I had a bit of a reality check on Saturday when I found myself driving down the main road of our suburb Tienmu, straddling the line that divides both traffic lanes, scooters whizzing down the inside, cars towards the centre of the road swerving over the centre line, while avoiding others “parked” in the outside lane, hazard lights indicating their temporary status in this spot. It’s a riot becoming a Taiwanese driver. Not only do many of the “streets” we navigate up the mountain more closely resemble tarred Billy goat tracks than a real road, you also become used to an amazing spatial perception: knowing just how close you can go to oncoming cars on one side without snapping off your side mirrors, while avoiding the drainage ditch on the other, the latter always open, deep, wide and dangerous. I have knocked mirrors a few times at speed, but they’ve managed to stay on the car and although I haven’t done so myself, I have witnessed drivers smacking blissfully unaware scooter drivers straight off the road into aforementioned ditches.

The rule seems to be: whoever gets there first, goes - disregarding traffic lights, signs and other traffic. If it’s behind you, it doesn’t exist. Pedestrians too, take their life in their hands if they cross on a green walking man signal. The newcomer foreigner is one who is often seen dodging traffic when they have right of way, unaware of the rule that the car is king, regardless of signals. Cars will swerve across three lanes of traffic to make a turn, causing near accidents for hundreds of metres behind them, cars will park in the middle of the road and compound their stupidity by opening their door into the narrow space left for following traffic. Taxi drivers, some of whom are off their heads on Beetle nut, are the worst offenders and will often mow a path through a phalanx of scooter riders if they sniff a fare. The ubiquitous blue truck is the next worst offender, drivers again suspiciously crazy, flashing the odd maniacal grin revealing bright red teeth and gums, the tell tale signs of the “nut” addict. Taiwanese work trucks are all in the same shade of ugly blue for some reason, we suspect that they test the level of nut in the blood before you can buy one…the more the “bluer”!

Still, in all this mayhem, no one ever gets aerated, harsh words are barely muttered and drivers are serene under the most awful traffic pressures. Ten-kilometer traffic snarls are caused by one car stopped in a lane to get something at a shop, drivers eventually passing the offending vehicle without even a sideways glance. I sometimes still imagine the road rage that would accompany any such behaviour back home: strings of expletives to outright physical violence and realize that here, in this situation, they’ve got it right. It is frustrating at times, but if everyone does it, you too can stop where you want, pull out into lines of cars when you need to and abuse every road rule you have ever learned if the need arises. In all this mayhem, it is not an uncomfortable experience driving here in Taipei: just know the “rules” and learn to adapt.

We have driven for half an hour behind a very cautious driver doing 30 km per hour up the winding, narrow streets of Yangminshan, champing at the bit to get to the beach, but realizing that if we pass, there will be another nutty squirrel to take this one’s place!
I can also park now in places that I wouldn’t even attempt at home, sometimes with just a few inches front and back. The reverse park takes on a whole different feel here, with no room to maneuver, driving on the left of the car, on the right side of the road and managing gears etc in the right hand as well. Thank god the pedals aren’t switched around; that would be just too much! Another thing that aids the park in the tight spot is the acceptance of the bump and grind technique; that is, if you need to, feel free to bump your way into the park by smashing into the car in front and behind! Who would buy a good car here??!! Plenty actually, Taipei having the highest per capita ownership of top line Mercedes in the world. These cars are not spared the treatment and owners seem to accept this as the price to be paid in a teeming, car owner’s city with very limited parking.

We have been absolutely stoked to get emails from Sue, my Mum (twice), Thurza and Cassy’s Mum and Dad (twice) over the latter part of the week and the weekend. It gave us a real buzz, so thank you all for your entertaining, newsy emails. That doesn’t excuse you other slack bastards! (You know who you are!)
We were also excited to get news that we’ve sold one of our units at Horizons, finally getting out of half of an ever increasing burden, especially with us over here and trying to communicate our wishes, needs etc. We just need to move the other one and we’ll have a real celebration!

Just quickly, surf on Friday after school (pretty good), surf on Saturday (a little better), party at Chad’s Saturday night (good, but we were a bit tired) and saw Cold Mountain (great) and had a flash lunch on Sunday (5 courses, very yummy, no tea!). Happy Birthday to my little sister on Sunday, she’s just turning 10! Have a couple of sherbets on Sunday night for me Bud!!

