Up for an early breakfast before packing up ready for a day at the coast, I wondered how the poor old “Aubergino” would go. We love our dinted and bashed little car, Ross dubbing its indeterminate colour aubergine many years ago, with its mismatched hubcaps, permanent acid burn stains in the duco on the bonnet and the boot and many quite significant dings and depressions all over its body. Lately, the air conditioner has needed to be regassed, the plumes of smoke choking the general populace have been only momentarily arrested and its front suspension appears to have almost collapsed completely, the tiniest aberration on the road causing the most alarming clunking “bottom outs” you could possible experience! I’ve tried to be a little tenderer with her as we traverse the mountain roads, her tyres are never squealed and she is caressed into all corners but somehow the deterioration continues. This car has taken us around Taiwan on one of our greatest ever holidays and we’re reticent to admit her days are numbered.

We, did, however, make it to the north coast and a quick inspection of all the spots was a little disappointing. All the surfers had been anticipating great things this weekend as a typhoon lurked off the coast moving slowly towards Japan. It wasn’t exactly flat, but the decent size waves were spoilt by a howling onshore wind. Cass and I made the best of it and she enjoyed her perch high on the Jinshan cliff as I attempted to get a few waves out the back after surviving a ferocious shore dump to make it out. We travelled to Jinshan proper after that, but it just wasn’t good enough to tempt us out and the swim wasn’t even an option with hulking pieces of driftwood being tossed around like matchsticks in a very turgid shore break.

Our drive round to Green Ball and Baishawan (both flat) was delightful, the day really a cracker, not a cloud in the sky as the typhoon had sucked away all the extraneous atmospheric muck. As we’d never done it, but often talked about it, we stopped for lunch at one of the increasing number of very cool restaurants fronting the protected beach strip just near Sanjih town. Some readers familiar with this area of Taipei county will remember the futuristic, "Jetson" style houses fronting the beach here, a terrible folly that seemed to last just one typhoon season. A little sadly for us, they have recently all been demolished...there goes a good talking point! Our choice called “We Love” had a very interesting menu (pictured) as well as some very funky elements including egg chairs, cool music and a Harley Davidson Sportster taking pride of place in the front window. The food was good and we enjoyed the air-conditioned comfort as we watched a succession of friends take trips on their new jet ski through the huge floor to ceiling windows at the back. Onwards and homebound, we eventually pulled the poor old aubergino into her garage for another weeks rest in the mid afternoon.

Yesterday we went to the movies in the middle of the day and saw, “The Time Traveler’s Wife”. I was grumbling a little bit about the prospect of a “chic flick”, but it was surprisingly good for its genre. We like both the leads, Eric Bana and Rachel McAdam, but found Aussie Eric to be a little wooden. Cass said it was quite faithful to the book, which is one of her favorites of recent years. We lunched at one of our all time favourites, “Aubergine”, (now that’s a weird coincidence which I didn’t even realize till I typed it just now!) and then moseyed on home and had a very relaxing evening.

All the boys are getting both excited and apprehensive as the next couple of weeks approach. The football finals of both codes have given us great opportunities to socialize and enjoy the games, but we all know that as the grand finals approach, so does the dreaded “sports hiatus”! Now hjust how long is it before they bowl the first ball in that Brisbane test against the West Indies?!

Photos: sign to Little Yeliou on the north coast, Cass at Jinshan, me with the Spider Girl, a crazy sight of an emu in a north coast yard (!) and some classic “Chinglish” on our restaurant menu. Cass is now reading, and thoroughly enjoying “The Day at the Races” and I am reading a motorcycle travel recount, “Silk Riders”.

September brings football finals rolling around and that has pretty much been the focus of the weekend entertainment the last couple of weeks. Friday, we settled in at the Green to watch an AFL game, and then I made the trek up the hill to Gerry’s place for the annual Collingwood finals party on Saturday night which also includes the speeches and handover of prize money from our tipping comp. Today we went to Yingge!

We introduced our new Grade 3 team member, Dave, from Canada to the game of AFL on Friday night and he was a quick learner and even submitted himself to another bout of the same on Saturday at Gerry’s. We got out and about after that and pulled out a few old chestnuts. The next day it all seems a bit bizarre and dazzlingly non PC, but at the time, with a few beers on board, we thought we were hilarious.

Saturday loomed as a possible beach day, but we both got up kind of late and the surf was flat again, so that hit that idea on the head immediately. We were really looking forward to watching the Knights semi final against the Bulldogs on Saturday night, but it was terribly delayed here, not starting till 11 pm! I stayed for the first half at Gerry’s before bringing some tea home for Cass and we fluffed around waiting for the “real” game to come on. We were so incredibly lazy in the day on Saturday and managed to watch most of the second series of Mad Men…it’s mesmerizing. The Knights tried hard, but going into a game with two key men very badly injured was never going to be a good choice: they were brave, but we still went to bed disappointed after 1 am, the “girls” wandering around meowing their protests at being kept up so late!

We decided to make the trip to Yingge today. We previously went on the train one time when Chris and Val were visiting, but we decided to try the car today. It was an interesting trip, as always here in Taiwan: dead set, most of these people look like they got their licenses from the back of a corn flakes packet. Apart from the funny, yet at times partly frightening driving, we dealt with intermittent rain showers all the way until blue skies magically appeared at the Sansia/Yingge turnoff. The weather then went straight back to type: baking sun made more insufferable as the water heated up and produced a sauna like effect. We parked a bit out of town and walked back, remembering the basic layout, re-visiting many of the shops and generally enjoying ourselves. Cass bravely agreed to try some street food for lunch, and we both survived, although Cassy got a shocking and massive head freeze from her Mango ice sorbet. I had a couple of big bruising German sausages and then we were re0-fuelled for another go at the shops.

