Another week just whizzed by here in Taipei, courtesy perhaps of a truncated week with the kiddies as we had two PD days to end the week. Cass was entertained by a couple of visiting experts on the subject of differentiation and I had a similar topic on Thursday, followed by reading comprehension on Friday. It was all so very humdrum, we can't believe how cynical we are, but seem to have this cynicism confirmed at every turn by so-called experts telling us what to do. It's just that when you have been teaching for a long time, everything old becomes new again, and due to our change in teaching environment, we've even seen the third coming of some initiatives and styles and approaches. It's kind of cool to see people get so excited about things: no doubt the first time around, we were enthusiastic too.
That said, we both admitted that we'd been to a lot worse, so not all was lost on the two days.
Australia Day saw a celebration of sorts when we watched the Aussies annihilate the Poms in the cricket and had an "Australian of the Year" presentation, put together by Josh. It was quite hilarious, along the lines of the recent ABC series "We can be Heroes", and we were in awe of the time and effort he put into the whole presentation. I was quite humbled to be awarded the Australian of the Year (Tienmu, Taipei version!!) and was given a bottle of wine with personalised label etc. It was a great laugh! We had a relatively early night, Cass not making it for the celebrations as it actually started to sleet just before she was to come down!
Saturday was bitterly cold and miserable so we decided to hunker down and watch a couple of movies that we've had ready to go for a little while. The first one "Babel" was an interesting movie, reminding me a little of "Crash" with its interwoven plot lines and characters and juxtapositions of time and space. It was pretty sad in parts, usually a choice of movie we avoid here, but beautifully photographed and thought provoking. Interestingly, I'd been hearing about a movie for a while which sounded very much like this from some of my colleagues: the plot sounded similar, the actors matched....the only thing was that they pronounced it as 'babble'! Now, I wonder what sound they think a brook makes??!! The other movie was the Australian movie, "Candy", another fairly tragic story, but again, beautifully acted and directed. All three principals were at the top of their game...it was great entertainment.
We went out to Cassy's favorite Japanese style curry restaurant here, "Aubergine" for tea. It is an excellent choice for us, with items on the menu to tempt Cassy's craving for something vegetarian and tasty and my "leaning" towards meat (boom, boom).
The city was alive and pulsing as usual: crowds all rugged up against the cold as if they're about to join Mawson in the Antarctic...it is cold, but do you really need the gloves, hats, scarves and full length puffy coats!
Sunday dawned as a sun shiny day, probably even colder with no cloud cover, but no wind chill as the gentlest of zephyrs was all that could be felt. Carl and I hoped that these conditions would suit the Pillbox, so we headed off to find a wave about 10 o'clock. There was a very enjoyable 2 foot wave at the Pillbox, the ubiquitous lack of any other surfer(which we love!), sun shining, water relatively clean and the pigs seemed to have had recent ablutions as their usual noxious odours were only sometimes caught on a puff of off shore wind. Carl supplied the cup of tea after we got out, our "Tobes" bottles cleaned us up and off we drove home. Cass and I settled in to watch the one day cricket between the Aussies and the Kiwis in the afternoon and evening and enjoyed some awesome Aussie batting and some spirited chasing by the Kiwis, nearly resulting in an upset. For some reason, the normal TV cable is only offering me a few ghosty Chinese and Japanese channels at the moment: very strange and something I can't seem to fix...I'll keep trying.
Full week this week. I have a field trip to the earthquake and fire museum tomorrow and I meet with a short listed candidate for the upper school principal's job on Wednesday. We have received the news that the school has not only employed our new superintendent for next year, but that she will be starting early, in fact, just after Chinese New Year. There seems to be a flurry of activity lately in preparation: dotting the "i"s etc as bosses make sure meetings are being held regularly and all tasks are being done. Does that sound too cynical again?!
Photos: Aussie of the Year!, Cassy with snuggling cats and chocolates, betel nut girl and car sales on the way back from the Pillbox.