System
· Close to Transportation/Schools/Medical/Shopping
· Swimming Pool (16' x 32') (Seasonal)
· Hot Tub (Year Round)
· Sports Lounge with Big Screen TV
· Laundry Service

WE OFFER – FULL SERVICE / SHORT TERM / AFFORDABLE ROOM & BOARD ACCOMMODATIONS. We offer EVERYTHING the hotels/motels do ... accept the PRICE!

Why Spend $75, $100 or $125 or More per/Night... Just to sleep?

WHY NOT... SAVE YOUR MONEY?

Come... Be Our Guests At...
THE GUEST HOUSE in Surrey, BC
14471 – 85A Avenue, Surrey, BC, V3S 5W3
PHONE: 604-598-0973
FAX: 604-598-0972


* The GUEST HOUSE OWNERS / Staff have all had their H1N1 / Flu Shots – You can be rest assured The Guest House is kept at the HIGHEST STANDARDS of CLEANLINESS **** WE ARE A NON-SMOKING ENVIRONMENT***
CATCH THE ”326” BUS ON 88TH & 144TH TO KING GEORGE SKYTRAIN STATION – 3 MINUTE WALK. 5 MINUTE BUS RIDE.

Ideal shared housing. Nice room available immediately! For personal occupancy.

Reasonable $600 a month, truly all inclusive! NOT ONLY electricity, hot water, heat, BUT ALSO laundry, telephone, furniture, AND EVEN high class appliances, high speed Internet, high quality satellite TV!

Yes! FREE utilities (real savings for you). FREE laundry (washer & dryer at home). FREE Internet (unlimited Wi-Fi). FREE television (over 120 channels). FREE phone line (no-limit local calls). FREE parking. One of the best neighbourhood -- friendly and safe -- priceless!

No matter where your are from (student or professional, welcome!). No matter long or short term stay (monthly). No matter when you like to move in (flexible starting date). No hidden fees. No bills to pay. No surprise rate-hikes. No deposit needed. No smoking. No pets. No problem!

Your private bedroom is fully FURNISHED: single size bed, comfortable mattress, study desk, deluxe chair, closet space, floor lamp, reading lamp, chest of drawers, duvet, pillow, bed sheet, drapes/curtains. Second floor of a charming triplex in great condition. Stylish stone wall. Hardwood floors, high ceilings, spacious house, huge windows. Sunny, bright, and most importantly, very clean!

TWO bathrooms with shower/bathtub and twin sinks. Modern kitchen/dining room completely equipped with top-of-the-line appliances: stainless-steel refrigerator, smooth-top stove, range hood, microwave oven, toaster, coffee maker. What's more? Rice cooker, dishware, utensils, lots of cabinets. Extra: dining table set. Plus: premium smoke alarm. Bonus: a terrific terrace!

CONVENIENT location! Corner of major street in the heart of Montreal island. 5 minutes bus to Rosemont metro station; 15 minutes to get to downtown or universities. Easy access to public transportation: main bus routes 197, 45, 10, 18...

Close to all: convenience store downstairs, cafe bar across the street, bank on next block, 24-hour restaurants around the corner, supermarket within walking distance. Relax at the beautiful Parc Père-Marquette, or enjoy the nearby recreation center (FREE indoor swimming pool, FREE ice-skating arena).

Call (or text) now: 514-831-7788 Gordy. Reference preferred.
____________________

Disponible dès maintenant! Une belle chambre meublée. Pour une seule personne. Grande maison à partager. Date et durée flexible selon vos besoins. Location long ou court terme. $600/mois tout compris, même internet et télé-satellite! 2 salles de bain communes. Cuisine complètement équipée. L'endroit est propre et calme. Un des plus beaux quartiers de la ville. Situé en plein coeur de l'île de Montréal. 5 minutes en autobus à station métro Rosemont, ligne orange. Non fumeur. Pas d'animaux.

Très confortable. Très abordable! Inclus dans le prix: électricité, eau chaude, chauffage, internet sans-fil haute-vitesse illimité, télévision satellite (120 canaux), téléphone. En plus: laveuse, sécheuse, réfrigérateur, cuisinière, four micro-ondes, grille-pain, cafetière, vaisselle, verrerie, ustensiles, serviettes et table. Aussi, entretien ménager des parties communes.

