One of the coolest vibes in Taipei City these days is that surrounding the 1914 Huashan Creative Park district down on Bade Road in the mid-eastern downtown. There is usually an eclectic mix of artists, performers, musicians and other neo-punk/hippie wantabes hanging around while couples, groups, and families with little kids intermingle in the cavernous halls, fresh garden pockets and alleyways of curiosity.

An artist's squat enclave for many years, the city government decided to embrace the modern usage of the generous site and instead of fencing it off and banning people, decided to form a co-op to restore and run it properly. The result is a real triumph and to have such spaces with accompanying open land in the middle of a hyper-dense city like Taipei is truly amazing.

The buildings are mega shabby chic, yet the crumbling facades belie the solidity of the structures: the exterior has been deliberately neglected for the look and feel desired, yet the cavity brick walls of the old factories and warehouses have been restored and rebuilt where necessary.

There were tap dancing piano accordionists, people in weird looking koala suits promoting a "Study In Melbourne" display, bubble blowing balloonists, giant versions of popular TV puppets and even a foreign guy who regaled the crowd with jokes in Mandarin in between juggling and performing other body twisting contortions! The crowd built during the afternoon and after wandering in and out of various trendy little shops and stalls all filled with essential Asian wonders, we dropped in to the industrial trendy Italian cafe in a side alley.

The chairs were the steel variety we used to use at fetes at the local primary school, the lights all big industrial numbers, all different, while the walls were graffitied and splashed with old paint. The wait staff of both genders were attired in jeans and chambray shirts, suspenders and "Andy Capp" hats....sounds weird but it was an interesting look that "fitted" the place. We were sandwiched in between a couple of girls speaking Japanese on one side and a group of girls cackling in Mandarin on the other. I was trying valiantly to eavesdrop on both parties only to discover that the drivel being spilled seemed to be universal! Our lunch was a delicious tiny set with a main meal of pasta (chilli chicken for me and smoked salmon with spinach for Cassy) washed down with a glass of red, incongruously (for the restaurant's style) served in a stemless, Riedel crystal wine glass.

It was such good fun to soak up some long-awaited sunshine while following the snaking line of humanity in and out of trendy cafes and tea houses, bookshops and boutiques, art-house cinemas and shops full of cutting edge tech gear or artisan trinkets. In the end, we left with no purchase other than a cute design Taiwan flag inspired baseball cap for Cass along with our lunch and drinks. We lingered a little as the ambiance was just so enjoyable: Taiwanese really do know how to appreciate their city and the various delights served up to them.

The MRT home was another interesting highlight as we traveled on an offshoot line we don't normally take: even though the overall journey was similar to one we would have taken on different lines, the change of scenery meant the journey too felt fresh and speedy.

We're looking forward to some improved weather this week and a concomitant lift in spirits that the warm sunshine usually beams in. Photos: all scenes from the Creative Park. See yaaa!

The deep rumbling was intense, raw and thunderous and the explosion woke us from a deep sleep. The whole building viciously shook and we leapt from the covers, racing to the hopeful shelter of the nearest doorway in record breaking time. Some frenzied, giant hand was swatting the Lilliputian structure! As the building continued to shake violently he cuddled each other and just hoped for the best. As the shake lapsed to a roll, then a milder quiver, we let out gasping sighs of relief and tried to still our wildly racing hearts along with thoughts of building collapses, trapped in rubble, or even worse scenarios.This was by far the worst earthquake experience yet, even if, mercifully, quite short. The aftermath was paltry, almost imperceptible. Apart from wildly skewed paintings and objects moved a few centimeters this way and that, there was little else to indicate that we'd experienced such shock. The building's basic steel interlocking structure had once again rolled with all the punches, although the cracks in the bedroom's plaster appeared to have further widened.

It wasn't a coincidence that in the next few days (it happened earlier in the week), we started making plans to do a little traveling in our spring break, as our mortality had reared up alarmingly close in our psyche's rear view mirror: let's make sure we live life to the full and accelerate away from that looming danger!

The Lantern Festival ended on the weekend and somehow we missed nearly all the festivities this year apart from some flashing images of lit-up streetscapes down the other end of Chung Shan Road. We did however hear the guttural booms from some of the most powerful firecrackers we've ever experienced and after our earthquake experience earlier in the week, they were enough to give us further heart palpitations. The bridge over "Sulphur Creek", quite near our house, seems to be the launching pad for all sorts of pyrotechnics, and although the growing tree cover means we're now shielded from errant rockets, it does little to muffle the ear-splitting gunpowder howls!

