I'm writing this on Tuesday, in a small window of opportunity at work. We’re suffering from the 3rd great computer breakdown. The poor old thing might be on its last legs, I think. Sunday morning it loaded up perfectly so we could check the tides and wave prediction before heading to the beach. Sunday evening after the football it just refused to start up except in safe mode. One good thing that has come from it is that I’ve discovered through necessity how to access my email remotely, which means we can use our usual email all year round now, instead of switching to hotmail when we aren’t in Taiwan.
Our weekend was pretty standard, with Ross and I scurrying off to the beach on Friday afternoon and surfing till dark (which is getting earlier and earlier as winter approaches) before heading home. The car is still going really well and does about 200 km each weekend, so let’s hope it continues! Carl and I had a couple of beers on Friday night and were met with the curious sight of the “master” at the Wow wow bar doing some (what we thought were) renovations. He’s a very lackadaisical character and we were shocked at this strange change in work ethic. But worse was to come: he informed us in broken English that the bar will close. Carl and I treasure our times there, mainly because it is a little run-down, certainly not trendy and never seems to have anyone much in it. We had a sneaking suspicion that this might happen one day, for the very reasons I just stated. We often wondered how he made any money and now we know. He didn’t!
We had a bit of a sleep in on sat morning before heading to the “Green Bar” for the AFL grand final. There was a crew of Aussies there and we had a great time, yelling abuse at the ref, the players and sometimes each other! The bar put on a great lunch of Indian curries which we ate with great relish, but it put our plans of an Indian tea out the window. The Board party at the American Club was on Saturday night and we thought that while a stack of people were there, we’d take the opportunity to get to the Indian “Spice Shop” without running into a lot of school people. Anyway, best laid plans and all that. We ended up having a delicious dinner of green onion pancakes bought from our little stall in Ker Chiang Rd, dressing them up with a couple of eggs and Tabasco for the princely sum of $3 (had leftovers the next day as well!)
Sunday was beach day and we were once again in a self imposed media ban as both finals of the footy were to be broadcast in the afternoon. We had a pretty good time, the surf wasn’t great, but fun little waves provided a bit of entertainment. Our little beach igloo is still going great guns, Cass declaring that she just couldn’t come to the beach without it! The sun is still intensely hot; I constantly need to re-apply sunscreen while we’re there. The football was good when we got home and I had mixed feelings about Easts. I followed this Sydney team right until Newcastle joined the comp and feel I should support them now, but I just can’t get past the fact that they’ve knocked the Knights out 4 out of the last 5 years! We’re thinking of having a few people round next week for the grand final which is on our ABC box live.
Cass is away at camp this week and I’m a bit lonely already without her. She’ll be back on Friday, but then I’m going to Thailand for a conference next Tuesday for another week!
Well, this is certainly taking longer than I thought. Work is calling and I’m afraid I’ve raved on with some mind numbing minutia, so I’ll sign off now.

Aching shoulders, bruised ribs and sore arms, as well as bites and small lacerations. No, not the result of a fight or a game of football, but surfing! I've taken the day off the trip to the beach today to get a little chance to recover. Because we make the trip over the mountains (a 2 hour round trip) we think that we should make the most of it, subsequently spending far too much time in the water. It certainly has been enjoyable the last couple of weeks, this weekend again seeing some decent swell and waves, although as mentioned, we've been bitten by some kind of jellyfish and suffered a few little cuts courtesy of some barnacled rocks at low tide.
After a surf till dark on Friday afternoon, we came back to town to go to Cathy's 30th birthday party, where both Cass and I had a great time. We've certainly sussed out who we really want to spend time with here and, as Chad and Cathy are fairly like-minded, the invitees were a great bunch of personalities and nationalities. Chad had organized the party to be held at the "Green Bar" and had asked the owner to pay for the food, as he was bringing in about 50 customers. Sensibly the owner agreed and we had home cooked Thai delights as well. It's the first time Cathy had a big party out since Levi was born a few months ago, so she had a ball.
Ross and I headed out early yesterday for more surf, trying out our new ratchet tie downs to secure the boards. We're no engineers, so it took us far longer than it should have to work out a decent system, but we got there in the end! They worked very well and we think we can do without a rack for a bit longer yet. After surfing ourselves to exhaustion, Ross drove us back (he has his licenses as well now) just in time for me to have some lunch before Cass and I headed down to the Living Mall to see "The Italian Job". What a fantastic movie! I was initially worried that I'd fall asleep. But there was no possibility of that as it was action and intrigue aplenty. We tried to go to one of our favorite restaurants a few train stops down, but "Mr. Fish" has gone! We were pretty disappointed as this was the only fish and chip shop in Taipei as far as we know. Anyway, we had a look at few DVDs without purchasing, than came back home and fried eggs on toast! They were yummy.
Today sees us enjoying a nice lazy Sunday morning, reading some clippings from the Newcastle Herald that Mum sends over, eating raison toast and drinking coffees. We're in a self imposed media ban as we will watch the delayed telecast of the Warriors game here at 1.30 followed straight after by Storm and Bulldogs. It's Carl's birthday on Monday, so we've arranged to go out to tea with his family after the football to celebrate that. He's been flat out lately taking his soccer team (he coaches the senior boys) to Thailand and also round the island here. He doesn't know whether he'll do it next year or not. It's a shame, because he's by a long way the best soccer coach they'll ever see.
Hope things are going well for you at home, thanks for the emails!