Cass was keen to get a set of dessert/soup dishes and had been looking around for a while. The trouble was that we found really cheap ones (which were OK, but a little too Chinesey or not Chinesey at all!) or at the other end of the scale, beautiful one off art pieces, designed to be put up on display. After looking in almost all (!!) the shops in the cute cobblestoned car free streets, Cass eventually settled on some mid range ones (still pretty cheap actually) that had a subtle blossom pattern on a sort of bluey gray background. We were keen on getting a little stone Buddha as well, but the ones we saw were just a little too cute for our liking although one rather imposing stone Buddha head might be worth another look sometime.

Purchase under arm, we wound our way back through the streets to the car and navigated our way back home. It was a 6 hour trip all up by the time we got the car swapped back over to the scooter and got ourselves back home, but an interesting sojourn for a sweltering Sunday afternoon.

Cassy is reading the book I just finished, A Day at the Races; it’s hilarious and resonates so well for us, early 80s in Australia, young adults, country towns etc. I ran out of Mum’s clippings this morning: she’s been away and unable to send fro a little while…woe is us! I didn’t send my sister Helen a card for her birthday yesterday…Hel if you’re reading, Happy B’day and sorry. Photos: all at Yingge, the red marble big cat is out of focus because I wasn’t supposed to take a shot of it….it was very stylish!

The mighty Newcastle Knights have just beaten Penrith to claim their rightful place in the finals series of the NRL for 2009 and I nearly dislocated by already sore shoulder punching the air and dancing around the loungeroom each time they scored! Could they possibly emulate their feats of 2001 when we made a flying visit home to watch them win the grand final? The chances are extremely remote, but we’ll enjoy supporting them however long they last in the series.

I’ve got a neat little segue back into Friday night here so I’ll use it! We had a couple of beers at Ulis before we met up with Lewey and Shaun at Shaun’s place to watch the first of the AFL semi-finals. It was a bit of a blowout, but we had a good time nonetheless and bantered away with all sorts of rubbish. Afterwards, Wol, Shaun, Lewey and I went to the newly named and slightly re-vamped “Soo Who” bar just round the corner and continued our conversations.

Cass and I were up early on Saturday to shake the Auburgino out of her recent lethargy and get over to the coast to check out the swell we hoped would be forthcoming. The car has been managing to convert Chung Shan Rd into a smoggier version of downtown Shanghai in recent times with a pungent plume of toxic gases billowing forth from the car every time we took it out. Apart from polluting the place, it was pretty embarrassing! Anyway, after getting the air con regassed and 4 litres of oil and a new oil filter it is much more civilised and we decided, allowed out on the road again. We met up with Dan and Nicky and family over at our little break of Pointies near the Jinshan harbour entrance and other guys we know, Scott and Brian showed up a little later. Even thought the surf was quite good, it was a bit of a worry seeing a phalanx of local mal riders joining us: they’ve been very superstitious of this place for years because of a number of drownings, but it appears our extended honeymoon of minimal crowds might be over! Cass got so hot she even went for a body surf (must have been hot!) and we had a very refreshing swim/surf. Duly cleansed in body and soul, we got back starving to a very late brekky, accompanied of course by Mum’s Herald clippings, which is our weekend tradition.

In the late afternoon/early evening we stolled down to Alleycats pizza via the new Sogo. It was very relaxed and had just cooled down enough to make it not too oppressive. Our meal was excellent as usual: Cass always has a Greek salad and some pizza and I like customizing mine with stuff like anchovies and artichoke hearts…yum! We saw another surfy mate of mine, Mark, there and had a nice chat with him and he told us he’d got some waves at the Cliff the day before. On the way home we stumbled upon our upstairs neighbours, Leon and Katherine, and had a nice long chat with them as well, mainly about our respective Christmas travel plans. We each commented that we never see each other in the building, but I suspect we both actually like it pretty much that way as well. Christmas plans are quite topical for us at the moment as we have just booked our flights to Denpasar where we will connect to another flight to the island of Sumba and the resort of Nihiwatu…but more about that later. Grabbing a stack of Wendel’s bread on the way back, we were nearly home when we spotted a big new Harley parked on the footpath…you just never know what you’ll find in Taipei.

I ventured out in the heat to get some Papa Poulet chicken and some pastrami sandwiches for lunch, while Cass did some grocery shopping and took 4 pairs of pants to be taken up at the seamstress round the corner. We had the two pairs of jeans I mentioned last week and a further pair of jeans(mine) and a pair of tailored pants that Cass had bought back home. The cost of alteration was a staggering low $500NT (about $20 Aussie) which matches the $460 NT Cass paid to get 6 items dry-cleaned last week!

That’s about it: we’re in a state of excitement about the Knights and life is just grand all-round: now, if we could just work on lowering this heat a little! Photos, trad pointyhat woman wanders past Alleycats with her cart, Harley on the path, the cats insisting on sleeping with each other despite the heat, Cass after taking a dip, an obviously named new bakery near Sogo and me getting one of a few good waves on Saturday. See also slideshow here.