Au 2e étage d'une maison triplex charmante. L'espace privée, soit votre chambre, est entièrement meublée et comprend d'un lit simple, literie, bureau de travail, chaise, commode, garde-robe. Grandes fenêtres de qualité supérieure. Beaucoup de soleil. Puits de lumière. Propre et éclairé. Bien décoré. Planchers de bois francs. Hauts plafonds. Accès à une grande terrasse extérieure.

Découvrir et profiter pleinement le Montréal. Vers l'université, centre ville, etc: 15 minutes. Proche de les transports publics, choix lignes d'autobus: #197, 45, 10, 18... Secteur paisible et agréable. Quartier résidentiel plaisant, tranquille et sécuritaire. Stationnement facile.

The closest shopping mall is the wal-mart supermarket which is just a five minute drive or 15 minute walk away.AAA Star driving,EB games are withing walking distance.Rexdale Boulevard is a nice place is like 2 to 3 minutes walk away on frost street,bergamont Ave..... bowlerama,wally's grill. EB games is a walking distance.This 2-bedroom apartment two bathroom,two bedroom,kitchen, dining room and two living room consists of all the facilities you have never think of .( laundry,washer and dryer,hydro,A/C ..........).

Do you happen to have plenty of trouble trying to get out of bed every morning? Well, this is where the Twist Alarm Clock comes in handy – it will only shut up once you managed to solve the relatively simple math problem displayed on the screen. There are two displays and an equal number of rotatable parts which will work in tandem to present you with a math problem each morning, where you will need to provide the right answer before it keeps quiet. Talk about being forced to use your brains the moment you open your eyes! It is currently available in Japan only for $30 after conversion, although we’re pretty sure that you can import this puppy if you want something totally rad for the bedroom.

Source: Crunchgear
Cool Gift Idea: Digital Picture Frames, check out our reviews.
[ Twist Alarm Clock needs you to use your brains copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

When Terri was diagnosed with cancer, Lionel Shriver was doting – at first. But as her condition worsened, there always seemed to be a reason not to call...

I met Terri in the early 1980s at an arts camp in Connecticut. We were both in the metalsmithing workshop, and this sharply featured, appealingly surly Armenian taught me some new tricks. Her speciality was rivets and other "cold connections", an apt expression in her case. She was a wilful, stubborn woman, more fiercely so than I first realised; 25 years later, I'd discover just how defiant my closest girlfriend could be, even in the face of the undeniable.

Terri was full of the contradictions that always captivate me in people: inclined to bear grudges but incredibly generous (often rocking up with gifts for no reason – why, I still have half a dozen pairs of her shoes). Harsh but warm. Prone to depression but with a knack for festivity. I conjure her scowling down the pavement and rolling in laughter with equal ease. She was tortured and brooding; she was terribly kind. And she was a serious artist in the best sense: not pretentious, but determined to craft interesting work well.

Back in Queens, where we both lived in our mid-20s, we found common cause in our improbable aspirations. She wanted to become a famous artist, I a famous novelist – but Terri had then sold next to nothing and I'd not published more than my phone number. It was a big, indifferent world out there, and an ally was crucial. We'd conspire over a six-pack in my tiny one-bedroom flat, jovially certain that we'd still be best friends when we were "cancerous old bags". It was a running gag. We thought it was funny.

Beware the jokes of your heedless, immortal youth. Fast-forward through two and a half decades, during which Terri and I survived abusive boyfriends, marital problems, professional setbacks, my expatriation to the UK and her exile to New Jersey, Terri's painful endometriosis and four failed IVF treatments, as well as, of course, each other. During my regular summer migration to New York, in 2005, Terri shared her perplexity that she'd been running a low-grade fever for weeks. I said it sounded like a tenacious virus. But shortly thereafter she rang from hospital.

She was being tested for a range of ailments, the most far-fetched of these a rare disease called mesothelioma. Thus it was quite a shock when the doctors confirmed that peritoneal mesothelioma was exactly what she had – almost certainly caused by exposure to the asbestos that laced metalsmithing materials when she was in art school. Her husband Paul reported grimly that the average survival rate for this ravaging cancer was a single year.

Terri was only 50, and the timing was tragic for other reasons, too. From frustration, malaise and exactingly high standards, through most of her career she had underproduced. Yet in recent years something had loosened up, and her output had accelerated. Better still, she was at last imbuing her creations with the feeling they'd sometimes lacked, the most moving of which was an elegy to her unavailing IVF treatments. She was finally pulling in big commissions, one of which was about to go on display at the V&A. At the same time, her brooding demeanour had brightened; she'd grown more outgoing, energetic and relaxed. Almost... happy. Well, so much for that.