Cass got us some calzones from Oggi on Saturday after our taste buds were still pining for some more authentic fare after last week's feast. We decadently went out again on Sunday to Eatburger and had blueberry muffins for dessert when we got home. The Sunday outing was a chance to debrief after watching the hugely entertaining hedonistic romp of "Wolf of Wall Street". Wow, what a dizzy dance that film proved to be. One of our friends commented when we left the theatre that he felt like he needed to go home and have a long shower....it was a bit like that! I think I liked it a little more than Cassy, but the three plus hours certainly flew by as we were watching. Leonardo DiCaprio plays these larger than life characters so effortlessly these days: he really is an actor who has come of age. On further reflection today, we both realize we really despised the main character and everything he stood for...it certainly got us thinking.

The damp cold has remained through the week and weekend and it has been rather dreary. This week doesn't look much better: looks like we'll be waiting a bit longer yet for some warmer weather when no doubt, we'll be wishing this weather back! You can tell by this week's photo roll how little we've actually done...I'd straightened all the pictures before I realized it would have been an interesting photo. Photos: Virgy does like sitting close to her best friend, the heater: we don't need a thermometer as the closer she sits the colder we know it is! We saw a weird,exotic looking small tiger/leopard in a pet shop window and our neighbour sent us photos of our newly painted building back home(we picked the colours!) and the improvements in front of the surf club. So, this is really shipping coals to Newcastle!

The river just 50 metres from our place has been variously dredged, made-over, flood-proofed and beautified at regular intervals during our tenure at Ker Qiang Road. At some points, it has been extremely annoying as a water pumping sub-station is near our bridge and it was the focus for much mechanical muscle a few years ago as diggers trundled back and forth in the river bed for months on end, clanking and engine roaring at all hours of the day and night.

Its real renaissance, however, came when the local council decided to re-lay the paths, include Parisian style lamp lighting, re-vegetate the banks and green the verges, including a neatly trimmed hedging along the paths on each side dotted with the most exquisite cherry blossoms which are heavy with flower at the moment. It actually is a very pleasant walk, and when we feel a little cooped up, we take to wandering various lengths of the river trail. Somewhat optimistically, there are even signs pointing out the local species of bird life and flowering plants that might be seen during your stroll. The best and latest promotion, however, is shown in one of the photos above: a rainbow trail of exercise wonder is advertised, "Health Trail of Rainbow". Could this be Taipei's answer to the rainbow pedestrian crossings in support of gay rights seen in Australian streets? Is it a tease to Putin's Sochi Olympics that gay rights are recognized in the leafy hills of Taipei's outer suburbs and not at the world's greatest sporting extravaganza? I'm sure its not, but the coincidence of this new promotion got us chuckling!

I'll ride that segue of the Olympics to mention that we're utilizing the wonders of modern technology more and more to keep up with world events and programming. Never has our internet connectivity been a problem and we're connecting at speeds triple that of what will be available in Australia for the foreseeable future. Along with that, we're not restricted by a download/upload limit, nor does our speed get choked. The trouble we've had watching some live streaming, especially from Australia, is that various sites are more regularly restricting our access because of the fact we're overseas. We've bought a VPN license to fool the sites to think we are in Australia and we are now able to access lots of programming, such as Ten's coverage of the Sochi Olympics. I'm stoked, as it is the first Olympics we have been able to watch since Sydney 2000, before we came over here.

Along with that, as long as we remember to set the VPN before we open it, we can access the ABC's iView app on the iPad then use our Apple TV to play it on the television in high definition...great stuff! We take advantage of this to watch a bit of content now and then when we have time, but it's set to become a whole lot more if the rumoured demise of Australia Network comes to fruition. What a disgrace: we know how valuable this tool is to promote Australia to many Asia Pacific nations and to think it will be sacrificed in some ABC witch hunt is just extremely short sighted and petty. We can only hope that when the dust settles from this latest fracas that cooler heads prevail and make some sensible decisions.

