We went downtown on Thursday evening for what would pass as our Thanksgiving feast after demurring on a very kind invitation from some friends to join them for turkey and pumpkin pie and all the trimmings. All the invitees have hordes of little kids, so we weren't sure we were up for all the excitement on this occasion! Instead, we taxied down to Romano's Macaroni Grill (see video above) to wine and dine Italian style, including the most superb operatic accompaniment from a tiny local singer! How did she produce such volume and range from that tiny frame? The meal was superb and we savoured each course in turn, Cassy declaring she had at least two new favourites.
We were keen to get out in the evening after the day had been spent watching some wonderful test cricket on my iPad app streaming through Apple TV onto the HD TV. Somehow, the Vodafone app has not realized we are not in Australia so it has not been "geo-blocked". I paid the princely sum of $12.99 for a season pass of all tests, one-dayers and the Twenty20s so we're able to watch to our heart's content. As Thursday was a dreary, rainy and miserable day, we felt no guilt putting the feet up and enjoying a great batting display from the Aussies.
Friday was a similarly lazy day, but I did get myself downtown again, braving the Saturday evening crush on the MRT to source some travel books for my darling wife. Cassy seems slightly unimpressed by the apps I have downloaded onto the iPad and phone for our trip, so I decided I would indulge her need for hard-copy books and get them at the cavernous "PageOne" bookstore in the famous 101 building in Hsin Yi. After being bodily train crushed for 45 minutes or so, I was eventually spat out to stroll for another 20 minutes or so through to the 101. I managed to find some pretty comprehensive guides to Krakow, Berlin and Budapest, the three cities we're planning to visit this Christmas (more later), before getting back to re-join Shaun and Wol for a couple of beers at Ulis after their long, wet day playing golf at one of Taiwan's most elite courses.
I got up before 5 a.m. on Saturday! Yes, really nuts, I know, but Danno had messaged me the night before saying he and Zef along with his visiting brother John were going to head to the infamous "Greenball" to catch the approaching high tide. As it is strewn with razor sharp rocks in the paddle out/clean up zone, it's always a good idea to go when there is just a wash of water at least over the top of the rocky carpet! It ended up being a really good session but I was terribly rusty in my skills. In turn, the car decided to have braking issues on the way over the mountain, so I cautiously came the long way home on the flats through Sanji and Damshui. I called in to the Pillbox for old times sake, and even though the tide was not ideal, it was still shaping up quite nicely. Check the story on pointyhat here. Oh by the way, after nearly 5 hours away, I still managed to wake a certain sleeping beauty when I got back!!
I continue to ache today from all my stretched and underused "surfing muscles", but was very stiff and sore yesterday! More cricket was watched, we went and did some shopping, then went down to Eddie's Cantina for an early dnner. The weather had cleaned up and it was a gorgeous autumn night so we walked there and back. It was a delightful end to what had been a very relaxing break.
Photos: a farewell card we made for one of Cassy's departing colleagues, a shot in the lift going down from Macaroni Grill, various scenes of Hsin Yi nighttime glitz, country cooking chickens and their wood burning pots near the Pillbox and a fake workman in the middle of the road. The last shot is of a very rare, deserted corridor at school taken on a Sunday, where against every tenet of my personal religion, I went into work to crunch some numbers for reports!