Football finals fever has struck with a vengeance across two codes, and coupled with some cricket in Sri Lanka and a rugby world cup just beginning, there just wasn't enough time to watch sport this weekend. Cass has been fairly immune to this excitement for some unknown reason(!): although she did join me to watch the mighty Knights bow out of the NRL competition this afternoon to the cheatin' Storm. I've also flicked across to the Aussies in Sri Lanka doing a resurgent job, the Wallabies cleaning up the Italians in NZ and some highlights of Sam Stosur making the final at the US Open. High speed, high definition streaming internet is a beautiful and wondrous thing!
I joined a group odf dedicated AFL fans at Brandon's new apartment to watch the first and most interesting AFL final on Friday night. We had a great time and were full of praise for his new place: it's very slick and should see their Taipei longevity increase a bit as a result. The World Cup tipping crew (of whom I am the co-administrator) had a get-together at the Patio 84 (old Green Bar), but we weren't keen to see the All Blacks demolish Tonga and hear the Kiwis gloat about it, so decided instead to have a little private party before and after the AFL viewing.
Cass and I hadn't been to the new location of one of our favourite Taipei restaurants, Romano's Macaroni Grill, so we decided to have a latish, lavish lunch downtown on Saturday. The mercury had inched up a few more notches on the weekend and the heat was oppressive. We love catching the train normally, but just the getting to and from the station was almost unbearably hot, so enervating that we were on the point of collapse by the time we arrived. After a recuperative San Pellegrino and a relaxing view of the confluence of Dun Hua North Road and Min Sheng East Road from the 7th floor, we were ready for our Italian feast! Unfortunately, they had not sourced the veal this week as it was of inferior quality, but our second choices were magnificent. A highlight was our entree tasting platter...sensational calamari, bruschetta, and mushrooms stuffed with crab....yum! Not being able to face the journey back to the station, we hailed one of Taipei's ubiqutous yellow cabs and were dropped off at the Hiroka pre-school near our place to ge greeted by a very unusual sight.
The tiny boutique pre-school just round the corner from us is a Japanese language school so most of the ex-pat Japanese with tiny kiddies are customers. They were hosting their annual carnival or matsuri, but we arrived just at the right time to see very cute little girls in traditional kimono, boys in pajama style festival wear and a performance by a troop of mini Taiko drummers! They were really very skilled and we were most impressed: these drums are hard to get a decent sound from I know, as my lone experience 26 years ago was an utter disaster (for me) when a similarly aged tiny drummer took the sticks from me and produced a much healthier sound than the one I managed to make! You can check a little video of their performance above or right here.
Owing to by cold, (or massive man flu that I am currently enduring with no complaint), we haven't done a lot today. Cass made her way over to do the grocery shopping and dragged it back through the heat, side stepping a massive crew from Hakka TV filming a show in our little park on the opposite side of the river. We're going to be on the lookout for a show in the near future where a foreign woman carries red shopping bags behind the actors in a park scene!
Cass has just one more "normal" week of school before she again treks off to the north east coast with the entire 8th grade for their five days of blissful camping: you can imagine she's all aquiver in anticipation and excitement. I'm back on the last legs of my Lisbeth Salander book after being distracted by the amazing "Unbroken" while Cass is getting very little chance to make a dent in Hart's War...she's grading way too many papers these days as her student load has increased by heaps this year. Photos: a dedicated coffee machine shop (how things have changed here in Taipei), shots from and in Macaroni Grill, cute Japanese kids at their festival.
