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.