Gaylord Focker’s nephews are Dom Focker and Randy Focker apparently and the movie had degenerated into slapstick by this point. Nonetheless, we enjoyed this sequel on Friday night after a meal at Chad and Cathy’s place. Chad fired up the BBQ and we had hamburgers and accompaniments. Cass and I took a bottle of red wine and ended up drinking the thing in rapid time, as after we’d had a chat for a while and been joined by Doug and Jerry, there wasn’t a lot of time before we were due at the movies. Doug and Jerry flew out to India the next day for a week of warmer temperatures, massages and pampering. The little chief, Levi, went with Gemma, the amah, to Takashimaya, one of his favorite places apparently!
Carl, Ross and I had arranged to meet at the beach on Saturday morning but just in time for our week’s break, the conditions decided to be most uncooperative, a lazy wash of foam crumbling down little pop gun waves, the power generated barely enough to propel us. We left the water at different stages to congregate in the car park and ended up having a good long chat about allsorts, drinking from Carl’s thermos of tea and eating the curried egg sangas that Cass regularly makes for us. The swell looks like being terribly lame for days to come yet, a possible improvement in conditions forecast for later in the week.
Cass and I had a lazy day yesterday before I decided to take the scooter out to Damshui to investigate some other possibilities for a wave in the future. It’s quite an exciting feeling to venture down windy, muddy tracks, following your nose to the ocean, hoping to find a little inlet or reef that surfers are yet to discover. Our Pillbox wave was just that we thought, but we’ve since found an article by an American who spied a break suspiciously similar in 1967 as he was traveling on a bus from Damshui! The old Damshui road has since been superceded by a new highway, but from his notes we figure that it is probably the same break; discovered, left and rediscovered all these years later. I found a few little coves, but we’ll have to wait for some swell before we really know whether they’ll work or not. I was determined to continue investigating, but a heavy sea mist started to roll in, dank and thick, cutting straight through the jacket I was wearing and chilling to the bone. The same fog is still around this morning, not a zephyr to disturb it as it sits obstinately over a very quiet, pre Chinese New Year city.
Chinese New Year’s Eve is tomorrow and shops and businesses are already closing down. The city becomes quite a different place this week, a balloon that has a slow leak, the air of excitement and bustle slowing ebbing from it as each day passes. It is a family time and many people have already traveled to ancestral homes here in Taiwan or even China.
I have just finished my face to face commitments with another class and have some assignments to finish off, yet have already begun another research course online and done some assignments for it as well. Our next travel will be to Vietnam in March for 4 days for conferences and yet more credit points (I should say “point”!) and we’ve booked in a very flash hotel with views of the Opera House.
