We went out for a surf on Friday afternoon to wash away the parent conferences from the past two days. The Pillbox was small but pleasant and was just the tonic for an early Friday surf. The car was locked in the school’s garage on Saturday as the Spring Fair extravaganza played itself out for another year. In my opinion, the school campus was a great place to avoid on Saturday. We’ve had a great weekend, kick started by the awesome Newcastle Knights! How good are those Knights going? Without wanting to put a hex on them, we’ve already looked up the grand final dates and I’ve already decided to line up for tickets when they go on sale when we’re back. Let’s hope we’re winging our way home again for that first weekend in October!

We went and saw “The Inside Man” at the movies on Saturday afternoon and thoroughly enjoyed it, partly I think because we didn’t know anything about it except for the actors before we went. That’s one bonus of living in a Chinese language environment: unless you actively seek the information out, you’d never know about all sorts of stuff. We went on the reputation of Clive Owen, Denzel and Jodie Foster as well as the directorial skills of Spike lee and loved it: there’s nothing like a good heist movie.
We followed that up by going to the Tienmu East Rd Thai restaurant that has been open for a while, but we’ve never been to. The Orchid and the Elephant had a pleasing ambiance and some flavour filled, authentic Thai food: just like being back on the beach at Ban Chang!

We had our now traditional big brekky of pancakes and proper coffees and Herald clippings courtesy of Mum and spent a looonng time doing it! Ross and I then went to the surf at the activity centre at Jinshan and had an unreal surf: some of the best rides I’ve had in Taiwan. I bit the bullet and did myself as Pointy of the Month on the Pointyhat site, partly to encourage others to volunteer: I quite enjoyed the experience actually; it was fun to think about the answers to some unusual questions.

Cass and I are both pleased to see the Aussie dollar take a long awaited dip. It will be good for the Aussie exporters and also the Aussie diaspora as they send money home: we’ll try to send some this week to take advantage. Just a three-day week coming up: lots of folk off to the EARCOS conference in Manila on Thursday and Friday. We opted out after going to Vietnam last year, so we’ll have stuff to do but no kids at the end of the week. Happy Days!

Photos this week: Cass went to the zoo with her Yr 8s on Friday and took this shot: wouldn't you love to have this much energy?! Dave on a big boomin' left on Sunday and Joey hoisting the premiership trophy... sign of things to come?

Bit lazy this week so I’m not writing anything much.
Surfed on Friday, drank VBs out at Jinshan: was a great experience. Ross and I unwisely decided to continue drinking beers down at the Green Bar till all hours. Carl was more sensible and went home. Subsequently, Saturday was a loungin’ day. Sunday we did our usual super brekky of pancakes, Herald clippings and our new coffee machine coffee. Listened to the clowns on 2GB through the net on Sat and Sun, watched both games of NRL and a bit of Super 14.
Cassy wrote most of her reports today and did dance duty on Friday night.
Cassy has just got back from a “meet the visiting author” drinks and nibblies and has come in with stories of luscious Margaret River wine and funny little authors.
We’re about to tuck into some Tandoori fish, eggplant concoction, butter chicken and paneer makhani from Café India just round the corner. Just for a laugh, check them out and have a look at the big boomers on pointyhat. See ya!P.S. got a haircut yesterday…the usual…sorry Mum!

We’ve had a real “Aussiefest” lately. On Friday night we had South Australia’s own Vilis pies and pasties for tea and washed them down with a robust drop of Barossa’s finest shiraz in the form of a 2001 Yalumba. We listened to the continuous call team yesterday as they broadcast the entire Knights-Eels game live and we jumped around the lounge room hear in time with the pulsing roar we could hear from Energy Australia stadium as the Knights when in to score; it’s pretty surreal sometimes as we look out over our Chinese neighbours sedately playing tennis at the courts below and look out across the river to the temple opposite as we listen to the crowd screaming in Newcastle. A strange, dislocated but exciting feeling.

We’ve continued our torrent hunt from Australia and had the misfortune to download an episode of Dancing with the Stars. The horribly annoying Darryl Somers at his very worst: surely we couldn’t be seeing this? I’ve read that this is one of the most popular shows in Australia..but our first taste of this show will be our last I’m afraid! One show we continue to enjoy is the new Chaser ..it’s more like it.

