Taipei Life

Cass had some real excitement through the week when she went to pick up her early birthday present from the perennial talisman (or as I like to call him, "The oily snake-oil salesman": no, not really!!), Joe the Jeweler. Sequestered in a tiny shopfront with some massively heavy hidden fortification in a thread of an alley down in the Japanese quarter, Joe has done some big business over the years with the bejeweled dolls of Tienmu and wider Taipei. Cass herself has done some pretty serious business with Joe over the years and his product is always superior and, according to Cass, right on the money. Maybe Cassy's idea of price and mine are slightly out of kilter: all I see are great wads of notes flowing from my hands straight into Joe's and only a few shiny trinkets are given in return. It just doesn't seem like a fair trade to me, but Cass always seems mighty pleased with the transactions, so perhaps I'm missing something! The words, "pilgrims" and "Indians" spring to mind, but I won't delve any deeper on that one! Suffice to say, she now has some more diamonds to adorn her fingers and she has some "in the pipeline" to be picked up after our return from Thailand.

We were both suffering from a cold this weekend after a week of spluttering kids and two days for cass at least of shaking hands with over 100 sets of parents. She endured her "stadium style" parent teacher interviews over the past few days, so it was no wonder she got a sore throat and little wonder that she icked up some lurgy. In my case, eight year olds are not famous for their hygeine and after the third or fourth time I was sneezed all over while helping the little charmers, I knew I was going to cop something bad!

We did struggle out against the germ-filled tide on Saturday afternoon and feasted on our favourite "Eat Burgers", before wandering across to SOGO and Wendel's to get some specialized supplies for the week. (By specialized, I'm referring to bread that tastes normal and isn't overloaded with a cup and a half of sugar and some plain yoghurt: Taipei's not completely normal just yet!) After that, we were both pretty exhausted so we drifted on home for some more lounge time.

Sunday, we didn't feel much better, but Cassy spent a vast majority of the day, tweaking and re-vamping her newly written Shakespeare unit for school. They've been tasked with an introductory unit of a smorgasbord of all things Shakespeare which is a pretty tough ask at Grade 8 level. She spent a lot of time on it yesterday and seems pretty satisfied that it will work well, so she feels it was time well spent. I watched a plethora of sport on TV: I was streaming the surfing final from Snapper Rocks, flicking across to the rugby league, then watched the cricket final with Sri Lanka. In between, my stir-crazy tendencies went into screaming overload so I took the scooter out for a bit of a ride-around. I went through some back streets in and around the surrounding suburbs and found all sorts of interesting nooks and crannies and discovered some potential new walking trails in the hills up behind the area between Beitou and Guandu.

I've finally finished that Stephen King book and it was a bit of a marathon but well worth it: a throwback to some of his early classics, with some plot gymnastics that had me totally flummoxed. Photos: Cassy snapping a fan of cash pre "Joe", Eat Burger, Buddha and blue truck, a crumbling house up behind Guandu, a crazy sign in Beitou central(!), scooter, lazy cats and a gelato affogato on a lazy Saturday afternoon...very European!