We have had a unique, interesting and rather relaxing week. Previously, we have always breezed in on the very last night after 18 hours door to door travel, scrambled into bed and been dazzled by beaming energetic people fresh from travels all over the world at 8am the next day! No wonder that first week seems to be one big blur!Initiated by work commitments, we came back a full week earlier this year and feel much more able to withstand an onslaught of shiny happy people tomorrow! Our entire test grading and proctoring went well, I was only called upon a few times for “consultations”, which were generally very smooth and pain free, and the bonus was we got to meet and greet a fair slab of our colleagues before the big day tomorrow.
During the week we’ve had lots of decadent lunches out, starting with a great Thai meal in the basement up near Tienmu west. We followed that up with meals at Chili’s and a long big breakfast at Wendel’s as well as Panini from the deli on the corner near school. We even had an ice-cream lunch at Haagen Daaz on the weekend! This has all made for a very enjoyable “ease in” to school for the new semester. We also had a delightful night on Wednesday when Sean and Katie invited us around for a meal and served us some delicious gnocchi with banana cake for dessert. Their house is just around the corner and it was lovely to see them interacting with their daughter Bella, soon to be joined by a sister so baby rooms were being prepared and things arranged. On Friday, I met up with a group of lads who decided we needed a refreshing ale at the Qiyan Wooso. I’d also had a couple of beers at the Red Hut on Thursday night with Lewy and lots of his book club crew, so the social whirl at the start of the year has started with a bang.
Gurecki brought us back some funny glasses that enabled you to see dollar signs around any light and they provided loads of entertainment after a couple of beers. We finally got to see the new batman movie and we were most impressed with our viewing of “The Dark Knight” here in our usual cinema in Tienmu after several attempts to buy tickets at the massive Imax theatre in Neihu…they were sold out every session!
I fixed a minor bit of damage on my new board this morning with some solar cure resin that I had brought back, and the swallow tail at the end is now fixed and ready for swell. The MR spitfire is raring to get into these Taiwanese waves, but we need more than the swell we discovered today when we drove out to the coast to give the car a much needed run. The board stayed in its cover and we did a big round trip: over the mountains to get there and back along the expressway through Wanli home. It was strange: we were taking short cuts that the locals didn’t even seem to know about…scary!
We’re starting to watch “Dexter” after I downloaded series one and two when we got back…it’s freaky and very good, so I think we’ll get back to it. Photos today are the holographic glasses amusing mildly inebriated folk, Virgil in need of a diet after eating non-stop all winter and little Bella posing on the mat.