One of the world's Youtube "5 minutes of fame" sensations was recruited to spend a week with our kiddies this week gone. John J has had a fleeting burst of "fame" as the double dream hands man, and has appeared on all the fluffy American shows like Ellen and America's Got Talent( where he was buzzed out rapidly in ignominious fashion!). I must say he was pretty good; even though he acted like a total goose throughout his short tenure, the kids were eating out of his hands. Anyone who can get a full auditorium of primary school kids hopping and a-bopping like he did has a rare talent. I took a few videos of the fun, starting with this and ending with this one. There are even more on Taipei Life's Youtube channel which is here.

Well, we're in a euphoric haze after the Aussies slaughtered the Poms in the return Ashes series first test in Brisbane. We were glued to the action for most of the weekend and only strayed away when there was a break in play or stumps were declared (3 pm our time). This meant a very subdued weekend in regard to daily excursions, but we did manage a hop, skip and jump across to Eat Burger and SOGO on Saturday afternoon/evening.

Even though we enjoyed a rare weekend of slouching around home and telly gazing, it's rare for us and I usually feel the need to get out and do something active or interesting on at least one of the days of the weekend. Feeling a little slovenly, I took stock of our activity meter and realized that we probably do pretty well most of the time. I do approximately 500 push-ups each and every week, get myself up the 1000 steps at irregular intervals and across to the coast to hit the surf occasionally. Cass pumps some iron on alternate days for her shoulders, biceps and triceps and does a massive cardio/anaerobic workout every Saturday by lugging all our shopping back from the supermarket through the park, across the bridge and through another park home (and before you say anything, I offer to help ALL the time, but the offer is politely refused!) Added to that are our Youbike adventures and our great long walks when we go downtown. The most constant and valuable exercise of all however, is our 40 minute walking commute each day. It's no chore: we rev up for the day ahead in the morning, debrief on the way home and never fail to spot some uniquely Taiwanese quirkiness or two daily!

Just because of this most magnificent healthy living we went down to Eat Burger on Saturday night to dilute some of our hard work! Wow, this burger is great....the freshness of the ingredients, the flavours etc. keep us coming back. The restaurant itself, as well as the nearby SOGO, have all their Christmas lights and trees going full on, despite the fact it is so far away and they have absolutely no cultural or religious link to this celebration at all: it is however, I suppose, yet another way to try and prise money from the consumer wallet. They got a few of our loose coins for dinner as well as for a Heat Tech scarf I bought at Uniqlo for my Christmas trip.

Where are we off to at Christmas break? Cass is making her fifth trip to France, this time reprising for the third time her TGV touring trip of three different French regions with her Mum. They will visit Paris, Lille, Strasbourg and Rheims this time. I suggested that she must have covered all areas of the country by now, but Cass begs to differ! Cass has all her fast train tickets bought and they have been delivered to us here. She'll meet Valerie in Hong Kong and they'll fly together to Paris. I've recently decided to go and see my old mate Gurecki in Nagasaki and check out his brand new school and home. I'll arrive in Fukuoka, spend a little time there and travel to Nagasaki. On my arrival home (mid-afternoon Christmas day) I plan to do a little east coast surfing tour here in Taiwan if I get motivated. The Boxing Day test, however, might tempt me to spend a little time at home though!

Photos: kid's party at school, road crossing, park renovations, kids in my room hard at work, SOGO and Eatburger Christmas and John J. I also included a map of the new and proposed MRT lines in the city: a new line linking our line all the way through to Xin Yi and Taipei 101 (no changes) just opened on Sunday....we'll check it out soon!

Sorry to my adoring readership of multitudes (!) that I didn't get this post out as expected yesterday. I was ensconsed in what might actually gain the title of most boring, day-long meeting of the year if such an award were being handed out. Suffice to say I had no spare time and by the time we got home I was "mentally drained"! This late posting will be severely truncated as I just have a very small window in which to write.

We ate at Din Tai Feng during the week and the dumplings and xia long bao were as exquisite as ever. The intricacy and uniformity of each one beggars belief and the perfect temperature at which they arrive is also part of a military precision. To remove the bamboo lids from the steaming serve at the table, knowing that the soup contained in each xia long bao will be at a perfect temperature, piping hot but not scolding, is a neat trick. The last bun can be lifted from the cotton mat just before it cools and sticks which would allow the soup to burst forth: also an amazing timing feat. We love this place!

My latest piece of memorabilia arrived back from the framers mid-week as well and I am stoked with it. Louis Armstrong played the Cave Nightclub/Restaurant (Vancouver) back in early 1963 and signed this handbill at that time. I had it framed simply with a wider black mat, simple black frame with a narrow immediate mat of white to offset the aging handbill itself: it looks great!

We had a wonderful day on Sunday. We roused ourselves relatively early to get showered and dressed and out for breakfast. Initially we planned on eating near the cinema then going to see a film, but our chosen destination, JB Diner, had seats only at a common bench. We decided to get across to the cinema, book our tickets for later in the day then scooter downtownish, across the Fulin bridge to the relatively new "1Bite2Go". It is a classic urban reno in very modern style, hinting at modern industrial style with its big black light fittings, exposed steel roof trusses and big open warehouse feel. It's a little like a mini aircraft hanger adorned with quirky and interesting photos on every available wall space and the tables diner style with tomato sauce, mustard, tabasco, salt and pepper all on hand in giant size. The breakfast were sublime and Cassy's french toast with home-made strawberry sauce was melt-in-the-mouth while my big fry up breakfast was just right for the time and place!

