Dave Bob Peter and Josh

There has been some stifling heat this week, that real take your breath away stuff that just forces you back into some air conditioning. We have been artificially cooled each day and night this week, at work and home. Combined with this heat, there has been a peculiar huge intense tropical downpour each day. This has been most curious, as it has occurred whenever we decided we were going to walk or bike to or from school each day! We tried to fool the storm a few times by leaving at different times but it still got us!

Virg’n Mary have even enjoyed the air conditioner this week, quite unusual for them, as they will seek out the hottest parts of the house in which to sleep and relax. The surf has remained quite the millpond and we have not even ventured over. There is the slight promise of a typhoon way off the coast towards the end of the week, so we’re all pinning our hopes on this storm to blow a little bit of swell our way: we don’t care how stormy/rainy it is, anything would be better than the flat conditions we’ve had now for 3 weeks. Yes, three weeks already and at some times it feels like months. Mum sent some clippings which arrived in record time from Australia so that last weekend, we enjoyed clippings from just the Saturday before. We read some more of these this weekend and they were especially enjoyable this morning as Cass cooked pancakes for breakfast! What a great treat that was, washed down with some strong coffee. We went to the pictures again today, as the weather was so enervating as to preclude any other activity. We saw “Redeye” which was quite a competent thriller, but we found it a little formulaic and not great in comparison with the funny “Wedding Crashers” from last week. We grabbed a quick takeaway lunch and settled in to watch the football between the Eels and the Raiders this afternoon. We’re off to one of our favourite restaurants, “Bird”, tonight, a Thai restaurant just up the way that serves delicious and authentic Thai fare. It’s close, so we think we’ll be able to make it there and back without getting heat stroke; I’m only half joking, it is psycho hot!

I had a fairly quiet day on Saturday after more than a few beers on Friday afternoon/night. I started in the afternoon with Ross and Gurecki just for a few quiet ones, but we ended up heading to the Green Bar after a great time on the terrace at Wendel’s bakery. I’ve included a few shots of the festivities…there were lots of our friends out and about, so plenty of encouragement to stay and have “just one more”. Suffice to say that Saturday was very quiet indeed and Cass popped in and out a few times while I enjoyed some time on the lounge in front of the telly!

Work will be busy, especially early this week as I prepare and present the ESL information night. I’m not at all nervous about this, which could be a worrying sign (!). I’m still teaching a full load while doing my other duties, and keep getting told that the issue will be resolved soon. I would much prefer if I were given some time off in form of a sub, rather than extra money, which is another possibility.

Carl and family got a dog this week! They’ve been interested for some time, but were worried about the usual things: apartment living, what to do in the big break etc. She’s a beautiful dog, a retriever of some type, but unfortunately, has got into some very bad habits while living with other families. She tends to ignore the litter tray and just relieve herself wherever she likes! As you can imagine, some hard and fast training has to occur and I think Hiroko has been at her wits end during the day. Carl is doing his best when he gets home and I’m sure they’ll have “Chisel” trained before you know it.

While still drifting in and out of a “return to reality” mood, I’m starting to see a little light at the end of the tunnel. What has exacerbated this feeling is the fact that I’m teaching a full load and still expected to do my administrative duties. It’s a hard ask at the start of the year in particular. I’m also working with 3 new teachers this year, who all are adapting to my presence in their room with varying degrees of stress, relaxation or trepidation! I’ve got so used to working with Blair and Chad over the years and I miss that easy rapport we shared. Belinda, John and Gerri will be just fine, but we all need to get used to each other and the way we each work. All the teachers amongst my readers will understand the daunting prospect of another teacher teaming with you, same room, same time. In contrast, Cassy is reveling in having her partner, Kristin, back with her. Kristin is just so delightful; she thanks Cassy at regular intervals for the work she does and the easy working relationship they have developed. Cassy’s classes are shaping up very nicely too and she was really pleased to see that Carl’s youngest boy, Sean, is in one of her classes. She taught Steven a couple of years ago. She also has a student who bears an uncanny resemblance to the “Bride of Chucky” who is quite precocious and demanding, but I’m sure she’ll deal with her in the appropriate manner!

I have been doing some boxing training here with Ross the past fortnight, using the extra gloves, wraps and focus pads that I brought from home. We are using a heavy bag that Aaron the pool guy had secreted away in his storeroom, until we get a better one. We string it up on a chin-up bar in the corridor outside the weight room, but it’s a cramped area and we have to take it down each day. Clarky has given me the OK to hang a heavy bag in the weight room, so I’ve been busy finding a good bag locally this week. I can’t find a speedball, which is a bit frustrating, but I’ll keep searching. Hopefully we’ll get properly set up in the next few weeks. Our new Aussie, Josh, who works on the 5th grade team with Ross, has even begun a new blog calling it the Pointy Hat boxing club, but I don’t know what he thinks he’ll post on there!

