The sky had a steely haze today and the wind was whipping through the treetops suggesting the day was cool, but it’s that really strange in-between weather that got us leaving the house well clad only to arrive back this afternoon in a bit of a sweat. We’ve been up to the Royal Host at Beitou to have a late lunch of their signature New Zealand steak (and paint thinner red wine!) and arrived back to catch a little cricket from the first game of the Australia/India one day series.

The weekend started in unusual fashion. We got the car out on Friday afternoon from the basement car park in anticipation of a run to the north coast on Saturday. The annual food fair was on Saturday at school and I’ve been caught before: in fact a couple of years ago, I remember wrestling out through the garage with my board in tow to catch a lift with someone and in quite a bizarre scene, walked through hay bales and the four ponies blocking the garage entrance giving little kiddies rides round the outside car park! Anyway, we had no such problems this weekend.

Cass and I drove out from our park nearby on the river road and got to Jinshan to be greeted by very messy, slow moving swell, very wind affected and totally uninviting. Continuing round the always picturesque northern highway round to Shimen and then beyond, I wasn’t expecting a lot, but Dan’s text, “lots of fellas, nice waves” didn’t quite prepare us for the sight as we crested the Greenball hill. The water was thick with surfers, little black dots bobbing and moving with the swell, and the road swollen with cars double and triple parked, surfers and gawkers alike choking the area in front of the scenic lookout.

Dan was on his way out and I followed closely behind negotiating the steep climb over rocks and tetra pods to make the paddle out spot. It was carnage out there: the swell was big enough to be interesting and the surf was smooth faced and powerful. The trouble was the 58 surfers sharing the one very narrow take off zone! After a narrow miss from an out of control mal rider, and three guys washing straight over the top of me during duckdiving a clean up set, I decided that discretion would be the better part of valour and paddled back in…it was just too dangerous, I reckon.

We drove back through the pretty hinterland at the back of Sanjih town and stopped off at a rather unusual structure perched on one of the highest hills beyond the town. It turned out to be an extremely ornate cemetery, the graves gleaming in blue and white tiles just hanging precariously on the steep hillside. Further on we stopped at another temple where we got some lunch at the local 7/11.

I was due to meet my book club group on Saturday night, but we weren’t starting till local lounge bar, “The Red Hut” opened at 9pm, so Cass and I watched some TV and had a very delicious dinner that she cooked, before I eventually meandered off in the mid evening drizzle to take the car back, then walk back to the bar. The book club group is an eclectic mix of men, all of whom work at school, but who represent many subject areas and are drawn from all 3 divisions. I’ve slowly warmed to the concept of this group, even though I had resisted its charms for many years, despite multiple invitations to join as I thought they were a bit elitist. They probably are to a certain extent, but it doesn’t really matter. We have good fun, all the guys are interesting characters and we all have a shared passion. Some of the best reading I’ve had in years is from recommendations from the other men here, so I’m enjoying the whole experience. Naturally, many beers are also drunk by all, which adds to the spice of the conversations as we drift along into the early hours of Sunday morning!

Late brekky this morning then I was delighted to be able to live stream the latest UFC, UFC 104 at 10 am. It was 7pm on Saturday night at the Staples center in Los Angeles: what an age we’re in! It was kind of freaky to watch this live event in our lounge room in Taipei, remotely beaming for the computer to the TV as it took place halfway across the world. In fact, right now, I am typing this on Cassy’s laptop sitting on the lounge as we both watch the cricket from India…I’ll just have to fiddle with the photos a bit later on.

I’m anticipating the photos I will use will be: me negotiating the entry to Greenball, getting out again, Cass at the hilltop cemetery and its Buddha, Cass at another Buddha near Beitou, a garish temple in the hills behind Danshui and one of the manholes which are ubiquitous in the Tienmu streets and lanes…they’re a real work of art. I’m reading “The Writing Book” by Kate Grenville, and Cass is reading, “People of the Book” by Geraldine Brooks for her upcoming book club meeting.

Australia is far more sophisticated and experienced than Taiwan in a certain rather bizarre area (and many others I suspect). The naturally occurring seasons falling in opposite quarters around the world means that Australia has experienced a full winter flu season of H1N1, of which Taiwan is only now on the verge. The protocols back home were stringent, the predictions dire and everyone was warned to brace for the very worst. Eventually, as hospitals strained at the seams and doctors stopped testing, instead advising normal flu precautions, people relaxed a little, remained vigilant and got on with life.

