Ye, that works quite well. If the plant is already wet, the water comes through quite quickly.

As someone else has said, choose something that is tolerant of neglect. Peace Lily is very forgiving of both drought - it droops its leaves like a dead octopus but perks up quickly - and sitting in water, although they a re a bit boring.

But as start I think it's hard to beat hippeastrum - it's fairly foolproof to get from bulb to flower, even if you don't get as far as a flower in year 2.