The surf has been as flat as my mood this week and all the Pointy Hat surfers have been very frustrated. I’ve resorted to posting photos that members took when they were home and also world’s smallest wave entries, but that has been about all. We were hoping for something today, but the tragic scenes that greeted us via web cam photo this morning were even worse than we expected.

Cassy had an interesting day yesterday when she traveled downtown on the MRT with 1 of her book club friends, Kathy and another woman from school, Carol, to check out some upmarket home ware and lifestyle stores. She came back most impressed with them all, some Swedish inspired and one specializing in exquisite Chinese antiques and other objet d’art where a sales assistant accompanied them around the store explaining each item if needed. She bought a small mat for the cat’s room and a set of 4 hand made glasses which are simply decorated and very stylish. We had a scrumptious meal at the Moroccan restaurant here in Tienmu last night and invited Carl, Hiroko and the boys. They hadn’t been there before and they were most impressed. It is swathed in silk and Moroccan curios inside, dimly lit and the food, in Tajine ovens, skewers and cous cous can transport you away from Taipei. Sitting there with our friends, we could have been anywhere in the world. We’re off to the pictures later this morning to see “Wedding Crashers” with Owen Wilson. Anything I’ve seen him in has been hilarious, so it might be just the tonic! We’ll come home to catch the big NRL game between the Saints and the Eels and I might try and drag myself into the weight room for an hour or so after that, seeing as I haven’t done one active thing all weekend. I’ve included a photo that Lewy took last week after he presented me and Ross and Gurecki (back to camera in horse impression!) with Delbridge Racing caps. He is a part owner in a number of horses back home and we share his passion to a point. (Just back from the pictures…it WAS hilarious!)

Now Monday afternoon and this short addendum. The software won’t load photos to the web so I’ve been delaying this post. It may end up being unaccompanied. We had a very civilized afternoon when a tropical storm, which just wouldn’t stop, thwarted our shopping plans, so we took the car! Underground parking, trolleys etc…we felt most spoilt. Taking advantage of the car, we bought mega packs of everything and what seemed like a thousand kilos of cat litter. I still had to take the car back to school and ride the scooter through the downpour, but it was quite the adventure!

the isolation 

the baths 

the wide brown land


It’s quite a wondrous thing to live in two different worlds. After a few days where our equilibrium was more than a little unsettled, everything is just settling down gently and those feelings of dislocation are subsiding again. We arrived to find two very healthy cats, feeling neglected and very sooky and needy. School has started in a whirlwind and the kids don’t even arrive until tomorrow!

What a great trip back we had. Newcastle is such a rare gem and it is unappreciated by the majority of Novocastrians. It has a provincial charm that I was never fully aware of before, masked by its leaders continually puffing out their chests and declaring it a “city” and demanding all those big city services. It is such an enjoyable mix of town and city, you almost wish you could freeze it in time: we don’t want it getting too big or too sophisticated. That gorgeous harbour and sparkling beaches…we could walk beside them and sit beside them and gaze all day long (in fact we did on many occasions!). Those cafes and restaurants vying to be the next trendy thing all serving up scrumptious meals and coffees. The open space and the parks, gardens and fields; even the front yards. People here would think they’d died and gone to heaven. The wine, the libraries, the galleries, the roads, the people speaking English, the vistas. It is underrated by those who live there, no doubt at all about that.

We’re still a little overwhelmed by how quickly we’re “back”, holiday slowly drifting into a warm fuzzy memory as work picks up a dizzying pace.

That 1st bit was written on Wednesday night and it’s now Saturday afternoon. We’ve had a few surfs already and the pointy hat site has been updated a couple of times this week. I was quite euphoric yesterday afternoon, getting a really quick, but full cover tube out at the rocket. All the other boys saw it which was even better…..little harder to believe these stories if you’re just telling them without eveidence! Today we went again but it was fairly small, so Ross and I came back early. Cass and I have just done the weekly shopping and remember what a frustrating experience this can be sometimes. Now, to not have any mince is a fairly common occurrence and this happened again today. When you realize that there is no margarine anywhere in the supermarket, you start losing it a little, but even we couldn’t believe the lack of carrots! It just means that we’ll have to get this stuff somewhere else through the week. I had already made the pilgrimage to the other big store nearby to buy rolls of toilet paper, as our supermarket doesn’t stock them either.

So, I’m feeling frustrated and missing the ease of living at home. It’s hard to make yourself understood, you can’t buy what you need and to make matters worse, the weather is boiling hot and drippingly humid. I suppose it doesn’t help that work seems just that little bit harder to cope with this year: maybe we’ve had too good a holiday.
I’m sure we’ll feel a little better soon: Cass actually feels OK now, I’ve just allowed myself to wallow in a little tizzy fit of depression for a while…no doubt I’ll snap out of it in a couple of days.
Apart from all the people, I’ve included a few shots of some things we’ll really miss as well.

merewether 

view from the unit