On the heels of her diagnosis, I was doting. I'm not tooting my own horn. I suspect being a paragon at the very start of a loved one's illness is pretty much the form. We're on the phone daily. We stop by regularly, and bring freshly baked scones. We follow every medical twist and turn. And we're inclined to rash promises. With a flinch, I recall declaring before Terri's surgery that I'd be willing to move into their house in New Jersey for weeks at a time! I'd be at her beck and call, running errands, preparing meals and filling prescriptions.

Useful tip: if someone close to you falls gravely ill, at the outset, in the first flush of anguish and desperation to help? Watch the mouth.

For the timing of Terri's cancer was terrible for me as well. A month after her diagnosis, I was intending to return home to London, where a host of professional commitments could not (or so it seemed) be reneged upon. Although for most of my literary career I'd scribbled in obscurity, my prospects were suddenly looking up. My seventh novel had inexplicably hit the bestseller list in the UK, and subsequently won the Orange prize earlier that summer. (I still have the droll good-luck package Terri and Paul delivered when I made the shortlist: orange marmalade, orange candles, orange oil.) For the first time, I faced a smorgasbord of opportunities – festival gigs, bookstore appearances, feature assignments – and I was in the middle of a new book.

So, however reluctantly, I flew back to London. After Terri's surgery, Paul phoned with the lowdown: the surgeons had discovered a patch of aggressive "sarcomatoid" cells, which meant Terri's prognosis was bleak.

I will give myself this grudging credit: I did fly back to visit Terri for Thanksgiving that November, and for a while I kept in faithful touch, ringing weekly and following every grisly detail of her punishing chemotherapy. But this is not a boast about what a wonderful friend I was in Terri's time of need. This is a mea culpa.

Little by little, I'd notice that it had been a fortnight since I'd rung New Jersey. I'd kick myself. But some book review would be due that afternoon, so I'd vow to ring tomorrow. Time and again some immediate task would seem more urgent, and I'd tell myself that I should ring Terri when I'm settled and concentrated. Watch out whenever you "tell yourself" anything; it's the red flag of self-deceit. Long hours of being "settled and concentrated" mysteriously failed to manifest themselves.

I stuck a Post-it note on the edge of my desk: "RING TERRI!" Over the months, the note faded, much like my resolve. On the too-rare occasions I acted on the reminder, I had to put a mental gun to my head. But why? This was one of my closest friends, and she was dying. While she was still on this Earth, why was I not battling to maximise every moment? Surely the problem should have been my ringing too often, whizzing back to the States too many times, making a pest of myself.

Granted, our conversations were sometimes awkward. My own life had never gone more swimmingly, while Terri's was circling the drain. I was embarrassed. I found myself editing from our discussions anything I'd done that was exciting or fun. When I returned from an author's tour of Sweden, I portrayed the trip as a drag. This  sort of cover-up reliably backfired. So apparently I felt sorry for myself – for going to Sweden! When Terri could rarely leave the house.

I make no apologies for this, since this is what novelists do: at some midpoint in Terri's decline, I decided that my next novel would draw on this encounter with cancer. At least I had the humanity to refrain from taking notes during our phone calls, thus relinquishing many a "telling detail" and much "great material". Consequently, I had to do an enormous amount of research on mesothelioma later, and this is what I do apologise for: not having done all those web searches on her treatments – the surgery, the drugs, the side-effects – when Terri was still suffering through them. Now, I'm mortified to have Googled "mesothelioma" only once the search was for a book.

When I returned to the US that second summer, Terri had alarmingly deteriorated. Thin to start with, she'd lost weight. She was gaunt and weak, her skin tinged a dark, unsettling orange: a chemo tan. It was obvious where this was headed. But whenever anyone acted as if she wasn't going to make it, Terri grew enraged. She resented the "sentimental" testimonials her friends and relatives recited at her bedside; she thought they were delivering a death sentence. Though she wouldn't have put it that way. I wonder if throughout her illness I ever heard her say the word "death" aloud.

Thus on one count only could I blame Terri herself for my increasingly deficient friendship. Her refusal to admit she was dying meant we couldn't ever talk about the elephant in the room. Pretending that the treatments were working and she was going to come through this injected an artifice in our relationship at odds with the confidences we'd shared for 25 years. Days I did visit, afternoons I did ring, we'd end up talking, lamely, about recipes. Indeed, on a brief trip in November 2006, I visited Terri in New Jersey; it was the last time I'd ever see her, and I knew this instinctively at the time. Yet we spent an appalling proportion of that final visit talking about mashed potatoes.

