Through the week, I accompanied the kiddies to Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall to view the annual lantern festival which marks the end of the Chinese New Year period. When I say “accompany”, I mean led the little champions onto buses then down into the bowels of an MRT. station we’d never seen before, try to buy tokens for 130 kids, then usher same downstairs, spread them along the platform before urging them on to the train without leaving anyone behind as the doors whoosh shut automatically after a very brief stop. I’m tired just writing that sentence! Then we did it all again on the way back!Ostensibly, it is another cog in the explore Taiwan curriculum machine we try to oil each 3rd semester; this visit is also about familiarizing the kids with public transport. They get a kick out of it I suppose, but I often wonder if anyone is standing by with charged paddles to kick me back to life as I narrowly avoid having a heart attack every time it happens. Oh well, all good fun, I suppose! The lanterns were a bit of a fizzer this year, down in size, number and quality after moving from Chiang Kai Shek’s memorial Hall. It’s all a political humdrum really, city government squabbling with national government over whether “Chiankas” was a dirty murdering war criminal or alternatively, Taiwan’s benevolent father figure to whom they all owe their lives. Speaking of which, there is a similar massive statue of Sun Yat Sen at his hall, which appears remarkably less benevolent to my untrained eye….hmmm! The same high stepping, shiny helmeted guards spin around each other with the changing of the guard, variously stomping their high shiny boots and spinning their saber fitted rifles round with mind boggling precision. If they breathed fire, I thought at the time that it wouldn’t be dissimilar to a good Kiss concert.
We’ve had a slightly more enjoyable week this week, although Cassy is still suffering the lingering effects of her cold which kept her pretty quiet. I decided to go with Lewy downtown on Friday night to see one of our faculty bands play. QvQ plays an impressive mix of mainly original songs interspersed with some classic rock, including one song (brilliantly performed) by my old favourites, The Sunnboys. We had a few beers with the boys after their set and had a great time. I reverted to my youth by yelling out requests to a completely bemused American Cowboy country duo playing with a drum machine: they’re probably wondering what Khe Sanh is…..they did actually say at one point, “I don’t know who this Kay Sands is buddy, but she aint with us!”
We got some local green onion pancake in Ker Qiang Rd for lunch, but it must have had some powerful bug caught in it somewhere as we both ended up in the toilet in the evening! We got some Alleycat pizza takeaway for tea and settled in to watch loads of trashy TV…it was great! (Australia’s Biggest Loser mainly: the only show where you can scoff down loads of chocolate and biscuits with a cup of tea and not feel too guilty because you’re not actually that bad yet!)
I got up early and made my way to the Pillbox for a surf and although the tide was pretty low and the conditions a bit edgy, I met up with a local Taiwanese guy and we communicated with a mix of his and my rudimentary skills in each others language. We went out together, the surf built and improved and I ended up staying out for nearly 3 hours and having my best surf since the big round island trip. It was powerful clean and fast…just like a real surf, I was, and still am pretty amped from this session! About a dozen guys were out by the time I headed in including an eclectic mix of two Taiwanese Americans, 3 local guys including Jeff, myself and JB, an American surfer who I often run into out in the water at some spot on the island. Check more on this day here.
Photos today are of various cute mice lanterns (it is the year of the rat) some with 101 in the background, some tiny little kids in front of one display, the precision guards at SYS and some awesome powerful surf earlier today.