Taipei Life

We’d both had another full week of teaching and meetings this week, the school seemingly having stepped up another gear in response to the new superintendent being on board. The new person has been visiting various teams at their meeting times and while being very much in the background and just there to observe, it has obviously set a few hearts racing, especially amongst our administrators! Needless to say, this sort of tension is a bit like water, trickling down to get to the cave dwellers (us!), but hopefully not drowning us.

We didn’t get to the beach at all this weekend for the first time in a long while, despite various attempts over the past three days. Friday night was the first attempt, but although a couple of guys went over, it was incredibly messy and blown out. We settled for a couple of beers at Diamond Tony’s before heading home for tea and a bit of telly. Saturday was meant to be an early run, but Josh texted me with the news that it wasn’t even worth going over, it was that bad. He had left at 5 am as Johnnsy was taking his surf ski over, so I was glad to get the message which saved Carl and me a trip. Cass and I watched the first NRL game here between the Cowboys and the Broncos and were most impressed with the standard of play for the very first round. Cass then zipped over to meet Kathy Patterson “on the dyke” just as the game ended, so they could venture downtown to the megalithic bookshop, “Page One”, housed in the equally gigantic Taipei 101 building. On the way there they had a couple of stops at various stations to explore some Japanese shops. Kathy has managed to scout out heaps of these stores around Taipei, as she is a sucker for these useful items you can’t afford to be without! Cass bought a quite beautiful plate from Spain for hardly any money at all, so she was very pleased with herself when she got home. The highlight of the trip, if I had gone, would have been the sight of a number of beautiful girls performing some kind of sexy dancing in tight white micro mini skirts and long white boots as they advertised something or other, perhaps a credit card. Cassy described the scene in great detail to me: even though a rather large crowd of men had gathered to watch, apparently the girls weren’t that impressed! They took the sky walk from Taipei City Hall station all the way through from the Eslite bookstore to Taipei 101, managing to avoid hitting the footpath for a good number of blocks. While Cass was away, I managed to get out while the rain held off and have a good long brisk walk and felt great when I got home.

Lewy and Josh and Wal had all told me about the new Sri Lankan restaurant in the back lanes off Tienmu West Rd, so we were keen to visit and check it out. Although the Sri Lankan restaurant that has been here forever serves very good food, we hadn’t been anywhere that was able to replicate the subtle flavours and aromas of Sri Lankan foods since we went there Christmas before last. As soon as we had our first bite, we were immediately transported back to the beach restaurants of Hikkaduwa: just superb! The odd thing was that when we walked in, every table was taken up by non-Chinese people, a really bizarre sight. As the night went on, more and more locals drifted in, a good sign if the restaurant is to survive the cutthroat atmosphere in the trade here.

We had a very lazy breakfast, read our clippings and had a chat before getting the radio streaming over the internet. The 2GB team was back in full swing and we listened for an hour or so before the live call of the Knights game came on. With my beaming apparatus here, I was able to get the internet radio playing through the stereo and beam the live, updating score and stats from nrl.com.au through to the TV. We were horrified when Joey was injured and frustrated to not get any more news for a long time. The latest we’ve heard is that he’ll be out next week at least, but has no facial fractures, which is relatively good news. We felt so proud of the Knights for digging in, coming back and getting that great win. We decided to eat at Jacques for lunch and enjoyed the delicate French flavours available at this tiny sun-filled café. We’ve never seen another foreigner in there and hope it stays that way, actually! The young girl who is the chef there has trained in France and it shows: delightful food for us was a pesto pasta and bacon pasta, delicate crepe or cream brulee and a coffee each, all for $14…just amazing!

Photos: Virg’n Mary have a love/hate relationship with this little teddy bear: we often come home to find it with them, while at other times they’re killing it. A couple of views of the “dyke” from my walk and Cass outside Jacques.