We dined at the incomparable Oggi Pizzeria on Saturday evening and again marveled at the quality and authenticity of the product. The clay wood fired oven sits squat in the front window and the chefs scuttle feverishly in and around the furnace. The produce is of the highest quality and bursting with freshness: the seafood pizza seems to have been laden from a fisherman's net straight from the ocean to the pizza dough. The master of the shop has been accredited by various associations in Italy and needs to maintain this quality. Luckily, even though it is much dearer than the alternatives, the local populace recognize the quality and there is always a constant stream of customers lining up to get in. We had a great time and a great meal, as usual!

We definitely lucked out with the weather for our break over Chinese New Year, but that expected cold and dreary week has arrived with a vengeance today. It will be a long, wet, chilly period  to endure. Cass has just finished The Dovekeepers but I am just finishing my own latest, The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson. I don't often put out the big "must read" recommendation, but I'm doing it with this one: my impression of North Korean life has been utterly transformed, and not for the better!! It won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and quite justifiably so. Just a few photos today from the Rainbow Path and an interesting new building project.

I've written about Chinese New Year for more than a decade and you'd think there is no new slant I could put on it wouldn't you? You're wrong! For the first time in thirteen years we've experienced a week off school for Chinese New Year where the weather was not uniformly dull, dreary, damp, depressing and damned cold! It was, in fact, the exact opposite and one day of brilliant sunshine, cool breezes and cloudless skies was followed by another and another ....you get the picture. We marvelled at the weather forecast at the start of the week, yet didn't think it could possibly eventuate just like that but it did and better.

As you know from last week's entry, we took advantage of the weather at the start of the week to do a bit of Taipei Youbiking out to Chiang Kai Chek's summer residence and gardens. We were somewhat insired by this visual feast of gardens and ponds (even the waterlilies at CKS's place) to visit the exhibition down at Taipei's Natural History Museum. During my week in Taipei without Wonder Girl over Christmas, I had attended this exhibition for a couple of hours, and, as is usual when basking in the radiance of Monet's work, I came away in a state of awe and bliss. I wanted Cass to experience that same serenity in our Taipei setting so we headed downtown to re-aquaint ourselves with these marvels of human craft.

The exhibition "Monet: Landscapes of Mind"is the 4th such masterful display of Monet's works which we have seen here in Taipei. The Taiwanese have a special affinity with the Impressionists and it is evident with the frequency of exhibitions of these artists here in this city. I visited the last one, "Monet's garden", with 38 seminal works no less than 4 times, so this double visit was conservative for me! The Musee Marmottan, our go-to hidden gem in Paris, which we have visited on numerous occasions, had lent 55 works to this traveling exhibition. Although we had seen all the paintings before, and some numerous times, it took nothing away from their majesty or sigh inducing quality.
It's a Ferris Bueller moment to stand in these spaces and drink in the history and sip appreciatively on the divine quality of the rooms upon rooms of paintings, some as big as a hotel bar, others hidden in corners and barely bigger than a cocktail shaker yet all exuding a hypnotic bouquet to dazzle and delight.

We had various other small outings throughout the week, including that second most decadent, the lunch out on a working day (the most decadent being the late breakfast as described last week!). We went to one of our favourite spots, "Wendel's Backerie" where we sat outdoors in the garden and enjoyed a delicious long lunch.

On yet another perfect day, we roused ourselves to visit the paths on the lower reaches of Yangminshan after negotiating the "1000 steps". No monkeys could be prised from their resting spots at this time of the day, much to Cassy's relief, and although the climb was tiring and steep, it's always a great feeling of achievement to mount that last step and breech the mountain path. After that it's just delightful to stroll the ridge line on the dappled path and it was especially enjoyable as the path and steps were nearly deserted. Chinese New Year is the time when families gather to eat "special and delicious" foods, fish and chicken for prosperity, while assorted other mysterious items are also prepared. This means that public places are by and large deserted and the only folk out awandering are the unencumbered foreigners!

We did have our dozen pies delivered by Leo and I tasted all three varieties: a massive problem could develop here as my fat tummy could balloon if I allow myself too many of these very tasty and authentic treats. Of course, Cassy's batch of homemade lemon butter slathered on big doorstep pieces of piping white toast each morning was similarly slimming! We had many a sleep-in, many a late night watching too much TV and too many movies: who would imagine we could watch the whole third season of Homeland in a week?!

Oh, such bliss. Back to work today and the sheen still remains.....it must have been a good holiday!

Photos: "special and delicious" foods (!), Monet and surrounds, up the 1000 steps and Marcus with his bonsai (we enjoyed a few beers on his rooftop before heading further afield on Friday)