When her husband rang me in London a few days later with the news, he was consumed with a steely rage. Obviously Paul was angry that he'd lost his wife. But he was also angry at other people. Oh, he expressed his disgust in general terms, as a disillusionment with the human race, a good-riddance to our whole species. But I knew what he meant. Paul's fury was aimed at Terri's friends and family, who had almost universally made themselves scarce for months. His fury was also aimed at me.

I thought I deserved it. I had visited, some. I had rung up, some. But not nearly often enough, and in truth one of my best friends perishing before my eyes had instilled a deep aversion, an instinctive avoidance, a desperation to flee.

It would be a far better thing if I were a lone shithead amid an ocean of altruists. And surely some folks really do step up to the plate when a friend or relative falls mortally ill – wonderful people who keep popping by with casseroles to the very last day. I have a new admiration for such stalwarts, as well as a new appreciation for the Christian duty to "visit the sick". Yet I fear this suddenly-remembering-somewhere-you-gotta-be is a common failing of our time. In fearing and avoiding death, we fear and avoid the dying.

I'll risk sounding preachy, since I've paid for my sermon with a regret that never leaves me. Most of us will experience the afflictions of our nearest and dearest perhaps multiple times before we're faced with a deadly diagnosis of our own. So be mindful. Disease is frightening. It's unpleasant. It reminds us of everything we try not to think about on our own accounts. A biological instinct to steer clear of contagion can kick in even with diseases like cancer that we understand rationally aren't communicable. So the urge to avoid sick people runs very deep. Notice it. Then overcome it. There will always be something you'd rather do than confront the agony, anxiety and exile of serious illness, and these alternative endeavours seem terribly pressing in the moment: replacing the printer cartridge, catching up on urgent work-related email. But nothing is more pressing than someone you love who's suffering, and whose continuing existence you can no longer take for granted. So never vow to ring "tomorrow" – pick up the bloody phone.

· So Much For That, by Lionel Shriver, is published by HarperCollins on 25 March at £15. To order a copy for £14, with free UK mainland p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846.

• Bereavement
• Relationships
• Cancer
• Health

Lionel Shriverguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The Iranian indie band talk about life as outlaws in their homeland, as documented in their new film No One Knows About Persian Cats

At first glance, Take It Easy Hospital look like any other aspiring indie duo. Dressed in impeccable Shoreditch chic – plaid shirt and skinny jeans for him, cute vintage dress, black tights and brogues for her – their teenage epiphanies came on copied cassettes of Nirvana and Pink Floyd, while these days they're more into Sigur Rós and Foals.

Their ambition for next year, once they find a drummer, is to get on to the bill at Glastonbury or Reading. The difference is that Take It Easy Hospital originally formed in Iran, where rock music is banned. When the local music industry is non-existent, gigs and recording studios are regularly raided by police and even MySpace is monitored, simply finding someone who shares your love of guitars and plaintive vocals is fraught with difficulties.

Ash Koshanejad and Negar Shaghaghi, the twin songwriters of Take It Easy Hospital, are the stars of a new Iranian film by garlanded Kurdish director Bahman Ghobadi, called No One Knows About Persian Cats (so named because pet cats, like rock musicians, are outlawed in Iran). The film is a fictionalised account of the duo's attempts to recruit a rhythm section in order to play a local underground gig and ultimately escape to the rock-friendly west. As the two indie innocents are taken under the wing of music-loving wide-boy Nader (Hamed Behdad), the film becomes a Linklater-esque romp through Tehran's clandestine rock underground. All the bands and musicians featured are real, but whether hairy blues rockers, jazz singers, class-war rappers or indie kids, they exhibit a love for making music that overrides the fear of being arrested the moment they switch on their amps. "If you were discovered playing rock music, you'd get arrested, you'd have to pay a fine," reveals Ash, matter-of-factly. "Sometimes you'd go to prison."

The film gleans affectionate humour from the various bands' ingenuity when it comes to hiding their rehearsal spaces from the authorities in diligently-soundproofed underground caverns, shacks constructed on the roofs of tower blocks or, in one case, in a working cattle barn (much to the cows' displeasure).

By coincidence, there is a British film out this month which also documents the struggle of a couple of indie dreamers to form a band – except 1234 is based in London, so the only obstacles are their own musical inadequacy and weedy sexual tension between bandmates. Persian Cats makes 1234 look rather pathetic.