We had a great lunch out yesterday, again at Wendel’s and the photos for this week are taken there. I had a surf on Thursday afternoon on the afternoon in between two of the most boring days of “professional development” I have ever experienced. Cassy, luckily, had no formal component scheduled and was able to get lots of practical stuff done with her team. I, on the other hand, endured another self-proclaimed guru, this time on the topic of guided reading. As I listened to the droning presentation, I wondered to myself how anyone could not know what this woman was preaching about and decided that if they didn’t know, they never should have been hired in the first place. I wondered, not for the first time, about this strange system of “experts” that the Americans seem to gushingly support: they feed on each other to the extent that they start believing their own hyperbole. Anyway, I found this one, as I’ve found most of the others, to be lacking in substance and to be a very poor presenter.

ABC Asia pacific had decided to only show one NRL game each weekend as they are now broadcasting Super 14 games as well, but after rallying a few of the boys to write and complain, we’ve actually had that decision reversed! From next weekend, they will show a delayed telecast of the Friday game “early” on Saturday morning as well as the usual channel 9 Sunday game. I don’t know what “early” means yet, but at least they listened: power to the people!

Not much to report this week. We’ve got our hotel bookings confirmed for Hong Kong for a few days in early April; we’ve actually been to Hong Kong about 20 times over the years, but never once left the airport, so this will be a new experience! We’ve upgraded to business class for our June/August trip back home after we got a pretty fair upgrade offer, so we’ll hob nob it for another trip before we move back into reality in economy. My Mum continues to provide us with all the news from Newcs and beyond in her regular packs of clippings from the Herald: it really does provide a highlight for our weekend, especially over a long lazy breakfast: I’ve just read that an apartment has sold for 4 million dollars at Silk House; my New York colleague, the great Gurecki commented that this was more like a New York price, and one of the reasons he is still without any property! That’s it…write an email if you’re reading this..let us know you’re still alive.

The best wave I saw this weekend was the one on top of Cassy’s head on Sunday morning! The surf has been dismal and although Ross and I had decided to wait till Sunday, conditions had actually deteriorated. So, this weekend, for the 1st time in a long while, we didn’t go out at all. Carl did venture over this morning and reported twelve million people taking part in a marathon that followed the coast road. This meant that it took him 25 minutes to get from the Jinshan turnoff to the beach (about a kilometre) after negotiating another million rubber-neckers on top of the mountain trying to get an early glimpse at the spring cherry blossoms. Sounds like a good day to avoid the coast, especially when the surf was near enough to flat.

Cassy endured two days in a row of parent interviews at the end of this week and was subsequently quite exhausted on Saturday. She spoke to nearly 50 parent groups! She’d also managed to grade 44 papers in between interviews, at lunch and before and after: I was tired just thinking about it! My Thursday was very interesting too. One of my colleagues on third grade, John, has been at the school for years and has developed friendships with lots of people. One of his friends is a pilot for China Airlines and this contact saw us gain some pretty special access to their facilities for the entire 3rd grade. We got to spend time in their 15 million dollar flight simulators, which was an amazing experience for me, so I imagine the kids were just blown away, or I hope they were. The simulators are a full replica of the cockpit of a 747 and they can set up scenarios for any airport, day and night, take off and landing. Our group landed at Hong Kong airport at night and even though we were slightly off line, we made it safely. Others weren’t quiet as lucky! The feeling in the simulator is absolutely amazing: I’d challenge anyone to honestly say that it didn’t feel exactly as if we were in a plane landing at night. The hydraulic jacks moved the simulator up and down and side-to-side according to how the “plane” was controlled…it was incredible.

We went out and saw the Pink Panther on Saturday, but pretty much regretted that decision, as it was a very pale imitation of the Seller’s classic from the mid ‘60s. Steve Martin didn’t do himself any favours taking on this role. On the way home, we got some Chili’s “take out” which was mouth wateringly delicious and felt quite decadent for some unknown reason!

Our whizzo computer/TV set up is continuing to provide us with great entertainment. I’ve been downloading torrents to the computer and subsequently beaming the pictures and audio to our TV via our little wireless hot spot we have now created in the apartment. We watched the Chaser’s War on Absolutely Everything the other night and loved it. Australia’s Biggest Loser is not a show I would probably watch at home (so I say!!), but anyway, an Australian torrent is an Australian torrent. We find ourselves drawn to this show because even though it is disturbing, the voyeuristic draw is very compelling. It’s kind of like the attraction of a car crash: you try not to look, but can’t quite stop yourself!

We’re being treated with the A league soccer grand final this afternoon by ABC Asia Pacific, so we’ll check that out and we’re going to watch Capote this evening. Then we’re pretty much up-to-date with all the Oscar nominees, so can watch on Monday night pretty knowledgeable about all the contenders.
The girls get treated with some different snacks on the weekend and I’ve included some shots of the feeding frenzy as well as the “wave of the week”!