two on board 

shipping coals to Newcastle?

You’d think that 4 days would be enough to re-charge the batteries and be ready to face just three more weeks wouldn’t you? Well the reality is not quite that for me as the piercing early morning cries of Virg’n Mary manage to wake me up at 6.30 am no matter what time I go to bed. For some reason the exact note necessary to wrench me from a deep sleep or a REM moment can be perfectly vocalized by our two little furry companions. Apart from that one small drawback, we’ve had a great 4-day break.

On Thursday, Chad and Cathy decided to lay low this year, so we didn’t head to their place for Thanksgiving lunch. In stead, we had our usual ponderous weekend breakfast, quite decadent for a Thursday I decided (!), and raced down to the Shin Shin for a showing of “Cellular”. It was quite entertaining and it was refreshing to see a bit of new talent on the screen doing a good job, instead of dusting off Brad, Tom (Cruise or Hanks, take your pick) or some other ubiquitous Hollywood hero for another outing. As it was a weekday and early, we finally got in to our favored restaurant, Grazie, down there and enjoyed some wood fired pizzas and good coffee. We’d had many disappointments here, preferring not to queue up to get in on the weekend: it kind of takes all the pleasure away, don’t you think?
We then scootered down to the computer market, where I haggled just a bit and bought myself a new toy: a 20gb iPod! Suffice to say, the remainder of the day (and come to think of it, right up to now, pretty much!) was occupied charging pods, downloading songs, reading instructions etc. Cass, of course, is absolutely over the moon with this purchase and can see how I just HAD to have it and that it is, in fact, a necessity of life. She has willingly embraced all the hi-tech features of the pod and is just as ecstatic with it as I am (oh, I’ve just woken from a pleasant dream I was having). I do think, in all seriousness that Cassy has seen it is a very clever machine although I don’t know if she’s quite the right love in her heart!

Friday morning saw Ross and I attempt the great eastern seaboard run, leaving at 6am to link up with the aforementioned labyrinth of link ramps to expressway 1 before hurtling down there and taking a few fancy shortcuts which we worked out from the map to arrive bright, early and refreshed at the famed east coast beach of Dashi, or Honeymoon Bay. As you can probably guess, it didn’t quite work out the way we had planned! The expressway was great, but we got lost a couple of times finding the shortcut and when we did, the little line on the map didn’t quite match the narrow winding road up an amazingly tall mountain, mist and rain threatening our vision of precipitous cliffs and edges dropping away into murky valleys. After we got through this, we encountered a coast “highway” full of lumbering trucks and road gangs holding up the traffic. However, two hours later we arrived I the tiny town to gat our first glimpse of Dashi waves through heavy sea mist. We admired the local’s determination in always crossing the jagged rocky shoreline to enter the surf and managed to get a few little nicks and knocks on our way out. The swell was pretty solid and big booming lefts were pealing away in front of a little temple before closing out and smashing onto a shoreline of ugly big boulders. We were both a little tentative but managed to get a few waves before some near death experiences with the rocks and a deep chill brought on by our lack of wetsuits saw us call it a day. When we got out, we looked about 400 metres further down the coast to see a familiar sight that was just starting to peek through the lifting haze: is that the bridge and waves and black sandy beach we can see on the web cam? We had been surfing the wrong spot! After all that travel, we just had to go out again in the “real thing” so after stuffing our boards through windows and boot we chugged down the road to the main beach. It was pretty windswept and a howling offshore not only didn’t seem to smooth the water, but succeeded in blinding us with spray with every wave we took off on. After both entering the beginning stages of hypothermia, we decided to call it a day and an even longer drive home dumped us back in Tienmu at 3pm.

