We’ve had a busy week and are expecting a similar one next week as the term hurtles towards semester break. Reports to be written, meetings to attend and normal teaching commitments will have us very ready for a holiday. We’re going to Sumba, to stay at the Nihiwatu resort there. It’s an unusual trip for us as we don’t go for the 5 star luxury as a rule, but this place with its combination of sensational accommodation and food with exclusive access to one of the world’s very best waves was impossible to ignore. We hope it lives up to its rep! We’ll fly into Denpasar on Saturday; spend a day and a night in Kuta, then take a tiny domestic plane for an hour’s flight to Sumba. We just can’t wait to get there.

Dan is going downtown on Tuesday to pick up my board (along with several of his) which has been getting its tail section reshaped and fixed after its heavy beating at Nan Ao. I’ll get to Indonesia not having surfed on it for ages, so I hope I get a day or two of gentler swell to get used to it again.

Cass had a great Saturday night out on the town. On of our colleagues gave us two tickets to a piano recital at the National Concert theatre, I was otherwise engaged, so Cass arranged to go with her friend, Kristin. They booked in for dinner at a Chilean restaurant near the theatre, “Salsa”, and had a superb meal with just the right touch of class without being too stuffy and formal. The pair of pianists was celebrating playing together for 30 years, a remarkable achievement. The concert was held in the outwardly impressive concert hall and the interior design was just as impressive and comfortable. They thoroughly enjoyed the concert by Wille and Yeh, the piano duet seamless and playing music for two pianos by Poulenc, Brahms, Rachmaninov and Bach.

I was also out and about on Saturday night, but at the polar opposite end of the cultural scale! We introduced Taipei to the concept of the Santa Claus pub crawl and had a rollicking good time. Little kiddies on the street were amazed to see the 10 or so Santas walking along and we took the time to talk to them all and sent them all away very excited. The night was a great success and even though we only had a relatively small contingent (mainly because of other end-of-year parties etc), I’m suspecting that if we do it again next year the numbers might swell when word leaks out about the great time we had.

Today we saw the rather forgettable, although it was enjoyable at the time, movie called Law Abiding Citizen: Janie Foxx was very smooth. After, we took advantage of the stellar weather to go for a spin over to Beitou on the scooter, where we checked out a big clothing warehouse. We’re glad we did as though even though it had endless racks of rubbish, it also had some great gems hidden amongst them. We spent very little and came away with two Ralph Lauren jackets, Cassy’s a pure wool tweedy style blazer and mine a plain black jacket with a parka lining. We also bought a fine knit wool jumper and a cotton shirt for me for work…
We’re both looking forward to our Papa Poulet chicken for tea, about now, so I’m finishing! Photos: Cass and Kristin at Salsa, inside the concert hall, Cass in the clothing warehouse and some santas on the loose!

We’ve been here so long now, that it’s easy to forget that there are still some really weird and quirky things going on in Taipei that we’ve slowly got used to over the years. Many, many other things have changed a lot and I suspect will continue to change at a rapid pace, but there are some customs and cultural peculiarities that I’ve been thinking about that stand the test of time.

We don’t have a garbage bin. We put the garbage outside the kitchen door on the back fire escape till one or other of us gets motivated to take it to the garbage truck. These days, we recycle nearly everything into separate bundles, so at any one time, apart from the slowly rotting stuff outside, we have lots of huge bags full of “clean” stuff, like paper, flat plastic, bottled plastic, glass, styrofoam etc. It’s all quite hilarious. We could do even more, but we’ve drawn the line at the red and blue buckets. You are meant to put all your food scraps and waste into little coloured buckets, one for pig swill and the other for stuff the pigs won’t eat. Then, at regular intervals, we’re meant to take these buckets and empty them into bigger buckets which are slung behind the garbage truck.

The garbage trucks can’t get into all the tiny little lanes and alleys here, so we have to take the refuse to the main roads, where there are drop off points. We have to wait with our bags and throw them into the back of the truck. You cannot leave your stuff for others and you need to use special bags from the 7/11 that have our district marked on them. It’s kind of cool because it becomes a user pay system and means that the local people are recycling to the max to avoid paying for more bags. The amount of stuff some people can jam into these blue bags is unbelievable! The little recycling truck follows the big truck and we then wait in line to deliver our recycling. All the different categories have different days and they never overlap. Luckily we have an old lady who intercepts us and takes our paper and plastic bottles, but she’s not keen on the styrofoam, flat plastic or glass, so we take that ourselves. When there is a decent crowd waiting for the truck, or it arrives a touch late, the wild scenes have to be seen to be believed: I’ve been hit in the head with flying blue bags and little old ladies have almost knocked me down in their haste to get their bags into the truck. The other bizarre thing is that the truck plays various classical tunes through its speakers and the unwary or uninitiated foreigner has been known to rush out to try to buy an ice-cream!

Car parking is at a premium in Taipei City. The oft heard rumour is that there are not enough parking spots, public and private, to house all the cars in Taipei, so the city relies on a certain number always being driven around at any given moment. People who live in our lane have taken to using white paint on the road to paint their own car parks on the tar and used Chinese characters to denote a private parking place, hoping people will leave the space free for them. The incredible thing is that it actually seems to work. About a year ago, one of our neighbours actually installed a huge heavy steel gate that he could swing across “his” park…on a public thoroughfare! We’re lucky that we have a park in the school’s basement car park, but that necessitates of course, that we need to get to school to use the car. Sometimes we walk, sometimes we scooter, but all the time it is an inconvenience many at home would wonder at. If we need to park anywhere in the city environs, it is just about impossible to find a park on the street anywhere. Basement paid parking is the go and entrepreneurs all over the city have made lots of money in this business alone.

Well, just a couple of things: there are plenty more, so I might re-visit this theme from time to time. We had a super lazy weekend this weekend: we’re in the throes of grading stuff, writing reports etc, so took the opportunity to do plenty of that while watching a couple of days of cricket. We went for a stroll in the perfect weather here this afternoon, but apart from that, have pretty much done nothing: bliss! The cricket picture has been sensational because we had to get our computer helper/ super hero Dick here through the week as our beaming system from computer to TV had gone on the blink. He installed a new high frequency job which is amazing: any streaming on computer now looks like a regular TV show when we beam it across. Photos are a bit sad today: lots of fish down at Carrefour (you can tell we’re in Asia) and a shot of one end of the new beamer. I’ve just finished a sensational autobiography of Gary Paulsen’s first 10 years….couldn’t put it down. It’s called Eastern Sun, Winter Moon. Cass is now going to pick it up. She is just finishing our David book: it’s fantastic.