It’s just been unreal to have a relaxing break from work this long weekend. Wednesday was a PD day at school with no kids, but it wasn’t all a barrel of laughs as we had to attend various workshops and I had to run two 50 minute ones back-to-back on blogging. In their wisdom, the air conditioning had been turned off at school making the rooms a sauna: it certainly hammers home the reality of who is considered important in the school and it aint the teachers! Wal came round on Thursday night to eat some of Cassy’s famous home-made rissoles and we managed to sneak a look at a UFC as well!Thursday was pretty eventful even after a lateish start. We went down to the movies mid morning to watch “3.10 to Yuma” and the leads, Christian Bale and Russell Crowe elevated this western to a good standard. Afterwards we mosied down to Jaques for a French lunch and it was, as usual, magnifique. Cass was due to pick up her re-modelled ring from Joe the Jeweler, so I was persuaded to accompany her on the bus down. She has had her original engagement diamond and another we bought in Vietnam set as shoulder diamonds on her bigger 10 year wedding anniversary ring. It is very sparkly, even I have to admit! After a jolting ride in the hands of the typically kangaroo hopping Taipei bus driver, we were spat out downtown somewhere to receive said jewels. On the way back, we stopped at the Shilin night market for me to get my watch fixed at the watchmakers. They discovered the winding mechanism was faulty, so I have to pick it up in a couple of days. Afterwards, I boldly declared that we should catch the “next bus” and everything went swimmingly until we got near the BMW corner and the thing turned off in some strange circuitous route miles away from where we wanted to go. As irony had it, we were deposited opposite Jacques’ again, but this time without scooter so we walked home through a series of back streets. We got home just in time for me to go off to my Chinese lesson to have a horrendous time, forgetting everything from previous lessons and creating a look of despair on my teacher’s face that I hope not to see again!
Even though we had planned to meet up with a group of surfers/campers at Fulong on Friday, the swell had dropped and the wind had blown up making it an uninviting prospect. Instead, we decided to do a few jobs that need doing periodically. We took the car down to Carrefour and loaded the trolley up with 20 bags of cat litter and heaps of closet camel re-fills. After getting all this stuff home, I deposited the car back at school and we then watched a bit of stuff on TV. For some reason, I’ve had a bit of trouble with my car rego this time and I made yet another abortive mission to the post office to try to pay it and managed to get everyone in the place offering assistance in Chinese and some broken English when the counter assistant announced in a ridiculously loud voice for some help. After I dragged my highly embarrassed hide out of there I arrived home to find that Cassy had made the most delicious banana cake of all time, one which we are trying not to wolf down every time we’ve had a piece of it since!
We set off to Pointies mid-morning on Saturday for a fairly successful surfing trip and we both felt the relief of getting away from the city for a while. The air was cool and clean and the surf, while nothing like last weekend, provided some fun waves. It’s always about a 4 hour trip if we head over the mountain and back and it was amazing, as usual, to see how different the weather was up top. Visibility was only a few metres due to a very thick fog, it was rainy and cold, yet on either side of the mountain it was quite pleasant, even bright sunshine and hot here in Tienmu. On Saturday night we ventured down to the south east part of town to go to dinner at Tony Roma’s Macaroni Grill and we each had an excellent dinner of veal parmesan. We had a sampler of various dishes for entrée including some superb bruschetta, crab stuffed mushrooms and tender calamari. They weren’t satisfied with their first cooking of our veal, so as we had to wait 15 minutes (which I though was quite reasonable anyway) they gave us a dessert of caramel topping soaked Pannacotta for free. What a meal! We almost literally waddled home after such a feast and even this morning we still felt full. The Hsin Yi district is really quite spectacular, especially at night and we had loads of fun interacting with various street performers, “living statues” etc, who seemed to gravitate towards us for some reason. Another amazing sight was the troupe of beautifully trained dogs catching Frisbees and entertaining a big crowd in the forecourt of the Shinkong Mitsukoshi building. I’ll put a few more of these night shots up in coming weeks.
Today was an extremely lazy day: we slept in till past 9 and Cass managed to do some grocery shopping before the league test came on at noon. We watched that and exhilarated in the wonderful new breed of footballer on display as well as the result (58-0 to Australia) then we’ve managed to do precious little since. The royal “we” has crept in again, sorry: Cassy has been busy doing all sorts of jobs all day; it’s just me that hasn’t done anything!
Photos: The ring, Cass and Joe the jeweler, flags fly proudly for 10/10 holiday, dogs display their talents, us at Tony Roma’s, Cass interacts with an angel, Cass on the bus, Taipei 101 sneaks above Shinkong building at night.