Cass went out for lunch to Pizza Rialto with Kristin and her baby on Friday afternoon and they did some minor clothes shopping on the way back. From all reports the company was great, the food delicious and the purchases excellent. Cass even minded a baby for a little while and enjoyed the experience! Ross and I were to meet again on Saturday to go to the Pillbox, which we did and we had a couple of hours of fair quality surf on Saturday afternoon. We arranged to meet later at the Indian round the corner for tea and we had a great dinner and a few beers. Our boss at school, Mark, was also there with his wife and some friends and we got the greatest surprise when we left: he had paid our bill! He really is just an amazing person, it really made our night. Ross and Ains came back for coffee and while Ross and I played with iPods etc, Cass and Ainsley had a good chat. We didn’t get to bed till quite late, so the piercing cries of the kitties were not appreciated this morning. We had a really lazy day today, I was loading more CDs onto the iPod and burning my Seinfeld DVDs and pausing to watch the Aussies whip the Poms in the league and read a few Herald clippings and my book. Using the royal “we” there was a bit of a mistake: Cass spent a lot of time marking papers!
Anyway, I’m falling asleep writing this as you probably are reading…..a bit of a report this one! See you in three weeks!!!

new toy 

sculpted trees 

Beautiful young women in full tizzy wedding gowns, heavily made up, layers of silk and lace and tulle. Their fiancées are similarly attired in white 3-piece suits, the couples flanked by a shutter of photographers and attendants. This might be a typical scene on the weekend in one of many reception centers around town, but totally incongruous on a wind swept rocky inlet just this side of the Damshui River. The Pillbox, our secret surfing spot of sorts, is adjacent to a coastline landfill and a sloshing pig farm, adding to the ambiance a herd of wild goats eats every piece of foliage in sight. It’s hard to describe the associated odours, but suffice to say, when the wind is blowing offshore, the waves look great but only the level of pungency varies the assault on our nostrils.
It is on this beach that we often encounter said betrothed and parties, shyly acknowledging our presence with a smile and a wave. I’m sure the subsequent photos look sublime: the odours not wafting from their snapshot prison and the dull half light from smog and sunset adding to a smoky romanticism suitable to the soon to be wed’s shots. The bride and groom to be frolic in the lapping shore waves for the benefit of the photographer, their finery being muddied and saturated from shin down. I assume it is all dry cleaned again for the big day, which can be weeks away. When the newlyweds arrive at their reception, the practice is to have a full album of “romance shots” for their guests to choose from, hence the pre wedding photo madness.

Ross and I had a surf which he rated as among the “worst five surfs I’ve ever had” on Friday evening. The surf was small, the wind was howling and a cold snap in the wind and water sent our extremities numb in about 15 minutes. We had a slightly better effort today, heading to the Rocket, but spoiled somewhat by the 18 other guys who joined us. Blown out everywhere else, our other spot was invaded by first timers who saw us from the highway as they scoured the coast for rideable spots. It was just too crazy; normally, we have the spot to ourselves and the oft-mentioned Taiwanese surf madness was in full swing by the time we gave up and left them to it. Poor Ross is a bit glum this weekend after the Aussies trumped the NZ netballers, our cricketers smacked the Black Caps and even the Pommies beat them in the league!

Cass and I had an intriguing Saturday afternoon. I had read that Chiang Kai Shek’s summer residence and garden was the 2nd rated spot for tourism in Taipei and, as we hadn’t been, and it was just a short scooter ride from home, I decided that we must check it out. Apart from the very tactile granite insects we found (see photos), to say that it was disappointing is one of the biggest understatements of all time! Cass disagrees with me here: she thinks it was so bizarre that it was actually a bit of a hoot!!
As we wandered through the beautifully cared for gardens we came to realize that all the other Taiwanese parks and gardens we had visited were different versions of the same horrible design and kitsch inspiration, but this was the grand daddy of them all! The electric blue pebbles in the western garden, the ugly bronze statue in a strange little fountain and the aberrant designs of each successive garden were a shock to body and soul. It just could have been so beautiful: instead, hordes of tranquility seeking Taiwanese crowded each pathway through a shocking maze of kitsch splendour. Piped music of James Taylor wafted from the garden’s speakers adding to the overall surreal and ghastly effect. To top it all off, we trekked up what seemed like 5000 steps to view the signposted “Buddha Heart Pavilion”, but when we arrived the view was obscured by trees and the pavilion looked like a World War One air-raid shelter painted white with funny looking Chinese scrolls attached to it. The highlight of the climb was spying a rubbish bin disguised inside a fiberglass “boulder”…maybe it fooled the little kiddies who were shortsighted! Oh well, put that one down to experience!

