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!