A strange habit has ingrained itself on me over the past month or two and I’m rather loathe to admit to it: on occasions I’ve found it necessary to carry what I’ll term delicately, a “man bag”. Now, prior to this epiphany, I would have found it anathema to carry anything more than a wallet in my back pocket. However, recently I’ve found it more than annoying to carry a camera (to record photos for this blog), an extra outer garment in case it gets cold, an umbrella (if weather looks threatening) and a hat (to contain my ever growing flowing locks if even a minor zephyr appears). How could I carry this equipment?

I bought the bag down at the night market and it is actually one of these trendy numbers with the long strap, so you can sling it across the shoulders and have it hang down below the hip at the back. Ostensibly bought for school after my more staid work bag broke, it is seeing service now on the weekends. What I really need is a utility belt; an upmarket version of the one that Batman had…now that would be great. I could ditch the Batterang and the aerosol can of shark repellant and get some really useful stuff like the aforementioned in there. The metrosexual Taiwanese young male, of whom there are seemingly endless hordes, did provide the inspiration as it doesn’t seem to be a problem for them to be toting all manner of bags in any situation. I must admit I have a love/hate relationship with the “man bag”: I don’t particularly like the look, but I have to admit it’s very convenient!

Cassy and I met up at Pizza Rialto on Friday evening and enjoyed a delicious dinner and Cass had some Chianti to go along with the food. I had been at a “beach party” on the deck of one of the buildings at school so had already partaken of numerous Coronas. We were keen to have an enjoyable night as we’d signed up to do the dreaded admissions exams the following day. Saturday saw us administer and then sort and grade vocabulary and reading exams, a grammar test and a writing sample for some 93 kids applying to gain entry to the school. These are high stakes test and can sometimes mean the difference to a family coming to Taiwan to take up positions or not. The kids need to meet certain criteria to enter the school in various categories, or else they are denied completely, or go on to a waiting list. It is a very, very tiring day. We proctor and invigilate for about 3 hours, before bundling everything up to bring home to grade. We usually make the best of it through the afternoon and the evening, listening to the rugby league chat over the internet while keeping half an eye on the AFL on TV with the sound turned down (at least I do!). After burning the midnight oil (not quite literally) we managed to get them all done…we’re a well oiled machine with this now and we both get two extra days pay, so we think it’s worth it. We’ve brokered a deal with school to come back early in August to do the same thing, and this, along with yesterday’s work and one more spot in December is going to pay for a trip we have planned for next year’s June which will be really decadent…more later on that!

We got out and enjoyed the absolutely glorious weather today and took a walk around, ending up at the Miramar cinema to see “Street Kings” which was quite superb. Keanu Reeves has certainly come of age as an actor in this: I always thought he was a bit washed out and lacking in conviction, but he and Forest Whitaker were superb as LA vice cops with a flawless cameo from the extremely talented Hugh Lawry as an internal affairs detective. By the way, my bag was extremely useful to carry all of our paraphernalia but I did notice that Cassy brought nothing and in fact used my bag to carry her jumper…something’s not right here! Photos: Cassy with her new specs talks to Mary, a butterfly amongst flowers, a tea menu, shots from our last scooter trip and a very strange collection of wiped out “futuristic” houses: nicknamed “Jetsons”, out near the coast, this is one of those projects that probably looked really good in some planning office 30 years ago…until the first typhoon hit.

Play week is always a frenzy of activity. As reported last week the dress rehearsal was held, and then fine tuning was done throughout the week. Cassy armed herself with even more supplies, various mascaras and foundations and hairspray and all sorts of weird stuff I don’t know the name of at all was sourced, bought and transported to school. The working week was a bit schlep for both of us, Cass trying to get her kids to concentrate on academic matters in class with the extra curricular excitement building and me trying to get back to normal routine after a few highly charged months.

My birthday on Monday was fairly anti-climactic, but I was delighted to get a phone call from Chris and Val the night before even though they were using the mobile from the depths of far north Queensland: actually, they no doubt consider it fairly civilised, it’s probably just me who has visions of burly bushmen wrestling wayward crocodiles left, right and centre! Anyway, that was a treat as well as the card they sent, which I waited for the day to open. Inside were some great sentiments and a very generous cash gift! On the way home, I checked my mailbox and there was a fun card from sister Sue, who also emailed me with a lovely message. My aunt Virginia also managed to get hold of both Cassy and me via email, after a few dramas of having some incorrect email addresses. As I said to her in a reply email, even though we are very comfortable here after all these years, it is birthdays when a few of the old feelings can creep back so it was great to get a few messages. To round things off, my great friend back home, Wayne, wrote me an entertaining email, Fran wished us both the best including all sorts of interesting gossip, and Mum both phoned me on the night (after I had dutifully attended my Chinese lesson!) then sent some cards to both of us later in the week with a welcome gift as well!

All in all, I was really pleased with the day. Cass got me a self polishing cover/bag for my iPod touch and one of my colleagues made me a chocolate cake that we ate at school, with an extra piece for me and Cass at home. Cass cooked up a delicious dinner and we cracked a 1994 cabernet sauvignon from California…it must have been special as it had its own wooden box! It was outstanding, I must report!

I took advantage of Cassy’s absence to play duties on Friday night to have a few beers at the new Woo So café at Qiyan up the road a few stops on the train with Wal and Gurecki. We planned the attack for Gurecki’s 50th birthday on Saturday, May 17th: somehow, I’ve become in charge of this event, but he deserves a good show: he’s a loyal friend and now of course, my writing partner! We’re all looking forward to the big event which will involve an entrée of paintball in the afternoon before home for a shower and a bite then don the ubiquitous memorabilia T shirt (which I need to organize in a hurry) then some beers and snacks at the very same Woo So café.