Tuesday, yet still my shoulders, neck and back are aching! What a great weekend of surf. After our incredible “Big Friday” afternoon, we headed back to the beach on Saturday, with our usual supplies of esky, food, drinks and sun tent. The swell had decreased, but not by much....it was still very difficult to get out as the typhoon which subsequently devastated Korea was pushing some big storm swells in to the Taiwanese northern coastline.
We saw some suicidal jumps off artificial jetties and breakwaters in an effort to get out the back. One poor guy was lucky to be alive after jumping at a very silly moment and being smashed into the rocks by the next set. They’ve obviously seen other people do this: but a typhoon swell is not the time to try it for the first time!
Ross and I both got out and enjoyed the 2nd best surf we’ve had for a long time. There was a crowd on the point, but not many guys were keen to take off on the sets, so we got a lot of waves.
We took our usual hour to get home and watched some footy, before having a fairly early night. Ross and I headed off again at 6 am Sunday, but the swell had dropped and it was back to normal. We had a bit of a muck around, and then headed home to see the Knights bow out of this year’s comp. I was pretty proud of the way they gutsed it out in the last few weeks and they certainly weren’t disgraced, just a little outclassed on the day. Ross was over the moon with the amazing performance of the Warriors, but even he thinks they’ll probably lose next week; they’re so hot and cold.
I was stoked to hear that Wayne had won his soccer and a little about the celebrations and as always, Mum, Xris and Val, Thurza and Sue have kept us going with some great emails, phone calls, videos or newspaper clippings. These things help to sustain us; they are so very important to us.
We have another professional development day on Friday, so we are looking forward to a 4 day kiddie’s week. By the way, those Tesco sausages were not quite as good as Aussie ones, but I have given them the thumbs up!

Just a short entry today, as we're heading to the beach in about 1/2 an hour. I am so excited! Ross and I left school a little earlier yesterday at 2.30 after a day of unit planning and headed to Jinshan beach to try to catch a bit of the typhoon swell at the top of the island. Our hopes were high for some ridable waves after two ultra-flat weekends in a row. We were greeted by near perfect 5-6 foot left handers peeling off a man made breakwater about 100 metres off shore! We couldn't believe our eyes and rushed to get in the water. Unfortunately there was no natural paddle out area and we battled to get out beyond the bank, which was pounding relentlessly. I managed to get out and enjoyed some of the best surf I've had for a year or more, including Australia! I paddled about 10 metres further out and about the same further inside than the Taiwanese boys and still found it a manageable takeoff. The waves were smooth, big and powerful. Some of the Taiwanese guys were putting on a nice show and I was amazed to see one of them really carving up a wave when I was paddling back out. I discovered when I got out that it was an Aussie from Margaret River, who has promised to get me a copy of a DVD that he and his mates have made of some "secret" spots on the west coast.
Well I have an aching back, neck and arms, but can't wait to get out again this morning to see if that swell is still hanging around. Cass and Ains are coming this morning as well, so we'll have a nice lazy day even if the swell has died. By the way, did I tell you I am excited!!

Two more dead flat days at the beach were not the highlight of the weekend. Cass and Ains came out with Ross and me to the beach yesterday and once again, we set up our little igloo, had our esky (NZ 'chilly bin') and Ross and I tried to tame the massive swell rolling in from the South China Sea. We had lots of fun and the best was the performance of the girls on the boards. Going for their maiden surf was great fun and Cass and Ainsley both got a few great little foamies and enjoyed the sensation of catching a few waves. Much to Ross' horror, Ainsley persevered for a while and managed to stand up on one wave. After his story to her about how hard this surfing caper is, he was a little taken aback!
When the surf was flat today, we were so disgusted that we just turned around and came back without even having a swim. At least we can do something else with our day off after leaving for the beach at 6am. A new Tesco store has opened in Taipei and we plan to head down on the scooter to check it out. A British chain, it is rumoured to have cook in curries, a home brand style of marmite (might mean the end of the eternal carting of Vegemite from Oz if it's any good) and, best of all, freshly made British style sausages! Until you live here for a while, you just can't imagine how very exciting this is!
Anyway, we'll reserve judgment until we check it all out and I'm sure we'll run into half the faculty down there today as everyone is pretty excited. There hasn't been much action on the movie front, so we haven't been to the Living Mall for a while, but our trip to the night market last weekend was good, Cass getting some sunnies and we got that congested hot crush of people feeling again (did I say that was good??)
We've had some great newsy emails from Mum, Thurza and Sue as well as Cassy's Mum and Dad.....if you don't see your name on this list, how about dropping us a line and making our day? We've been stoked to see the Knights going so well without Johnsy, but even our red and blue eyes are not seeing us flying back for the grand final this year. Our ABC Asia Pacific channel just gets better and better as ALL the AFL and NRL semis are being shown all the way through to the respective grand finals. (Please take note my wonderful, reliable video taper, Sue....have a holiday till next season!)
It only took about 1/2 an hour to find a park today after coming back from the beach, pretty good really. This brings me to an interesting 'fact', which I heard the other day. Although it may be urban legend, first hand experience makes me think this is true: There are not enough parks in Taipei to accommodate all the cars here, apparently about 5000 short, so the city relies on a massive number actually being on the road at any one time. Anyway, that car will sit there till next Saturday now and the trusty scooter will be called into service this afternoon, our legs through the week!