Taipei’s jade market nestles under the intersection of two massive overhead expressways in the south east of the city. Hundreds of tiny stalls and shops are jammed into a labyrinth of crisscrossing alleys and lanes, with extra items sold from cardboard boxes outside by smaller operators. People typically haggle over every price, a process I’ve never been comfortable with or very good at, much preferring to say "That seems pretty good", then studiously avoiding similar looking items further on, just in case I got diddled on my own purchase! Of course this is very un-Chinese and the retailers seem to gain as much pleasure from the exchange of horrified looks and raised eyebrows and other over the top histrionics at the customer’s proffered offers as the sale itself. We thoroughly enjoyed a few hours here on Saturday after jamming the scooter into the most minute of spaces on a footpath a couple of blocks away, after going to the pictures earlier in the day.
Love Actually was a delightful experience for us both and we savoured that peculiarly British way of bringing cinematic tears and laughs almost simultaneously, as well as the understated way of telling a simple story, linking a few vignettes together through the course of the film. We had a tasty lunch down at Cinemark and succumbed to the call of “Maccas” for tea when we got home, which I got on the scooter and brought home. You know, it really is quite miraculous how their stuff manages to taste the same wherever you are in the world. I must confess that, apart from the deliciously French salad dressing in Paris, the teriyaki burger in Japan and Taiwan’s peculiar obsession with promoting a murky grey copy of the ubiquitous mess served in various slop kitchens around town, you could be anywhere when you eat this fast food. It’s kind of comforting in a way; I suppose too, that’s how they’ve been so successful.
As you can no doubt guess, we didn’t go the beach on Saturday, partly because we dashed to the coast after our PD day at school on Friday afternoon, and partly because the alarming lack of swell we experienced then could not have improved in the 12 hours before we were due to head off again. Plus, it was Valentine’s Day (!) Today saw the conditions improve somewhat, and we got some nice little left-handers at Baishawan beach, about 14 km around from our usual haunt, Jinshan. Ross and I arranged to meet up with Carl and his family out there and we were surprised to arrive before them. When Carl pulled up a few minutes later, he related the story of the “flying board”. Apparently, in the strong winds and high speeds of the drive out, his ocky straps had actually snapped in two. None of us had ever seen or heard of this before, but the evidence was there for us to see. Carl’s board, in cover, had flown off his racks at high speed and landed back down the road, barely missing decapitating several scooter riders in the process! We inspected the damage and while not unscathed, the board had survived this terror flight remarkably well, all things considered. He will have to repair a big ding to the tail, which unfortunately broke through to the blank, but the board was OK apart from this. The boys are improving with every session they go out; they’re so quick to learn and seem very excited with the whole deal.
After the last month or two, you’re probably wondering why I’m not moaning about the weather again. Much to our surprise and delight the skies have cleared, the air has thawed and somehow, everything looks a little brighter, figuratively and literally. I even got a little sunburned today, but just in case my Dad has some kind of cosmic line to this communication, “No, not my nose, it had cream on it!”
Anyway, that will do for now: write us an email anyone reading this! Short or long, we’d be interested if you just tell us what you had for tea last night!

It’s been a bleak and miserable week here in Taipei, in large part due to shocking weather and the general malaise that often seems to accompany such dreary days. To say it has been unseasonably cold is a massive understatement: some 20 year veterans prepared to say it is the coldest winter they have experienced. We have had our little fan heater working overtime, the kittens running from their room in the mornings and afternoons when released from captivity to bathe in the little ceramic glow of heat it valiantly tries to blow around the room. Taiwan’s high humidity adds just that extra bit of zip to the single figure temperatures, gusts of wind whipping through the hardiest of jackets and piercing leg coverings like a thousand little needles, chilling to the bone.

These most frigid conditions did not preclude us from making our usual weekend pilgrimage to the beach, however! Leaving Cass tucked up inside nursing her two little balls of heat, I picked Ross up from his last class at school for his current Master’s course, met Carl in his car and headed off to our new-found secret spot at the southern end of the Green Bay beach. Anathema to we Antipodeans, the beach is actually privately owned by the Howard Plaza resort which flanks its outer edges, but undeterred by such strange happenings we flagrantly disregard the private beach signs (we can’t read them, we’re foreign), park in their overflow car park and trot along their pathways to the water. We may find some more resistance from the guards in summer but, at the moment, I’m pretty certain we are just providing the greatest amusement for anyone who sees us!
The waves were very poor quality even by our latest standards and we found it quite difficult to latch onto anything approaching a decent rideable wave. Wetsuits must be removed at some point and it is this moment that starts the real teeth chattering, tongue-tying chill that doesn’t stop till a long, very hot shower back home.

