Ross and Ains and light sticks
Here's an innovation! We're able to post some image files to the blog now, so what better time than a few shots of the festivities here last night in Taipei. As reported in the last blog we made our way to see Elton John down at Yuanshan football stadium and were treated to a fantastic concert Taipei style. We were inserted into the stadium surrounds in an almost surgical fashion by the ever-efficient MRT and endured a snaking queue for only 30 minutes or so as just one entrance was open. The rain was alternating between the finest of mists and occasional heavy dumps and we were delighted to find that, just by chance, the section we had been allocated was the only one with a roof. While the fancy pants who paid $300 a ticket got soaked to the skin we were high and dry, reveling in an excellent view of stage and screen. Big Elton caused a real stir here by offending nearly everyone when he got off the plane to be met by an aggressive media scrum by letting fly with a string of expletives. He apologized to the audience after the first couple of songs.
EJ was the true professional and even though he struggled a bit with the upper registers of some songs, his backup singers filled the breach magnificently. He played all the hits and had even the usually sedate Taipei crowd up singin' and dancin' to Saturday Night and Crocodile Rock in the second hour. When he was just starting the final chorus to Rocket Man a low flying passenger jet thundered straight above the stadium as others had done with frequency throughout the show. He had a good laugh about that before continuing. Chad had smuggled in what seemed like about 100 beers and kept rolling them across to Ross and me, getting us pretty primed up and waving our amazing light sticks with 5 different pulse settings! Only in Taipei.
The whole night was quite surreal. We were sitting high in the stands of an ornate soccer stadium of faded glory and the fiery glow of the Grand Palace hotel blinked above the stands. Passenger jets were screaming across a night sky lit by thousands of bustling commuters' cars and neon draped shop fronts. Away and beyond Elton's stage we could see kanji emblazoned buildings and within the stadium a great sea of bodies and faces, with what seemed like every foreigner in Taipei joining the locals in what was a unique spectacular. We were whisked away home again by the MRT and walked the short trip home, only 15 minutes between the last strains of song and the key unlocking the door. We both felt pretty wasted at school today, me especially (I don't know if the beers had anything to do with that!) and we're looking forward to our 4 day break.