Just past the nuclear power plant outlet and in the shadows of the Patriot missile battery, all pointed to China, the two intrepid surfers got a rocket ride out into a good 8-10 foot set. Water was rushing into this little inlet and flowing out up past a man made rock wall, the only trouble was that when the rock wall ended, we were out the back in amongst these monsters.
This was how our long weekend began on Thursday morning and after a fair battering, Ross and I joined Cass and Ains in the car for a journey into unexplored territory on the spectacular north east coast of Taiwan. The road followed impossibly sheer cliffs which just seemed to rise as vertically on one side of the road as it dropped away precipitously to rocky shores far below on the other. We drove through Green Bay and onto Keelung, the coastal town and harbour that has cruise ships leaving for Japan and the rest of the South China Sea, an escape route if ever the unthinkable Chinese attack comes! Tracking the coastal road through town and beyond we spied all sorts of interesting coves and points, ripe for further investigation when the surf conditions are right. We turned around at Fulong, a wide, wind swept beach of huge (by Taiwan standards) proportions.
We drove back to Green Bay where we were booked at the Howard Plaza resort, a curious and megalithic hotel, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Modern, clean and spacious, the rooms were a delightful surprise, a Disneyland style castle holding all the amenities, like gym, indoor pool, restaurants etc and an outdoor area with lagoon size pools and private beach no less!
We were originally told the hotel was booked out, but after some persistence, they agreed to let us book two double rooms. We were scoffing at their claims until 16 coach loads of school kids descended on the place about 7pm! The kids were pretty well behaved and they left again at 6.30 in the morning, only a lot of open empty rooms indicating that they weren't just a figment of our imagination.
Ross and I surfed our private beach for a couple of hours before a magnificent buffet breakfast (pre-paid!) and we had a great time except for a back injury I sustained by free falling about 2 metres onto the rail of my board. We packed up late (check out at midday) and headed to the point at Jinshan. Another Aussie, Clarky, had just arrived and even though I wasn't relishing the prospect of a paddle out in a stormy, rising swell, I felt compelled to show that no Byron clubby was better than a Newcastle boy! Gritting teeth and protecting back muscles as best I could I managed to get out the back and get a few big boomers before my leg rope broke, leading to an interesting body surf over rocks to retrieve my board from the shallows where it survived with just a few scratches.
Suffice to say that this ridiculous act of bravado saw me lying on the lounge most of the remainder of the weekend, alternating deep heat cream with ice packs.
We did venture out on Saturday to see "Kill Bill", the new Tarantino spatter fest, which we both thought was excellent. The generous lashings of Japanese dialogue were only subtitled in Chinese of course, so I did my best to keep Cass informed of the jist of things, even though the visual almost comic book style was fairly self-explanatory!
Sunday saw the lounge-lying kick in and we were treated to 3 games of world cup rugby and Cass took the opportunity to read a bit of her new book, Sue Grafton's "Q is for Quarry" (ordered from Amazon at some unspeakable price!)
I walked around at work today like Quasimodo due to the back and took a little early mark to get the ice pack on to it. We're not too far away from finishing our latest roll of film and we're hoping to get quite a few good photos to post on our other site (stay tuned!)
It's a funny place Taiwan....we reach the point sometimes where we can appreciate all that it has to offer whilst yearning for home, friends and family, yet at other times we're just totally exasperated with some strange thing or other. This weekend was the former; seeing the north east coast and all its rugged beauty, it was hard to imagine a better place to be, especially in the company of your soul mate.

