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.