Taipei Life

The Chinese New Year holiday week is always much anticipated in this house. Tienmu, our cosy little northern suburb of Taipei is away from a lot of the hurly burly at the best of times, but when family traditions call during this week, it turns into a big old country town. In fact, it very much reminds us of Newcastle!

I introduced Cassy to the joys of punching the heavy bag and the speedball on Monday after we watched “Apocalypto” on DVD. The violent themes in the film were a perfect segue to a frenetic workout: Cass even got to tap a few out on the speedball. I bit the bullet today and decided I was going to learn a little bit of Mandarin. We’re in our 6^th year now and look like being here for a few more and as I’ve finished my studies at long last and seem to have a little spare time on my hands, I thought… Anyway, I downloaded some audio programs and have been diligently trying to do a lesson or two each day for the past week or so. Unbelievably, I’m actually just starting to hear a few words distinctly, but it will be a really long haul if I manage to stick with it.

On Wednesday, the rain and wind moved in, the surf was uninviting, so I went up with Carl to give our Kiwi mate Aaron a hand with his home renovations. He’s managed to rent that rare jewel round here, a free-standing house, for a very reasonable price: the catch is that the place had really gone to rack and ruin and he’s just starting the long process of bringing it up to scratch. With Carl and me helping, the three of us got heaps of painting done and broke the back of it for him. It was a long day of physical labour and it felt good!

Thursday, I went for an early surf with Carl and Tobes and made it back to be greeted by a sparkling clean house. Cassy then had no qualms in requesting my presence at Chili’s for lunch, so off we went. The price was somewhat assuaged by a gift voucher I had received for Christmas, so the delicious feast was consumed guilt free in terms of money (but I’m not so sure about the calories!)

Friday we were up and showered early and headed down to the German Wendel’s Backerei for their big breakfast. What a decadent treat this always is! Loads of food, great service and a relaxing ambience combine to make it a wonderful start to the day. I’d been threatening to take Cass to the giant Ferris Wheel at Neihu for some time, and as the sun peeked through the clouds and the mist burnt off, we thought we’d take the opportunity. What a mistake! As we started up on the trip round, my old, hitherto fairly well disguised fear of heights hit with a vengeance: it was a white knuckle ride for the majority of the trip. What a wuss I am: the wheel seemed to be hardly moving it went so slowly and the gondolas were rock solid and air conditioned. Anyway, Cassy seemed to enjoy the whole experience immensely! We scootered over to Hola at Neihu and bought some towels to replace our ancient ratty old green numbers then got home in time to receive our annual invitation to “cracker night”.

We met up with Carl, Hiroko, Steve and Sean in the little park opposite our place as is our little tradition. Carl and the boys had bought enough explosives to start a small war and we proceeded to let the whole lot off in various combinations over the next couple of hours! What a blast, it was certainly an explosive mix of testosterone, fire and gunpowder (sorry for the very obvious puns). Cass managed to catch an errant spark smack bang under her right eye, leaving her cheek with a slight burn, an abrasion and a bruise. We couldn’t believe it: the spark had managed to fly straight past all of us and hit Cass as she stood at a very circumspect and “safe” distance from the action! Suffice to say that ice and savlon saved the day and she’s fine now.

The surf on Saturday was just top shelf. A good size ground swell combined with a few hours of light off shore wind, clear water, well-formed banks etc etc. We surfed ourselves to exhaustion because these conditions just don’t come along every day in Taiwan.

On Sunday, I delivered an apple cake to a colleague’s house that Cass had made the night before. Their daughter had suffered a life threatening bout of Pneumonia and been hospitalized for more than a week. The community had rallied around and got a little “feeding roster” worked out and Cass had offered to do the dessert for the Sunday evening. It was gratefully accepted and it was great to see both parents relieved at the fact that their daughter was slowly on the road to recovery: our lives here are really just a flickering flame in a breeze aren’t they?

Anyway, enough with the philosophy: we had a magic week off, so much so that I couldn’t even rouse myself to write this blog at the right time. Back to work two days now, feels like two weeks and holiday zone is rapidly retreating into a beautiful memory! Photos: various adventures in the past week and one blast from 1980... We met 27 years ago today!