We scootered home and did this and that before taking up our appointment at the cinema for "Captain Phillips". It was an extraordinary, tension-filled, hand held camera rush of an experience, with Tom Hanks delivering a stand-out performance I might have guessed was beyond him. It was a thrilling ride and we both highly recommend it!

Photos: our local temple lantern looked pretty in the twilight, Cass catching the first of her mushroom vegetarian dumplings, "beer bites" at Ulis on Friday, 1Bite2Go shots as well as Satchmo's distinct and bold signature from the early 60s.

I've enjoyed a scintillating day today as the bi-annual round of testing for my kids gets underway. We're off class all week to get the tests done, as the majority of them need to be done "one-on-one". I'm brain dead with a throbbing headache after spending all day saying the exact same thing and getting pretty much the same reply in the initial speaking and listening tests. Oh well, just 4 more days to go!

After our house was broken into last July when we were in Australia, we've bolstered security in various ways. We've got a safety deposit box for a cache of Cassy's jewellry and various other ingenious spots around the house where things can be secreted away from prying thieves. We changed the lock on the giant outer steel door to a quadruple lock combination, which, while a pain to lock and unlock, is pretty much impregnable. The last piece in this Houdiniesque parade of steel security was the replacement of the old wooden inner door with a steel security replacement.

If some magician manages to get through the outer door (which would take an oxy-acetylene torch or equivalent) they now have to deal with a solid steel inner door with a steel door frame bolted about a foot into the surrounding walls. We stayed home for about 4 hours for the installation of this superhero of doors on Saturday. It was an amazing operation involving three men, precision fitting the new after mass destruction of the old door and frame. It entailed a whole lot of drilling and bashing before subsequent filling and finessing. The lounge room was an unholy mess as old mate decided that our marble floor was a good spot to make his cement slurry to fill in around the door frame.....ohhh! Cass and I did an industrial cleanup later and got the inner and outer doors and surrounds cleaner than they've probably ever been!

After all that effort, we decided the only reward was a trip downtown to the noteworthy and oft-visited Romano's Macaroni Grill. The exquisite fare at this establishment is always of the same sublime quality, the service outstanding and the quirky house singers always give us some unusual entertainment. Last time a tiny opera singer with a huge voice graced the dining room, while this time it was a honey-throated young man soprano playing a ukelele! Good fun.

The trip down was a bit more than we wanted after our busy day and we got crushed onto the third of three trains. After swaying with the crowd who were packed in like sardines in a tin, we demurred on the return underground trip and lashed out on a taxi door-to-door for the trip home.

Sunday was the last soak of dripping humidity for the season we hope...it was a moist mop of a thing, and we sweltered for most of the day before relenting and switching on the air-conditioner. Today and the rest of the week are supposed to be composed of "sprinkles" or "showers" and lovely autumn temperatures around the mid 20s....at last!

Photos: The escalator between trains two and three on Saturday night (it was only 5.30 p.m.!), Macaroni Grill, some of my kids hard at work last week, and the new "impregnable barricade"!

In this age of teaching where I have a laptop tablet, an iPad, a document camera, a data projector, and an Apple TV in most classes, as well as a smart-board in others along with various remotes, electronic pointers and electronic data capability coming from every portal, it was refreshing to see one of my fifth grader's "choice" pieces last week. She bypassed all the electronic wizardry at her disposal, eschewed the PowerPoint and the Prezi or Sliderocket presentations and unashamedly rejected the internet as her source of text and graphics. Instead she used real books, synthesized the information adroitly, and designed the most wonderful poster to which she spoke. It's a beautiful thing in an educational world seemingly bedazzled by electronic tools and tricks: the other kids were bewitched by this "different" presentation and were planning to do something similar for their own next pieces!

I've always been one of the first to embrace some new tool or technology in either my professional or personal life, a trait innately imprinted from my dad and shared by at least one of my siblings (hi Hel!). I'm an eager up-taker of the latest and greatest phone, computer, tablet, stereo, camera etc and find that "new toy" to be almost irresistible at times. My drawers and cupboards provide a sad indictment of my cavalier approach to old models, with circuit boards of once glittering cellphone and iPad technology, leads and power cords, screens and chips, all littering these murky spaces like cars about to crushed in a junkyard compactor.

That said, the gratuitous use of electronic gadgets in education continues to perplex me a little. Even IT teachers like to repeat the mantra that these shiny new objects are just tools to get the job done towards a learning goal, not the goal itself. When administrators get their sparkling hi tech presents they are so enamored of them, so loathe to let them sit idle for any longer than the battery takes to charge, that they start to use them as the goal itself. I begin to wonder if that is why reading and writing scores across the world appear to be falling, sliding inexorably year by year. Are we using these jewels of technology just as dazzling baubles, not letting kids sit, think, infer and produce like we used to? I'm still a fan of my toys, but I think some teachers and administrators become so blinded by the light that they can't see the wood for the trees. Enough tired idioms for now?!

We had a super weekend as per usual! Eddie's Cantina was at the end of our Sunday stroll, so we indulged in an early dinner. The "pencil school" near our place is eponymously named (by us at least!), and Amelia Earhart done "old-school" style. I'm reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell and Cassy is reading Dear Life by Alice Munro