In Iran musicians are forced to behave like fugitives, even though the charges invoked against them are vague (Ahmadinejad imposed a ban on "western and decadent music" soon after becoming president in 2005). "It's a not a written law," complains Negar. "There isn't this red line. You never know when you're crossing it. [The authorities] don't even really know what they're opposing. They don't see that music brings energy and good nature to society."

In 2007, Ash's former band Font staged an open-air gig in a private garden in a suburb of Tehran. Armed police arrived en masse to shut it down, arresting everyone in the audience, and slinging the band in prison for 21 days. "They didn't have any law that said what they should do with us, so they called us satanists. They said we were against the moral law and disgracing the face of society." Ash chuckles wryly at the memory. "It was an odd experience, sleeping next to a serial killer for three weeks. But it made me believe even more in what I was doing."

Font and Take It Easy Hospital are rarities: most Iranian wannabe rockers never even get further then their bedrooms, due to the subtle pressure exerted within families. "Under this regime, you don't have any opportunity to make a living from being a musician, so families prevent their children from learning music in the first place," Ash explains. "Families are a small example of big government. They don't trust the young generation."

When Ash and Negar were kids, the only opportunity they had to hear western rock music was when somebody from their community travelled abroad and brought back CDs. "They'd be copied on to a tape over and over again," says Negar. "We used to write the track names in class when the teacher wasn't looking and take it home with such excitement to listen to it." Even so, whatever they got depended on the tastes of the traveller; often hoping for something similar to Nirvana, they'd end up having to make do with ABBA.

The advent of the internet changed everything for Iranian teenagers, who were suddenly able to participate in global youth culture, employing their technological nous to stay one step ahead of government censors. The fact that the bands in No One Knows About Persian Cats wear Strokes T-shirts and pass around copies of the NME shouldn't seem that strange. But what is the attraction to Ash and Negar of the kind of fey indie music that even within its countries of origin is often considered a bit insular?

"Well, we are indie!" declares Ash. "We had to do it ourselves in bedrooms because if you step out into the streets, you cannot even tell anyone you've just written a song. We would make our own imaginariums in our rooms."

If they'd grown up in England, Take It Easy Hospital's wan, organ-driven indie-pop, topped with earnest observations about the "human jungle", might stand accused of being a little bit twee. But once you learn how hard Ash and Negar have had to fight just to get their songs heard, they take on a whole new complexion. And despite their ugly experiences in Iran, they are determined not to make rebel rock. "Me, I don't care about politics," says Negar. "The value of art is a lot more than politics. Politics is something that passes, but art stays for years."

Ash picks up the thread: "Politics is a tool to solve a situation at one moment. We believe that art is pure and always depending on human nature, so we've always kept ourselves far from politics. Our music is not dangerous, but the current regime in Iran feels that it has to keep people away from honest expression because if they face up to the reality they will soon find out what they are missing."

Ash and Negar agreed to star in Persian Cats not to make a political point, but to try to show the older generation, including their parents, that music is a force for good. But while Ash has received some positive feedback from older Iranians – "I've heard that they walk away after seeing this film to remember what they had before the revolution" – Negar is despondent that most of them haven't been able to overcome their prejudices. "I guess that when people decide to close their eyes to something, you can't force them to see the truth."

In the light of last year's post-election protests, the police crackdown on young people involved in music and the arts has intensified. When Take It Easy Hospital's old drummer went back to Iran several weeks after the election, he was arrested and beaten. Last January, the film's co-writer, Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, was arrested in Tehran and handed an eight-year jail sentence on trumped up charges of being a US spy (she was eventually freed following a global outcry).

Reluctantly, Ash and Negar decided it was unsafe to return to Iran and have successfully applied for asylum in the UK, where they've been living since coming over to play at Manchester's In The City festival in 2008. In the film, the duo never make it to London, so in this case, truth is happier than fiction. However, Negar is at pains to point out that they never viewed England as the promised land, despite our rather more relaxed laws regarding the public airing of Farfisa-driven jangle pop.

"Some people say we've run away," says Negar. "But there is no running away. Moving from one country to another doesn't necessarily solve all the problems that are on your mind." Proof that indie introspection truly is an international language.

No One Knows About Persian Cats is out Fri; it previews at Brixton Ritzy, SW2, Tue

• World cinema

Sam Richardsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Bedrooms of the Fallen, from war photographer Ashley Gilbertson. Via the NYT Lens Blog: War Memorials With Neatly Made Beds. (Slideshow: The Shrine Down The Hall)