Cass survived yet another year at the all fun, all activities, all consuming Grade 8 camp. This loathsome task is a chore each year, as any teacher who has been on a camp well knows: there is no down time and the 24/7 nature of the commitment makes it enervating and physically and emotionally taxing. To compound her experience, on the first of her seashore hikes which she leads each year, she rolled one of her ankles quite badly, necessitating ice, elevation, help back to the main camp etc. The privations of the campsite didn’t help, but she had good support from the nurse who regularly strapped and supplied with ice the injured ankle.
I was greeted with a limping tired girl on Friday afternoon, but she got home and did her icing and elevation all weekend, and the result is pretty good this evening.

We managed to escape the approaching lashing teeth of Typhoon Fanapi on Saturday night and went to our traditional post camp restaurant where Cass breathes in the fine dining experience at Wendels, we both order up large and generally wash away the camp for another year. She always relishes the chance to be clean, couth and elegant again: her nails had been busily attended to by her busy team of girls at Takashimaya in the afternoon and the meal was the last restorative measure needed.

The typhoon struck with a vengeance during the night and we awoke a number of times as the cats cried or the vicious squalls pounded and drummed away at our usually very protected windows. It’s always a little nerve-wracking: I lie awake tensely at times, half expecting a giant window blowout and the catastrophe that would follow: it’s never happened, but shaking, rattling and bowing giant windows don’t do much to ease the spirits! This morning the roads were littered with trees debris and the odd awning is askew. The calm that follows the storm is usually very interesting as well: people tentatively poking their way outside, weaving around the rubbish and slowly re-entering the world. I snuck out to get us some sandwiches for lunch and had to bypass a few usual stores as they were still shuttered up.

As is the pattern of recent years, these typhoons do little but seriously inconvenience us on our days off. If it had struck on any other night bar Friday or Saturday, we would certainly have had a “typhoon day” off school. These days are usually the sweetest of holidays: an unexpected and late notice holiday, precipitated by approaching violent weather and heralded by the much anticipated “phone tree” at about 9 p.m. In fact, we did get some calls from colleagues, but only to inform us that the campus was closed on Sunday……so what??!

We’ve had a lazy day today and apart from my brief outside sojourn, we’ve been content, to read, watch T.V. and play with various electronic toys (well, I was…!) while listening to the wind and rain dance in the trees outside. We’ve got a P.D. day on Wednesday, but this will no doubt add to the stress of the week: they seem to be filled with so much busy work these days: we’d much rather just teach our kiddies.
I’m reading a book about watercolors as well as The Other and Cass is still enjoying her The Elegance of the Hedgehog

We’ve had a really low key weekend, mainly because the infamous middle school camp rapidly approaches. Continuing sapping heat has not helped us to get out and about the real de-motivator is Cassy’s appointment with kids and colleagues for 5 days of 24 hour a day “fun”. Even though it is quite bearable when she is there, it is always exhausting. The Grade 8 version of camp is pretty much back-to-basics after a couple of years of resort/hotel type stays away, the Grade 8s get down and dirty and about as rough as this fairly pampered  group could handle. Cass is an old hand at all the activities and leads some very vigorous hikes that the kids have trouble completing, so she tends to get very tired (especially after doing it twice!). Her innovation last year of starting another activity based on Newcastle’s own 24 hour shoot out, where small groups make an in-camera movie using various obligatory props will be a go again. It is a great activity for both the supervisors and the kids and has an added benefit. The instant communication, camera savvy generation can gaze lovingly upon themselves each night as the movies are replayed for the entire assembled throng!

I had Book Club on Friday night and we went to our traditional haunt, The Red Hut. It was good fun, and although our new members didn’t turn up and one was missing, we had the usual rollicking time and plenty of tall and true tales were told and heard. Curbside drinking Taiwan beers from cans till the Hut opens is a tradition all its own and a quirky Taiwan one. Where else do you think you could drink and guffaw in a public park before being moved on rather quickly? Gotta love Taiwan.

We had another of our occasional weekend meals which I’ll call “lundinner” for want of a better word. We’ve found we can enjoy a meal at one of the popular Tienmu restaurants in mid-afternoon without a crowd and getting instant service and not running into a thousand colleagues and students. Off to Takashimaya on the way home to get some cans of Sanitarium Rediburger for the vegetarian brigade (including Cass) on camp. After the food service guy at school couldn’t source the vegi patties, I rang KGB burgers downtown and they assured me they could do it, just needed to ring back with a price. They rang back and said they couldn’t do it at all, so we felt obligated to try to find a replacement. I even eat this stuff, so I reckon it will be fine!

