A heat haze has descended on Taipei this weekend and breathing is like standing a little to close to a barbeque and getting that super heated blast of air down your lungs. The breeze has been pretty strong, but unusually for Taiwan it hasn’t had that heavy humidity we’re so used to. If we were home in this heat, I’d expect to hear about bushfires springing up everywhere and energy usage spiking as air conditioners buzzed along day and night.
Ironically, many people were out today observing a quaint religious festival, which we see quite often. On special days of religious significance, people can be seen burning huge wads of fake money in small metal tins, either in the street or on their balconies. In today’s heat, it was particularly bizarre. Small shops and businesses also lay a table on the footpath full of juicy fruits and other fare to appease the gods and, if they’re lucky, get to burn some incense sticks as a parade passes.
We had some first hand experience this morning of one such festival as a cacophony of noise with the occasional booming of what sounded like cannons blasted across the creek from the temple beyond! The musical instruments of choice are very loud drums and a peculiar Chinese instrument, which produces a very unpleasant, strident and discordant noise. When all played in unison with no apparent conducting, it is a terrible sound. Seemingly quite soothing to the local ear, all this noise then travels around the neighbourhood on a convoy of garishly decorated small trucks and quite amazing floats. The floats look like moving versions of the tacky, brightly coloured and lit sideshow attractions at the show back home. They are adorned on top by brightly painted figures on some kind of mechanical wheel, dancing like dervishes atop their traveling platforms.
I got caught up in all these festivities when I went to get some sandwiches for lunch and took all the shots here while waiting for the police to clear the road. After this strange cultural interlude, I escaped back home, pulled the curtains, fired up the air conditioner and settled in to watch the Wets vs. St. George game on telly. It was pretty strange experiencing two completely different worlds on the same day! We followed the heartbreaking Knight’s loss on the internet scoreboard and I rang Mum ½ way through to wish her bon voyage for her trip on Tuesday. We’re still managing to keep up with lots of little local events courtesy of our regular clippings from the Herald sent by Mum, our regular weekend reading rarely disturbed.
Cass and I went to “Bird” Thai restaurant last night and enjoyed our meal immensely. It’s certainly the best Thai food I’ve tasted, except perhaps for the little beach restaurant near Pattaya, Thailand, but I suppose my feelings may have been influenced a touch by the sand between my toes and the vision of the setting sun over crystal waters as I ate! We’ve heard a rumour that Bird might be closing down due to inconsistent trade: we passionately hope it’s just that, a rumour!
Earlier in the day, Ross and Carl and I went in a vain search for a rideable wave at every surf spot we know on the northern tip of the island. We were very frustrated, but had a bit of fun by buying some “pointy hats” at a local stall in Jinshan town to help promote the new site I’ve established, The Pointy Hat Surf Club. It’s an upmarket blogger, with photos of course, but also links. I’ve been practicing my rudimentary HTML skills to enter these links on the site and so far, so good. If you haven’t had a chance to see it, check out the site at http://pointyhat.blogspot.com/ …it’s just for fun. Lots and lots of work coming up this week for both Cass and me, not quite as bad as the fast fading memory of Grammar end-of-year stress, but close enough!