On Tuesday night we scootered off to the Taipei Arts precinct to meet Cassy’s cousin, Ashley for dinner. We met him at his hotel and chaperoned him to the Café Onion for dinner and we enjoyed a tasty dinner and a great chat about family, home, travel and our respective lives in general. Ashley seemed pleased to be able to have a night where he could relax and not worry about everything he said, as he is usually a guest of business contacts during his visits. He certainly has some whirlwind trips: at time of writing, he’s visited another 3 countries with 3 to go! It was great to catch up with him, he’s great company and we enjoyed a little slice of decadence on a “school night”!!
There are few things more frustrating than to dash out of work on a Friday afternoon, ready for a quick surf, fly home and get the boards on, beat a few lights, take any number of short cuts and back roads up to the top of the hill and then get caught behind one of the habitual slow crawling traffic criminals we often encounter on the windy Yangminshan road. We eventually got to the beach of course yet the massive swells battering the coastline (in our dreams) had sadly dissipated while we were stuck behind those slow coaches. We had a refreshing break and caught a few little tiddlers, reminding me of the comp I’ve started at school amongst the small surfing set. Inspired by some nut recently surfing a 60 footer in Hawaii, we are going to try to surf the world’s smallest wave instead! Documentary and pictorial evidence are essential, and early entries suggest that 6” might be a good starting point…..you can see how delirious we’re becoming in this last 5 weeks of school! Carl, Ross and I arranged to meet at the bar across from the Green at 8.30, so I picked Carl up on the scooter and we had a few games of pool and some relaxing "sherbets", before heading home before the witching hour.
Saturday was set aside for Cass to go downtown with her friend to the mysterious jeweler who has a shop in a back lane and only lets you in after you stand on his doorstep setting off an alarm. Apparently this was a great success and he quoted Cass the exact amount of money she had set aside for the setting of her stones, so that seemed to be an omen of sorts (of what, I’m not too sure!). She can pick them up in two weeks so she’s quite excited about the whole deal. I lazed around and did some book reading and cat amusing and then watched the football and listened to the patchy performance of the Knights on the internet. Speaking of which, apparently our seats at the football in the new concourse are ticketiboo after Chris and Val made a call just before they headed off to the game on Saturday evening.
We made a foray into the flash hotel part of downtown on Saturday night to the “G’day Café” situated in a tiny side street. Belying its name, it was not staffed by Aussies or serve “Australian” food, but rather the Filipino waitresses and cooks produced some scrumptious Mexican meals. It was cheap and super delicious and we’ll be heading back there for sure.
Sunday’s surf conditions were tailor made for an attempt at the aforementioned record, but apart from that, would only attract the lake lover. Ross couldn’t stay away, but I let him trundle over the mountain with Ains for company, as I couldn’t see the possibility of catching anything except a sunburn and a case of the grumpies. Cass and I headed back down to the pictures after a late breakfast to see Tarantino’s Kill Bill 2. Whilst not a comic book splatter fest like the first one, we both enjoyed the character development and flashbacks and forwards of this film and the homage paid to 70s martial arts films and others. It was very enjoyable and we had a tasty lunch at the section 2 version of Curry Champ before heading back to watch the Bulldogs beat the Broncos (always sweet to see those Queenslanders go down!)
Mum had brought a cake tin over for Cass during the Spring Break, because the tins here (at only one store mind you) were either too tall, too big, too small, or had some other imperceptible problem not immediately apparent to a cake baker extraordinaire like myself. Anyway, Cass had sought out all the necessary ingredients at about 3 different places and used our little baby benchtop oven to bake the most mouth-watering apple cake! It was indistinguishable from her efforts at home so she was very chuffed with the result. The only slight negative to all this was that 3 pieces needed to be taken to school for her team which I decided was a far too generous gesture.....what? only half a cake for me?!
At work today we heard that the flash new Warner Village cinema complex opened over the weekend just up the road from us (near the Green Bar), so that’ll be something to check out soon.
I have to speak to 80 teachers from local primary schools for an hour on Wednesday afternoon, telling them how we run the ESL program here at Taipei American School. I’ve got the data projector and the laptop booked and the PowerPoint ready to go, so if my crapping on fails, technology will hopefully come to the rescue. Cass is teaching the American Civil War at present, so be sure to quiz her about it when you next see her: she knows it all (!)
I’ll write again in a week….bet you can’t say the same thing!!!!