We’ve got a short week coming up due to Thanksgiving, another slightly mysterious holiday for us, but one which we’re happy to take. I think Chad is going to invite us around on Thursday for lunch, a lovely tradition that they’ve kept with us: amazingly this will be the 4th year that we’ve done this! It’s very generous of them, especially with Cathy pregnant and the “Little Chief” Levi to care of, not to mention that they have family of their own here now: Cathy’s parents Doug and Jerry working at the school and doting on the Little Chief every chance they get. I’m due to give a presentation to the lower school parents this Wednesday and gave a talk to 50 visiting teachers from a local school last week, which I think went very well. Cass is going bowling with her grade 8s this Wednesday and looking forward to our long weekend. Just think, we’ll be home in less than a month!

this tree was quite beautiful 

granite insects were cool 

sunset over tienmu

Our secret spot, the Pillbox delivered some decidedly powerful little waves on Friday afternoon and although the current seemed intent on sweeping us down to the Damshui river mouth, if we stayed on the peak, we could pick up quite a few perfectly shaped, fast left-handers. Saturday proved to be a little more problematic, with the high tide delivering a dead flat pool of surface shimmery yet murky water, not even disturbed by the matrix of jagged rocks that we knew lurked just below the surface. That Pillbox is a bizarre place. Other surfers never disturb us; yet the odd local fisherman will occasionally wander down to throw a line in. The people who we do see very often lately are fully dressed brides and grooms with an entourage of photographers to take their “pre-wedding” snaps: this is great fun for us and a funny story that I’ll keep for another time. Undeterred, we kept going round the coast to Baishawan, where we decided we would stay. Restaurants, just round the bend had an interesting right, but the seven people crowded on the one workable break were a little off-putting. Ross, Carl and I enjoyed an hour or so of good waves before conditions deteriorated to the point that Cassy’s curried egg sangas and Carl’s thermos of tea seemed much more inviting. Picture below sees Carl and Ross relaxing in the car park after the surf.

Even though we fly by most of the scenery, it is often quite beautiful, ugly, amusing or strange, I suppose depending on the mood one is in. Once our traditional lane changing skip and hop through the bottleneck out of Damshui is finished, if we look beyond the chaos on the road to the hills beyond, a quite calming vista can be seen, especially on clear sunny days, which we’ve had all week long. Light and shade on verdant hills are quite pretty and the mountains rise away from the flat coastal strip so sharply that it doesn’t surprise to hear of landslips and slides in typhoon weather. Every now and then when cresting the brow of a hill, you can see glimpses of the same greenery, stretching away to a glistening sea and can often imagine you are somewhere else: the Caribbean, Bali, Queensland perhaps? I might exaggerate a little, but it’s always fun to look beyond the immediate chaos of buzzing scooters, beetle nut influenced blue truck drivers and the car pilots who all follow that most simple of Taiwanese road rules: if it’s not in front of you it doesn’t exist. On the way back on Saturday, I was heartened to see that the latest apartment block development overlooking the Damshui river is going to bring the Opera House over for the residents to view in the near distance. It’s incredible what they can do these days isn’t it?!(See photo below)
The third photo (above) is of a side of Taipei that’s not that famous. I snapped this shot of a beautiful sunset from our verandah at dusk. The buildings in the foreground just don’t look so bad when they have such a backdrop and when they’re shrouded in a dusty half-light. OK, they’re still pretty horrendous, I’ll admit!

Sunday was a very pleasant day for us. As usual we enjoyed a decadently late and delicious breakfast accompanied by our Herald clippings (thanks, as always Mum!) before lazing around and avoiding our “world lifeline” the internet, as we were in a self imposed media blackout to escape the Aus/Great Britain football score, as it would be repeated later. We wandered down to the new premises of Wendel’s bakery and restaurant and had a tasty lunch in plush and comfortable surrounds. The sun was beating in from the south (we’re in the northern hemisphere!) so we sat inside avoiding the heat and enjoying the ambiance of light and freshness it seemed to bring, seemingly cutting a swathe through the usual pall of smog that seems to descend and not lift for days on end at other times. Our lunch was scrumptious and takeaway cakes were just the finish to our afternoon. Shame those Pommies spoiled the party though!! That will do for now; I think I will write about the seaside brides next week, hopefully you’ll find it as amusing as I do!

opera house view?? 