I have just been informed that one of the three classes with which I work will be quarantined this week. Taiwan has a protocol in place that TAS follows, which states that a class and their teacher must remain home from school for 5 days if two or more students test positive for H1N1 at any one time. Dave, the class teacher, is a new young teacher from Canada in his first year at TAS, so I can imagine how he must be treating this news. I will only have 2/3 of my support class and not be in his class at all, so I’ll need to deliver work to these kids via email and the online classroom. The school is geared up for these eventualities of course, but kids at this age and stage still have trouble with keyboarding skills, let alone the intricacies of receiving, completing then re-sending work electronically over a period of time. Oh well, we’ll wait and see how it goes…

On Friday, I was in the second day of parent conferences and Cassy had a PD day which was far from a picnic. She set herself a quota of essays to grade and somehow marked 19 of them before she went to meet her team for lunch at 1 o’clock! They went to Chili’s, but even though one of her favourites, I don’t know if she enjoyed it so much…her brain was set to explode! I got my car inspected on Friday afternoon and by some absolute miracle it passed all the tests including a rather stringent emissions test: the fact that I drove it around for 40 minutes before going in and literally blowing off a lot of smoke must have done the trick…

Cassy and I have had about the laziest day imaginable today and the rest of the weekend wasn’t much different! We’ve spent all day today lying around reading books, she with the unputdownable, The Slap, and me with the very strange, The Lost Symbol. I have spent vast amounts of hot air ranting about the poor quality of Dan Brown books, but thought I’d better actually read one in its entirety before making further aspersions. Verdict: although grammatically perfect and sophisticated vocabulary is used at times, it was frustrating to deal with overuse of exclamation points, italics to indicate every character’s most banal and obvious thoughts as well as the ludicrously short chapters. Each sentence and chapter follows a formula, and the mini climax at the end of each chapter just gets too weird... deeply disturbing, yet strangely compelling! Anyway, at least I tried: in fact they really remind me of the exciting Alastair MacLean books I read as a teenager, except not as good.

We had a major breakdown of electronic equipment this week so we’ve had to upgrade all sorts of things. We nearly got a new phone until we realized that we probably just needed to replace the fancy rechargeable batteries: solved. The monitor of the computer, an old boxy model had to make way for a slick new flat screen model when the old one started to dance and wave all over the place. The only creatures sad about this will be Virg’n Mary as they won’t be able to sit on the warm top anymore! We walked over to Carrefour yesterday afternoon and got a new wireless keyboard and mouse to replace the very old dirty faded and annoying corded set we’ve had for the last 8 years. So now, we actually have a set of accessories that match the super power of our computer and internet connection…much better. Continuing the upgrade of electronics, I recently bought an e-reader, which is proving to be a great success. I can store hundreds if not thousands of books on here if i choose, and will probably use it a lot when travelling. I’m reading Dan on it right now. It has a snazzy leather cover, and unlike the Kindle or Sony Reader, my Hanlin can read nearly every type of text file imaginable, like word, lit., pdf., epub. and about another 10 varieties. It’s another techy toy that I love!

Yesterday we went out to tea at Thai Town then wandered over to FNAC to get the phone batteries , came home and watched some TV went to bed late and had our super lazy day today: in fact, writing this has been the most exhausting thing I’ve done all day!
Photos: Cass at Thai Town, red lanterns on the street, the girls relaxing on the back of the lounge, the new screen, keyboard and mouse and me with the ereader.

If you're wondering where that beautiful Taiwan video has gone, well I put it under "videos" on the left, or you can view it again here.

The streetscape of Tienmu looks very different at 4.15 in the morning. The newly installed disco light poles were pulsing slowly in garish colours in the predawn gloom, a few strangely sober looking night owls wended their way home and screaming scooters flew through red traffic lights at speed. I held my breath waiting for a typically non-look turner to collect them, but they seemed to negotiate the journey safely, at least while I was waiting for Dan to pick me up.

Onboard, we set off to Nan Ao on the east coast, some 2 hours drive away via the long tunnel on expressway 5. We’d checked the swell reports all-round and had convinced ourselves that everything pointed to an exceptional day at this vaguely mystical break. The only other time we’d made the trip it was fantastic, so we held high hopes. Bumping onto the deserted hard sand before 6.30 we were greeted by every surfers dream: sunrise surf lines of huge size and quality peeling off a craggy point, spray back indicating an offshore wind to clean the faces and a threatening rumble as inshore rocks and boulders were tossed around and against each other.

The next eight hours were quite surreal. The first trick to get out through the murderous shore break was negotiated, and then a building swell saw us wide eyed and trepidatious as we paddled over ever higher powerful swells. We both eased into the break and our first waves confirmed that this was, indeed, massive surf. I snapped my legrope on the second wave and went in to retrieve Dan’s spare and received the first of numerous pummeling on the inner boulder surge zone. Out again, Dan was gaining more confidence and really carving a few up: I followed suit on a biggy and rode it well until I came off and somehow in the swirling power of this wave I snapped another legrope, the board careering in over the boulders and shearing off a good portion of the swallowtail on my new MR board! We got into town to find some tiny Allen keys to borrow and managed to fix the legrope and tape up the back of the board, and then out we went again. Suffice to say we got lots of very big quality waves, I got smashed up many times (including nearly puncturing my stomach with the nose of my board), but to catch these waves was an absolutely unforgettable experience. Eventually, spent physically and emotionally from the highly charged adrenalin filled atmosphere we began the drive home at 4pm. The road was blocked by landslides from the typhoon so it took us 4 hours to get back, and I dragged myself in again some 14 hours after leaving in the morning!

