I stopped off on the way home on Friday evening to order some pizzas, arranging for them to be delivered at 6.30pm, about ½ time in the football. This was a real decadence, because unlike the relatively cheap option this is at home, here in Taipei, 2 pizzas delivered costs about $45! As it happened, there was an offer on so it worked out to be about ½ price, so that was a little bonus. Cass and I settled in to watch the re-match of Australia and NZ in the rugby league test and were thoroughly entertained by the whole game. The pizzas dutifully arrived and the pizza boy zoomed off with his special hot box on the back of his scooter.
We were both exceptionally tired on Friday: I had been conferencing with parents for 2 days straight and Cassy had worked a very solid week. Cass has the delights of two days of conferences later this week. As, dare I say it, “veteran” teachers, the parent conference certainly doesn’t hold any fear and trepidation for us like they used to in our early teaching days. Our parents tend to be quite overawed sometimes, and certainly younger than we are. Age and experience is a huge factor here in Asia and the younger teachers tend to cop a lot more parental flak than the older ones which is quite ironic in a way, as I’m sure the youngies are bringing a touch more enthusiasm and newer ideas to the classroom than we are. Anyway, we’ll take it…there have to be some advantages to being a senior member of your profession! The profusion of young blood here, flushed out every few years as the young and adventurous educator looks to different exotic locales and more seek to come here, is quite invigorating in a way. While I’m sure we’d be drifting towards the cynical back home, I’m sure the fresh excitement of some of our colleagues rubs off to a certain extent. While I won’t volunteer for every committee and action group going, we’ll usually get pulled along with some group or initiative or other.
Saturday’s surf was a surging, wind-lashed slop of a thing, the Pillbox, for a very rare occasion, completely failing us. As the annual food fair was also on Saturday, I was unable to park the car back in the underground garage, so I had arranged with Cass that we would take the car to Carrefour, the local big supermarket with an underground car park, to get some heavy and bulky stuff. What a joke eh?! Just when you start believing that life is really pretty simple, you remember that to drive a car to the shopping and get it home is a luxury! Usually of course, shopping means lugging great bags of stuff from the supermarket, through the mahjong park, across the river and through the park home. Anyway, we dutifully loaded up on every conceivable heavy non-perishable item in sight, so we are now able to drink 100 cans of diet coke, stack our closets full of closet camels, wash our clothes for the next 10 years and Virg’n Mary can crap in about 10 tonnes of cat litter! It was great fun! We managed to find a park straight opposite the apartment which was a rare treat, so I decided to wait until Sunday to take it back.
That worked out very well as a matter of fact. Just after I’d gorged down numerous pieces of raisin toast, the phone rang with Carl asking if I wanted to go and look at the surf. I agreed to pick him up in 10 minutes and we did the trek across to Jinshan, Rocket et al. The most notable part of the trip was to emerge from the Green Bay tunnels to find 37 guys out at a very weak looking break, most fully kitted up in full suits. The weather has got a touch chilly here lately, but really!
We were very frustrated and returned without even getting wet. This was fortuitous in a way as I was still able to make a luncheon date with Cassy. We went to the Moroccan restaurant and ate a superb meal, which I won’t describe, because I’m sure the description is elsewhere on these pages. Suffice to say, we had a magnificent meal and full as the last bus, we returned to watch Australia beat the Irish in a hybrid international rules AFL type game and it was very entertaining.
You have read of wedding photos on the beach here before, often taken before the big day, with brides dragging their dresses through the shallows and mud. I took this picture as we emerged from a surf one afternoon. The fire is a giant pile of fake money, burnt for good luck by the happy couple. Part of the wedding party can be seen in the background and the fire is lit against the famous Pillbox from which we named our secret surf spot.Other photos are action from 3rd grade community games and the sad sight of all the boys out at Green Bay with no waves.