Regular readers of this blog have been used to seeing a line of archives down the left hand side dating back to November 2002, 18 months after we arrived in Taiwan and when this blog began. They’re not there anymore! I switched to a beta Blog this week (apparently it is much better, more reliable and has other features), but I was reluctant as I didn’t want to tamper with the blog which has proven to be trouble free for so many years. Looks like I was right to be wary! I saved the template of the blog and all the back posts just in case something happened, but I can’t get those archives to appear on the public version of the blog. I’m trying to get some answers from some blog friends online (!), but so far, no success. Anyway, sorry, if you enjoyed looking back at any posts, you will just have the current page of posts for the time being. When/if I can retrieve them, it will be pretty obvious: they’ll re-appear. Stop Press: Done! One of the blog community very generously pointed out that I had been using a superceded template for many years, believe it or not! I put a bit of html into the template and voila, they're back. STOP Stop press!: brand new template necessary...hope you like it. It will let me add different images, links etc if we want.

The pointyhat blog, of lesser importance to me, and really just a bit of fun, of course, as is the way with things like this where it really doesn’t matter, transferred seamlessly into the new format without a glitch. Frustrating!! Stop Press: pointyhat blog also now has a brand new look and template.

Cass and I have had a very busy week, trying to tie up lots of loose ends before shooting back home for 3 weeks at the end of this working week. We’ve had a candidate for superintendent here all week and another one arrives tomorrow. This has meant that the school has been abuzz with all sorts of special meetings and added time demands as we sort out who will be the next boss. It’s an amazing process, unlike anything we have seen back home: I don’t know if Big Al would get past the very first hurdle here! The candidates are short listed by a “search team” of interested admin, teachers and parents and brought to the school for interviews. The entire faculty and various constituency groups then have a chance to grill the candidate, including faculty, parents and students. Everyone fills in a feedback form and hopefully, that input goes a long way to deciding who the next boss will be. It’s quite a marathon: I’ll be having a meeting with the next candidate on Tuesday for an hour to talk all things ESL, after a similar meeting with the last candidate this week.

We went downtown after work early in the week and enjoyed getting out into the exciting inner city streets at night, which we don’t do often enough. There are just so many people about, all doing their individual things; meeting, shopping, browsing, chatting, drinking eating, walking, looking and a million other things…it was very exciting! We bought some Christmas presents and ordered some more, as well as a wedding present, but I won’t say too much just in case those recipients are reading! I’m going back down on the MRT on Thursday night to pick up a few items, while Cass stays home to pack her stuff. We’ve got Lily organized to look after the girls again which is great: she is reliable and trustworthy.

Our weekend was relatively subdued, but we caught a movie, Déjà vu, which was pretty good, nothing to rave about but entertaining with Denzel Washington in the lead. He always gives a very polished performance. We watched a DVD this afternoon which was a great laugh. Many of you have probably seen it, but it didn’t make the “blockbuster” cut for the cinema here, so we’ve only just watched it. “Little Miss Sunshine” with Toni Collette was just fantastic….we’re still laughing at some of the scenes! I went out and get some reasonable waves at the Pillbox today: it’s turned cold and I wore my wetsuit for the first time this winter season. It was raining and quite bleak and I wondered aloud as I sat out there by myself why on earth I had decided to go out! It wasn’t bad actually and blew a few lazy weekend cobwebs away. I spied one of the ubiquitous Taipei County chicken roasters on the way back so paused to take a couple of shots…just by the side of the road, dirty old farmers with dirty old roasters: bird flu anyone??!! I reckon they’re great! Photos: Virg portrait, the girls together and a couple of those great chicken shots.

mexican wave

cricket viewing and xmas tree

wal enjoying his snacks!

toucheng entrance


Report writing is so much easier when you have a template to work from, so this week, I’ve had to spend a fair bit of time writing my comments as I wrote them all from scratch. When you’re teaching the same grade level and similar ability and characteristics are shown by kids over the years, the natural tendency is to rely on previous reports for some inspiration. The inspiration is occasionally just that, and occasionally the opportunity to copy slabs of that comment into a new one. I decided that I’d recycled my present comments just too many times, so I set out to write individualized comments from scratch, about 1200 characters each for my 21 kids. To cut a long, and extremely boring story short, it was quite a pain, but done!

We’ve had the 2nd Ashes cricket test on here this weekend, once again, via streaming video over the internet. We seem to have ironed out all the kinks and even today, high traffic Sunday, it didn’t miss a beat. As I mentioned before, the secret is threefold: get everything possible off the hard drive, have the latest and greatest software and hardware, and lastly have a superfast connection. It’s been well worth it and I’ve just signed up for another year of 3M connection speed on the cable modem, so it should continue. Companies really reward loyalty here as I think the locals are very fickle and tend to gravitate to new operators offering very attractive looking honeymoon deals on connections. We’re paying about $280 Australian per year for uninterrupted, unlimited download and upload and speeds which are not even offered in Australia yet. I just hope they’ve got it sorted properly by the time we get home! It really is the tyranny of a small population base: while we Aussies enjoy the lifestyle, prices and services just can’t compete with these teeming masses over here in such confined spaces.

There was some talk of doing an early dash to the beach for a surf this morning, but the cam showed a big, messy slopfest out at Jinshan. The Pillbox leapt straight to mind, but I have to admit, I got cold feet almost literally at the thought. I went out to get some mouthwatering wood fired pizza takeaway last night and noted that almost overnight, as is the way in Taiwan, the temperature has dropped, the wind has begun to scythe through outer garments and it is really quite cold!

I put the Christmas tree up today (an arduous task of removing the tree from the box, fluffing the branches and plugging it in!). We really love this Christmas tree: it spins around on a base and the fibre optic threads light up and shimmy and shake and put on quite the show. I’ve been known to stare at this tree for extended periods, I’m sure it has some kind of hypnotic power! We had a great crowd here this afternoon for the cricket, including Josh, Lewy and Wal. Minus Lewy, this also makes up our boxing club at school and some combinations of the three of us have a good workout on the bag, speedball and focus pads most weekdays.

Cass “enjoyed” the annual candlelight winter wonderland dinner at school on Friday night. It’s a very strange affair, where all the middle school kids get tizzied up to the nines and eat together in the muted lights of a cafeteria quite miraculously transformed for the night. It’s not compulsory, but everyone attends…one of those types of shows.
Photos: the big gate at Toucheng and the cricket crowd, including a Mexican wave attempt! We'll be home in Merewether in less than two weeks! Hurrah!!