On Friday, I was glad Cass wanted a very lazy day as I was incapable of anything else. I had cuts, nicks and bruises all over both feet, a growing kaleidoscope of colour on my nearly pierced stomach, some wicked purple bruises on my bum and a swollen bruised underarm from gripping the board so tightly under giant walls of whitewater.

We’ve had a 4 day weekend due to the “10/10” local holiday, and boy did we need it! We’ve been going non-stop since getting back in early August and we’re both quite exhausted. Later on Friday afternoon, we wandered down to the MRT and went into town. We went east to the Xin Yi area, had a look around the big Eslite store and marveled at all the very trendy stuff. After that we strolled along the Shin Kong Mitsukoshi buildings’ avenue took in the sights and sounds of an awakening weekend evening and dined at one of our favourites, the Macaroni Grill. We had a delicious meal and shared a bottle of Petaluma Riesling, lobster ravioli and veal Parmigiana and Pannacotta with caramel sauce. We then went and had a drink at the very slick and trendy Brown Sugar jazz bar nearby before, in deference to my cut and bruised feet, decadently got a cab home.

We ventured out to see a movie on Saturday, the surprisingly agreeable “Surrogates”, then made our way over to C’est Jacques for a light lunch…still delicately cooked in the French style by the same young woman/ French trained chef/owner. Evening time we watched the wonderfully nostalgic Hey, Hey it’s Saturday reunion show, which I had downloaded. It brought back lots of memories for us and it was just like putting on a cosy pair of slippers and we were transported away from Taipei to our living room in Hamilton or Georgetown all those years ago…it was great!

Today, we slept in, read our clippings (thanks Mum!) for hours over hot raison toast and coffee, then read our books nearly all day. The day outside is finally a pleasant temperature, but windy and overcast: just the day to laze around and catch up doing next to nothing at all! Photos: lots from Nan Ao, including my damaged board. Various shots from our night in Xin Yi and a shot from our lunch at C’est Jaques. Cass is reading “The Sorrows of an American”( she says it’s a complex vision of contemporary New York life) and I’ve just finished the superb, “The Slap”.

What a devastating week for all in the Asia Pacific region. The shocking intensity of the Padang earthquake, the frightening tsunami that ripped through the low-lying Samoa and Tonga, Manila completely inundated by typhoon and flood and now super typhoon Parma bearing down monstrously on the top end of the Philippines and on its way to Taiwan.

Weather here is already squally and raining, wind whipping up the tunnel-like streets and lanes with amazingly strong gusts, the scooter only just managing to stay upright. The full force of the typhoon will not be felt for at least two-three more days, but the prelude is bad enough. Why am I riding a scooter around in these conditions you may ask?

Today is the NRL grand final and I have been down to SOGO to get some wheat bread, over to Takashimaya to get some Crown Lagers (at criminally inflated prices I might add!), then to Papa Poulet for three whole rotisserie chickens. We’re planning to butter the bread, peel the chicken pieces from the bone and basically just let the boys indulge in an old fashioned medieval feast at half time. The chicken is delicious, the ceremony never grand so we thought this would be a slightly healthier alternative to buckets of KFC or pizzas. Of course, we’d love to have the unhealthiest, but best, food of all for a football game: some Aussie meat pies. The trouble is that all our sources have gone…we’ll hope they make a comeback somewhere, some time.

The game is on at 2pm Taiwan time, with the lead up from 1.30. So, come to Taiwan and you can have an old fashioned afternoon grand final time! We’re not sure who is coming, but the regular suspects will be here, including Shaun, Wol, Lewy and Gurecki. I expect Brandon will be here along with Terry and possibly Andrew V and Bondy as well. If they all turn up, we’ll be a bit squeezy. I’m writing this in the rather odd time of the very early afternoon, because I certainly won’t feel like it later.

Just to top off our natural disasters, we were woken to a rockin’ rollin’ earthquake last night about 1.30am. We waited while the building swayed and rolled and then let our beating hearts calm down before getting back to sleep. It was a 6.3 on the Richter and had its epicenter just ssw of Hualien, unusually on land this time instead of off the coast. Somehow it produced only slight damage…the buildings here don’t look much but they can certainly withstand a good shake.

Right, I have to get off to get the ice, then pack a few beers in it before the visitors arrive. I am reading the fantastic Aussie award winner, The Slap, and Cass has switched across to my Silk Riders. Photos: I’m determined to post some from this afternoon…I hope I remember to take some in all the excitement!
P.S. Well, it's a little after all the excitement, and of course we forgot to take any photos at all! I'll post a few tomorrow of my team and some kiddies just for a bit of colour....Melbourne wins...oh no!!

No post last Sunday....sorry to readers. I just got caught up doing, well, pretty much nothing! Take a few minutes to check the video above...it gives a different perspective on Taiwan: this island is as beautiful as I think it is.