Cass and I were keen to see a movie today, but scanning the paper’s movie listings did not inspire us. We decided instead to treat ourselves to a delicious German lunch of sausage, bread, mash and sauerkraut bookended with a warming bowl of soup and a lovely piece of home made cake and coffee. We then braved the conditions to get a few supplies at the Carrefour, including a whole stack of downlights, as ours had all decided to extinguish roughly at the same time in the last week.

During the week, I was mesmerised by a very strange sight. As I stood on our verandah in the early evening, I watched some strange orange glowing lights drifting across the park opposite, light flickering as they rose higher and higher. They stayed alight as I strained to see them as they turned to fiery pinpricks far away. A succession of these lights passed by before I realized they were lanterns for the Chinese New Year, set aloft, the embers inside providing the lift to keep the paper in the air. This was just a precursor to even stranger sights and sounds. A caravan of small open trucks each with a cargo of fervent drum bashing youths onboard wended their way down our tiny lane, accompanied by the constant strident bleating of an unknown instrument sending shivers of displeasure down our spines. A woman’s voice from the temple across the river, amplified at what seemed a ludicrously high level, seemed to call the faithful to the various proceedings about to start. Later, with a hypnotic jungle beat of drums as background, constant volleys of fireworks were sent skyward, cymbals clashed, people sang and shouted, as children’s screams of delight drifted across to us, the start of some great celebration. Taking stock for a moment, it once again amazed us that we live and work in this great melting pot of strange and wondrous events, trying to appreciate and understand it just a bit: we don’t want to become blasé, or I wouldn’t have anything else to write about!

The big freeze has continued in Taipei this week, a slight lull coming just in time for the weekend. Dramas aplenty yesterday as Ross was ensconced in a cell like classroom at school doing his Framingham course, no doubt doodling pictures of stick men surfers riding impossibly perfect waves while listening to his lecturer drone on and on. This was not the drama though. Carl was due to pick me up in the new car to make the trip to the beach for the boy’s inaugural surf. He rang as I waited to tell me his battery was flat. I entertained thoughts of getting some jumper leads down at the Carrefour only to realize it was far too early. Carl went to school to hunt some down, I zoomed up on the scooter, met him with the borrowed leads then came back to get our car to do the charging. I couldn’t believe the key turning in the ignition to NO response whatsoever. Ours was flat as a pancake as well! Carl got a colleague to charge his car and came round to charge ours, whereupon we set out for the coast very late. We took both cars in the end to make sure they got a good run. The arctic conditions of the past week or two must have had something to do with it, or else it was just the freakiest of coincidences.

Suffice to say, we got to the beach and enjoyed some nice 3-4 foot right handers, breaking on a shallow bank, Sean and Steven getting plenty of quality time on a few foamies and nearly making it up a few times on their first day: an impressive debut.
Cass and I made an ill fated attempt to find the Chocolate War on DVD down at Asiaworld (yes, it actually is called that!) after a hectic scooter ride downtown in the mid weekend traffic. We had some curry out for tea and a quiet night at home with kitties, but not before buying an oven, ostensibly for all manner of cooking, but really to heat my new found pies. It’s an interesting contraption, quite large enough to bake things and grill others, the Chinese substitute for a wall oven. Anyway, we’re yet to christen it, but it looks quite impressive on our kitchen bench!

Surf again on Sunday, but alas, for Ross in particular, the surf was not offering much in the way of size. It was however, a glorious day: one of those rare ones in Taipei where the air is crisp, a zephyr of wind saw the sun just sneaking out to have a peep every now and then and a perfect temperature. We’re expecting another cold snap this week and ironically, even though we’ve had plenty of rain in the last few weeks, the northern parts of the island will go into water restrictions soon. Apparently the problem is the terrible inefficiency of the dams and the pipes, with 80% of water leaking from pipes on the way to the taps!

Virg’n Mary continue to delight us with their antics, but we’re hoping their affections for us continue after we take them back to the vet for some shots this afternoon. Carl and I are seriously considering buying some short boards to get a bit more zip in the water: a great idea in theory, but perhaps not when our shoulders begin screaming from the extra paddling effort. With this in mind, I’ve started lifting weights again regularly (well, just started again today!) after a long lay-off. That combined with a bit of karate should help shouldn’t it? (!)

Cass got her throat infection on the weekend, but was able to immediately identify and hit it straight away with some antibiotics we’d brought from home for just such an eventuality and she’s feeling pretty good, all things considered. School continues to throw up its fair share of challenges, but somehow, we’re never as stressed as we were back home. The worst day here probably equates to an average one there and we wonder if it perhaps is our new attitude and renewed enthusiasm for our teaching that is the difference. I think we’re just enjoying life!