Today, I decided to accompany Cassy up the road to check out the mysterious make up room. It certainly is a hotbed of activity, but luckily the actors this year aren’t displaying any annoying prima donna traits and the girls in her team are all very efficient, slick and proficient. I left her to do a Carrefour run with the car and loaded up with cartons of low cal soft drink and dozens of bags of cat litter! We have to use the car for a big run every now and then because our normal shop is just walking and carrying and these items are very heavy! I got the usual crazy looks, probably saying, “That crazy foreigner”. I managed to use some Chinese to great advantage and told a family of stare bears that I had “2 big tigers at home” to explain the excess of product…I didn’t wait around for any reaction. Back to play, I’d missed the big flurry, but went and got Cass a Panini and then walked home. Cass herself has walked in a bit exhausted just now, went and had a shower and is looking forward to just doing nothing! Photos: me with cake and wine, the “girls” on their new favorite sleeping spot, Cass and Charles the lion, the room and a couple of her “girls”. See you next week…

Well, the past week of restless nights and busy corporate days, the past months of preparation and document gathering and the past year of gradual writing and rewriting our policies and promotional material paid off on Friday afternoon when we listened to the auditors’ report. Along with some glowing commendations for the ESL department and the faculty within, but there were absolutely no recommendations apart from continuing what we are already doing. This is almost without precedent and I feel very satisfied to say the least!

Cassy was also fairly pleased. Her humanities program was also under scrutiny and of course, anything with which she had any direct input in shaping was extremely well received. Divisionally, there were recommendations for change made in all three divisions, yet they are all fairly reasonable and will not take a quantum shift in thinking to achieve. All in all, we’re both quite ecstatic with outcome: it’s quite amazing to have a program vindicated and praised by some leading experts internationally in the field, a real buzz actually. So much so, that we’ve both experienced a bit of a let down this weekend as the accumulated effect of weeks of adrenalin charged working fervour gradually slipped away.

Now for more important matters (!) Cassy supervised and advised her little coterie of makeup girls as the middle school play full dress rehearsal went ahead on Saturday. Apparently the girls got a little carried away with the expensive stuff allocated for the “trees” in Oz, so we ventured out today to makeup shops both glitzy and pedestrian to source the elusive brown needed to re-supply the trees. It was quite hilarious as the sleek black clad girls in Sasa fussed around and tried to find what was needed. They were extremely helpful but language barriers did prove a bit of a problem: asking for directions and ordering food etc is pretty easy these days, but describing the hue needed for the faces of human trees is not! Anyway, after much hilarity and a thorough examination of Watson’s round the corner, Cass came away with all she needed.

Huge news: after many years of being a spectacleless family after my eye surgery, Cassy has succumbed to the first signs of ageing eyes! She has used a little pair of glasses at 1.5 times magnification for a little while at home now, after I bought her a pair at a 2 buck shop. She feels it might almost be time to wear them at school occasionally, when she is grading stuff, so we checked out a glasses store in the Shi Dong and she ordered a very stylish, but plain pair of titanium frames. The lenses are quite weak, but just enough to stop that “long arm syndrome” getting any worse. I might convince Cass to let me post a photo next week, but don’t hold your breath!

Photos: Cass in various makeup shops and the last of the famous “Chee Chee”

I don’t usually write a blog when we’re on holidays, but I’ll relent this time and just writer a short one, mainly because it was quite bizarre. All year, once a week, a kid in Gerri’s class takes a toy monkey called Cheee Chee home to have an adventure for a week. After the week, the kiddy does an oral presentation, shows some photos and then everyone else in the class writes them a letter in response. We’ve found it’s a great way to get them to speak and to write in correct letter format without getting bored. The culmination of the activity this year was for me to take Chee Chee home and we’ve carted the poor little bugger around for a week!

The week started with drizzling mournful rainy weather and managed to maintain this without respite till yesterday afternoon. It was just awful outside, but instead of moping around regretting our decision not to go to Malaysia or Singapore or both, we stayed determined to make the most of the break.

One day I went out and surfed and got some really great waves, Cassy coming along for the ride. I tried another day very early in the morning, but we couldn’t find anything. We stayed home for a couple of dark dank days and watched the entire series of Underbelly, a TV drama from back home that somehow arrived in my computer’s hard drive to be burnt to disc….I didn’t download that thing(!) did I?

Another day saw us brave the conditions to trek way way out of town to the end of the metro line where we transferred to the so called Maokong Gondola. We were expecting a short ride up the mountain on a cable car, but the thing was just awesome! Four kilometers in length, the ride took 20 minutes each way and reached the dizzying heights of the Maokong tea house mountains. Here, where the Taipei citizenry can escape the summer heat and sip all sorts of invigorating teas, lies a quite magical little area, but the trip up is most spectacular. We were suspended about 500 metres above the ground in parts and it was a little frightening and a lot thrilling!

We scootered up the mountain yesterday and had a beautiful day in the sun. On the way back we wandered in and around the gorgeous, peaceful Beitou public library. It is like a giant tree house, rising from the park, all wood and glass and open air abiance. That evening we celebrated Cassy’s birthday in style at “Le Jardin” a French restaurant that supplied us with a fantastic meal and delicious wine. She was absolutely delighted to get birthday greetings from her parents and also my sister Sue…looks like everyone else forgot her: I told her it was probably deliberate, maybe trying to make her forget how old she was!

Lots of other stuff happened, but suffice to say, we’ll both me glad to see the back of Chee Chee….he was quite annoying!