Thailand certainly proved to be a land of incredible contrasts for me. Just back from a week in Ban Chang, which is in the south of the country not that far from Cambodia. The course I attended was a tutor-training course and I now have a qualification to teach this course for the next 5 years. It's called ESL in the Mainstream and as the name suggests, allows us to run a course to teach classroom teachers how to differentiate their programs to be more inclusive of ESL learners. I was very impressed with the Aussie lecturers, as it is sourced from South Australia.
I had two colleagues from my school in my group of 12 and it was a bit of a double-edged sword. As they waffled on and asked questions about minutia, I cringed and hoped the Aussies wouldn't tar me with the same brush. On the contrary, they were very sympathetic to my plight as the ESL head having to deal with those two nutters! I did a fair bit of networking and met the ESL coordinators from Bangkok Patana, Int School Manila, Beijing Int School and Int School Hong Kong and did a bit of comparing notes etc. I was a bit jealous as they all get heaps of time off for their roles...as much as 60% admin, %40 face-to-face!
To alleviate the pain of the day, I certainly took advantage of the lagoon size pool and the beach of the Gulf of Thailand, which lapped just 50 metres from our rooms. No surf of course, but beautiful sunsets and crystal clear waters were very soothing. I met up with some guys on the course and we went into Pattaya city on 3 occasions after class, ostensibly to do some shopping but really to have a few cleansing ales and see the amazing sights and sounds of this beach town about 3 hours south of Bangkok. We met up with some Dutch guys and watched the South Africans annihilate someone at the Copenhagen Bar, a sprinkling of Pommies and Aussies and lots of Thais added to the great atmosphere. I bought some DVDs at amazing prices ($4 Aus), and various rip off soccer shirts and t-shirts.
The streets of Pattaya were quite overwhelming; a cacophony of sound and colour and people. I read that this town has the highest ratio of bars per metre of road anywhere in the world and that it all started as an R&R spot for the American soldiers in Vietnam. However it started, it doesn't seem to have missed a beat yet!
Jet skis whiz along the beach just a few feet from shore with cruise boats touting for business to go to Ko Samet and Ko Samui, both gorgeous islands sitting out in the gulf with fine silicone sand and views of other idyllic islets.
As you can imagine the food was just out of this world......green curries, red curries, sweet and sour fish, along with heaps more exotic fare. On at least 3 nights, we sat at a little local restaurant just up from the hotel, with cane chairs and tables right out on the sand, watched sunsets, drank Singa beer and ate a succession of wonderful dishes till we could barely move. Our Thai friends from the course and some of the longer term expat "Thailanders" selected magnificent feasts for us...we ate whole fish steamed in chilies and garlic, incredible fried rices and Tom Yum soups (which nearly blew my head off..I literally couldn't speak for 10 minutes after eating one of the versions!!) And fresh prawns cooked behind our table on the wok with fish sauces curry, chili and veges.
Of course, I missed my darling terribly, especially as we had only seen each other for a couple of days after Cassy's camp. I've tried not to wax too lyrically about the food up to now as it is definitely Cassy's favorite........unless I can convince her not to read this, I've had it now!!

After all the excitement of the grand final last week, this weekend is a little of an anti-climax... unless you're into the rugby! We had a great time watching the "Pennies" win last Sunday and had quite a crowd of boys round to share in the footy fever. The "big screen" worked well and we even managed English commentary with the aid of the sound from ABC Asia's telecast that we had coming simultaneously through the TV.

David left for Thailand on Tuesday afternoon and I've had a couple of emails from him. He's not too impressed with the work required for the course but he's managed to find a buddy or two, so the "shopping" trips to Pattaya are a bit of an escape for him. They watched some of the rugby (the South Africa game as well as the All-Blacks) with some new Dutch mates at the "Copenhagen Bar" so I guess it's not too tedious for him!

I had a very busy week until Friday evening. I collected 48 memoirs from my classes to be edited in a very detailed fashion. This consumed my every waking (and not-so-awake) moment from Wednesday till 11:20am Friday. Then I had to teach, so the timing of Cathy Funk's (MS principal) "TGIF" (Thank God it's Friday) bash was great for me. I had a pretty good time and the food was delicious - tasty Indian triangles with yogurt dip, artichoke dip, leg ham and mustard bread rolls, little tuna sandwiches, a selection of great cheese, Belgian chocolate clusters... and plenty of beer and wine.