the boys 

kathy, carol, danielle and cassy

We were piloting the car along a 10 lane superhighway way, way up above the Sunday afternoon snarl of Taipei’s inner-city streets, similar transport veins snaked and slewed below and around us and we had no idea how to get off! This was the culmination of an incredibly frustrating search for surf on Sunday that saw us driving for the best part of 5 hours, first on our usual mountain roads to Jinshan before we fought our way northeast on the coastal highway chasing an (elusive) exotic surf. Not satisfied with the ever growing cult crowd which had established itself on the two workable peaks at Jinshan, kamikaze surfers threatening to break the ankles of all who fell anywhere near their erratic novice trajectory on a wave, we headed off for some uncrowded waves. Every beach and cove and rocky inlet we spied signaled a further deterioration in surf size and quality, but on we traveled, hoping against hope that things would improve. We reached the Fulong beach only to discover not only unsurfable tiny slop, but also guards preventing entry to the water, as it was “too dangerous”!
We decided to brave the main expressway back to Taipei and everything went smoothly until we found ourselves hundreds of feet in the air, traveling into downtown Taipei away from our little mountainside suburb, great juggernauts shaking our car as they hurtled by and every exit looking more confusing than the last. We took any exit and eventually corkscrewed our way to ground level before we braved the scooters and cars and ubiquitous traffic lights for a slow crawl home.

Cass and I had a quite different experience in the evening when we decided to walk to a nearby steakhouse for tea. When we neared, it was obvious that Taipei’s latest love affair with Japanese Shabu Shabu had consumed another victim: this time, the “My Home” steak outlet that we had visited many times before. It was early and we were not yet starving, so we retraced our steps to the nearest gleaming MRT station. It always strikes me as so incongruous that the overly hectic, noisy and dirty streets with their cacophony of sound and at times, pungent bouquets wafting up from roadside drains can be replaced in a few short steps with a calm, fastidiously and regularly cleansed train station, with its “Logan’s Run” voiceovers and purring trains, picking the masses up to gently pat them off again a few stops down the line. Of course, upon exiting, the same street sensations come back again, maybe even intensified on the outskirts of the Shilin night market precinct with its associated lights, action and traffic and pedestrian mayhem. We really enjoyed the experience and both commented how long it had been since we’d done just the simple things like this: surely we haven’t become “Taipei blasé”?! Dinner was great at the other branch of My Home Steak and we were full as the last train to Damshui by the time we lumbered back up the street to the train station. Yuan Yuan records provided us with Kill Bill I on DVD for just 329NT$, so we were well pleased. In fact, old eagle eyed Cass had spied a 1000NT$ note gently shooshing in the grate at the end of an escalator at Takashimaya earlier in the day, so after a brief unproductive search for an owner, she pocketed it and this paid for our night out.

As just mentioned, Cassy had spent some time looking at some beautiful things at her leisure, without me pestering her to move on, at Takashimaya earlier on Sunday. She was blown away by the new Jason’s supermarket and I thought shed did really well to make it out of there with just a pack of John West smoked oysters. I never thought I’d see the day when Cassy would be flummoxed by an overly stimulating array of goods in a shop: Taipei must have lowered her expectations! She did, however, manage to get a book for the birthday of her colleague, Kristin’s 1 year old child, which ostensibly at least was the main purpose for her visit, as she is going up for a little birthday afternoon tea tomorrow afternoon.

Cassy’s book club night went very well indeed and although she thought everything tasted like cardboard, I was able to dissuade her of this thought after tasting the mouth-watering Pavlova slice which she had saved for me. Sorry Valerie, it was her best yet and all in a tiny desktop oven! (See photos of the group above and below) All the visitors made many encouraging comments about our unit, most often about the photos we have framed on nearly all the walls now; watch out Sue, you might even get a commission from Taipei from a complete stranger!
In a couple of days, it will be this Blog’s second birthday: I’m so sorry I didn’t start it earlier….I can’t imagine what bizarre reactions I may have had to things 18 months before I started writing about them. Over 100 pages, mostly done when procrastinating about marking, commenting or doing various uni work……..I’d best keep up the good work then!

By the way, for better quality pictures, the photos here can be opened and expanded in another window: double click on photo for first expansion, then wait for expansion icon to appear bottom right of photo and click on this. To return to blog, just hit the "Back" button.

kristin, cassy, carol and danielle