In between footy finals, I ducked out to scale the intimidating 1000 steps of the Tienmu Gu Dao today. I’ve been nursing my chalky knee for a while, and just sticking to the treadmill most days. Let me tell you, despite me reassuring myself that the treadmill on a steep incline and a reasonable speed replicated the stairs….I was WRONG! I was in bad shape by the half way mark and had to slow off my usual pace to make it to the top. A good three minutes slower than usual, I was a lather of sweat and shaky legged by the top. I wandered along the path for a while at the top before heading back down. It was scorching!

Meanwhile, back home, Cass has been researching all the hotels for her trip to France at Christmas. Who knew there were that many options in Nante and Bordeaux, let alone Paris! She has been working very hard, but has narrowed the options down considerably.

I’ve got a new phone, an HTC Wildfire, one of the so-called Iphone 4 “killers” . Made by a Taiwanese company, this thing is red hot. It can do all the iphone can, but has the added feature which I needed of a superb camera. The 5mp camera is great (check the photos today), but playing flash video and using Google’s Android platform makes my iPod Touch even seem a little clunky: I never thought I’d say that! Anyway, as I play with it more through the week I’ll discover heaps more about it…the GPS locator is already freaking me out….sorry, weird tech nerd voices are speaking to me. Check out this link if you’re interested. So, Cass off to camp and I am hoping to be a good carer for Virg’n Mary this week. Photos are various shots from the trail: lots of signs, northern Taipei in a heat/smog haze from ½ way down.

Footy fever is alive and well in Taipei as the Australia Network decided to show all the AFL finals from the weekend live. A group of us took advantage on Friday night to watch an extremely entertaining first final between Geelong and St. Kilda made even more interesting by an absolute flurry of text messages between Wal or me with Josh who is based in Singapore. Every bad decision, turning point and mishap was analyzed in 20 characters or less! We had a great time and it was a good start to the finals series. Even though the Knights won’t feature, I’m also looking forward to the NRL semis starting next week.

On Saturday night, we decided to go to a restaurant downtown that we haven’t tried but has very good reviews. Unfortunately, we were too late to book for a busy Saturday. Instead we managed to book in to Tienmu’s own fine dining establishment, Le Jardin, which we visited relatively recently for the Craw’s wedding party. It has moved from its old Chung Chen location and is now hidden away in the ground floor of an apartment building just off section 7. They have spared no expense on the décor and the general ambiance is one of luxuriant calm. It is a beautiful space with wood paneling, soft music and trickling water in pots scattered in the outdoor courtyard. We were even entertained by a tiny kitten while we waited for our first course. It played then slept, found its mother, suckled, nuzzled then cavorted some more. The food was just delectable: we both ended up having the exact same thing with a slab of salmon followed by chicken consommé. Then came the beef medallion and the most decadently rich chocolate cake/pudding you could imagine. All courses were artistically plated up (isn’t that what you’re supposed to say now in the Masterchef age?!) and served on fine china with sparkling cutlery.

Out to the beach today and though the sun had dipped behind a few clouds this morning to lower the temperature, it was always a false dawn of hope for cooler weather. However as we climbed up the back slopes of Yangminshan a not uncommon sight greeted us. Just in sight of the belching fumaroles an almost saturnine drape of cloud and drizzle slowly falls on the landscape. Cars slow down to a crawl as if we’ve entered an alien landscape and the pall of mist and rain follows us all the way down to the Jinshan plain. Once there though, the rain lifted, the sun again sat behind a cloud and we enjoyed a few hours of very pleasant temperatures.

Cass has nominated “Jinshan number 2” as her favourite beach. It has a cliff top panoramic viewing point with some conveniently placed boulders for sitting and viewing. She took her latest Australian House and Garden magazine, armed herself with the camera and warned me she’d just take a few early on before settling into her reading material. I had a great time out in the water. It was a luke warm bath and hardly refreshing, but the surf was powerfully churning up a wafer thin bank and providing some fast hollow little waves if you dared. All my surf gear was loaded down with sand by the time I got out, and although a bit exhausting it was lots of fun. Cass got us some refreshments from the nearest convenience store and was stoked to find a “zero” version of Sarsaparilla. The weirdest thing here is that the only low cal soft drink available is Diet Coke (up till now at least). I suppose the local default body doesn’t really worry about sugared soft drinks: Taiwanese people are envy producing svelte!

Great trip home again, but a bit funny as I’d forgotten to bring some dry shorts. I drove home in my undies, asked Cass to throw some shorts off the balcony, which I subsequently retrieved, donned, then drove up to school to garage the car and scooter home! I l left the camera at school this weekend, so what we have above is from Cassy’s school file (her team pic this year) and some she took with our old camera today at the beach. I’m being very slow on my Connelly, but Cass has moved on to The Elegance of the Hedgehog which she reports as alternating philosophical viewpoints from characters…translated from the French.