I slept for over 12 hours - must still have been tired from camp - and just lazed around and read most of the day on Saturday. My slothfulness ensured that I missed going to the beach with Ross and Ainsley but... there's always next weekend!

Today I've done the shopping, washing, ironing and typed up the minutes from our team meetings last week (my turn). I plan to write some first quarter reports now (due Monday, October 20) so that next weekend I can relax with David.

Hope we eventually get some cricket on ABC Asia; presumably it's the rugby that's pushing it off the schedule at the moment.

Grand final fever has gripped Taipei as the Chinese locals and ex-pats alike eagerly await the big game which will be broadcast live here at 5pm. Parties are being planned the length and breadth of the island as an unprecedented interest has blossomed in the great game of rugby league almost overnight.
Well, in reality, I'm sure there will be a small crowd of people at the Brass Monkey bar downtown, at Tienmu's own Green Bar and at our place for the big game. We've borrowed a data projector from school as well as a local video player to decode the signal and have tested it out. It throws a picture up on our loungeroom wall, which rivals the size of the biggest screen anywhere! There were many problems along the way.....
Firstly, I discovered that our digital set top box, which decodes the ABC, would not transfer its signal to video (about 4 hours). Then I realized that the Chinese video has no audio outlets meaning we would only get sound from the projector. The local cable channels will load on to the video so I looked up the TV times for the Star Sports channel and found that they too were broadcasting the game live. The only problem possible will be if they don't take the Australian audio and decide to commentate over the top. We can overcome that by streaming the 2GB commentary over the internet in the study in the adjoining room. So we can watch the pre-game stuff at 4.30 on the ABC and then hook the data projector to the Video for the game at 5 on the Star sports channel. Fingers crossed it will all work out!
Another slight problem was what to feed the visitors. We thought of good footy fare: pies (no), sausage rolls (no), frankfurts (no), cabanossi etc (no). We've decided to go and get some cheese, biscuits, chips etc and a couple of buckets of KFC! Beer is, thankfully, no problem.
Cass got back from camp on Friday quite exhausted and glad to be back to our clean house and comfortable bed. She declined the invitation to go to the beach yesterday and I wish I had too. Ainsley stayed in the car marking the whole time and Ross and I attempted to get out the back in a howling gale, supremely messy 5-6 foot swell. It was a real storm surf and we couldn't get out and I came back in after about 1/2 an hour without catching one wave. Ross persevered for a while longer before we packed up and came home. We also went on Friday after school and similarly disappointing surf, but not before we retrieved the car from it's parking spot around the corner only to find the driver's side window smashed! We cleaned out the mess and Mr. Lee, our landlord, took me around to a windscreen/window repair place and negotiated a time (8.30 Sat morning) and a price (just $45 Aust.!) for the replacement. I went round in the morning and we were on our way to the beach in about 20 minutes. The incredible level of service here is something we really miss when we get back home. They would have done it on the spot if we'd wanted that as well.
Work has continued to be very busy and I will need to leave work for my substitute when I leave on Tuesday night for a week in Thailand. I'm attending an ESL Tutor training course, which will give me some sort of certification and a license to train classroom teachers to help them work with an ESL teacher and ESL kids in a team teaching environment. It costs a bomb just for the course (an amazing $2,500 U.S. !!) let alone the airfares and accommodation. My predecessor as ESL head had already received full funding for this trip and this transferred to me when I got my new position. I'm not that keen on going especially as Cass has only just got back, but it's part of the job.
Anyway, we're looking forward to a great game today......many people will know that I was an Easts supporter before Newcastle joined the comp but.....they just keep knocking the Knights out of the semi finals! I'll have mixed feelings today so I'll just enjoy watching the game. Cass will get all her black gear on to support the "Penny" panthers, they're black cats so there's really no choice for her!