Go the Knights! Stoked this evening to hear the Knights are to face off against arch rivals, Manly, next Friday night. What is even better is the knowledge that Australianetwork TV (the old ABC Asia Pacific) will broadcast the Friday semi live. Cass is a bit upset as her book club has arranged a meeting on Friday night, so she’s in a bit of a dilemma: apparently these strange hoity toity yanks she hangs around with don’t understand the rugby league religion…imagine that!!
We’ve had a really enjoyable weekend on the back of a pretty good week. My second last parent presentation went very well mid-week and Cass had a professional development day where she found out the results of last year’s standardized writing tests. Her kids, including Sean Lochrin, went extremely well, so the vintage Moet, which was produced for a celebratory tipple on Friday, tasted even sweeter than usual. I donned the boxing gloves after classes and hit the heavy bag for an hour or so in the afternoon, feeling very pleased with myself. Poor Cassy had to come home from that day and go straight back out to do a dance duty, but she has now done her duty for the years it’s over and done with. When she got home, we watched some torrented Australian Idol (which we’re really enjoying), before a relatively early night.
Saturday saw our usual, long relaxed breakfast…pancakes and proper coffee, Herald clippings and looking forlornly at the various cameras that we access to show the surf out on the northern coast. Dead flat! Carl was suffering in the tremendously enervating weather we’ve been experiencing lately as he coached his junior girl’s soccer team, before watching both boys play in separate games. He is quite excited today as he has ordered a new bike: he is right into it at the moment and regularly goes out on long rides, so he’ll be chuffed to be riding a newer model. We decided to take the car over to the big B&Q and Hola outlets in Shilin (the equivalent of Bunnings warehouse and Domayne) to scout out some material for new bedroom curtains and to get a container and possibly a high-pressure water sprayer for the car. (Disclaimer: Ross, if you’re reading this, try to contain yourself…I have bought the sprayer, a la Tobes, and it works very effectively!) We got the stuff for the car… the sprayer mentioned is to have a little shower and wash the feet off at some of the beaches we go to with very primitive facilities and I must say that it is very civilized indeed! The curtain fabric we were after (to match the lounge room) is not there any more, but when we’re ready there are other suitable ones.
We raced over relatively early to the beach this morning as I spied a couple of small swells coming through via the cams, got a Subway (actually a “Subber”, Taiwan’s own strange copy!) to take with us in lieu of brekky and made it over to get a few nice little waves. I had to work pretty hard, but it was OK and Cass and I both had a refreshing loll around in the water. On the way, we drove through the busy as a beehive weekend market at Jinshan downtown and Cass hopped out and bought two new “Pointy hats” from a bemused shopkeeper! I’m pretty sure only the local farmers, peasants (!) or road workers wear them, but they are so practical in this blazing heat. We checked out the activity centre (see photo), but it was really flat and they seem to be demanding money to use it during the summer months. It is anathema for us to pay to use a beach so we drove up the road to Jinshan “number 2”.
Cass is cooking up some salmon mornay as I write, so the weekend is going to finish off in quite a delicious manner…that’s all for now!