Our walk to and from work each day is always a nice time of the day and it’s interesting what you see and hear along the way. It takes us about 15 minutes to get there at a good clip, and about 20 or more if we amble along. From Tai Chi in the park, scooters on the footpath (!) and the “enchanted forest” on the Chung North footpath, with beautiful shade trees adorned with their own decorations, kind of a living tinsel of dangling tendrils giving it an other worldly feel. One of the sights we see many mornings is a set of twin girls walking to the local primary school. We have seen them walking for many, many years now, and they are getting quite big (maybe 3rd or 4th grade). They have always been such a cute sight and we can gauge their mood with the world, but more particularly themselves very easily. The best barometer is their proximity to one another. When everything is right in the world they are walking along holding hands, joking and giggling, laughing and talking. But on occasions, there is a falling out and they walk along with terribly glum expressions about 50 metres apart!! Even though they seem very upset with one another, they still keep each other in sight: it really is “so cute”! I managed to snap a shot of them in the distance which I zoomed in on …this was a good day! Cassy modeled for the shot in the foreground so I didn’t look like some weird foreign creep taking photos of school kids!We’ve had an extremely relaxing weekend: or should that read, “extremely lazy”! On Saturday, we did venture out before the rain set in. Dan had texted me a surf report which basically said, “Stay in bed” which I took literally for an hour or two. Eventually we roused ourselves and had a decadently late breakfast at the flash French restaurant on Chung Cheng Rd, “Le Jardin”. We both really enjoyed the fine fare, including exquisitely cooked omelets, eggs, toast with home made jams, fresh juices and coffee etc etc. We then wandered over to the Shin Kong Mitsukoshi to see the latest James Bond installment. Although jam packed with all the usuals, I think we were both slightly disappointed as it didn’t quite live up to the last one, which we thought was probably the best ever. Daniel Craig still does a fantastic job however: tough as well as suave, but he can still deliver a few funny one-liners!
The rain started to seep down from mid Saturday onwards and has not let up since. Today we spent the afternoon watching the cricket while every few overs, Cassy would get up and add some extra ingredient to a bubbling pot of chicken soup. She is preparing for next Friday when her book club group is due for their monthly meeting, Cassy hosting this one. Speaking of next Friday, I’ll be at the races in Singapore Friday night!! Wal and I are catching a flight on Thursday after school and going to Singapore for a long weekend. We’ve got stacks of stuff lined up to do, but we are going really to attend Josh’s buck’s night on Saturday. Some of his mates down there have got it all organized, I just hope we’ll make it back on the plane to Taipei on Sunday afternoon….more on this next week (and I guarantee you the blog will be late: keep an eye out on Monday or Tuesday I’d suggest!)
Photos: Studying some Chinese, one of the golf group from last week, Cass being my model on the way to school with the twins in the background, and a zoomed in shot of the twins.