Hurtling over swollen city streets and dodging bottlenecks and snarls is daily practice driving in Taipei, drivers negotiating their way through streets and alleyways to find the sought after on-ramps to the city's extensive network of raised roads and expressways.
Our experience is similar, and after years in the city, we've worked out all the shortcuts and tricks needed to negotiate the snaking network of arteries elevated above the ground level smog. In fact, we've traveled on the road pictured above many times as it is a lead-in motorway to the main arterial roads slicing south and east of the metropolis. We're just glad we weren't in this taxi, nor indeed, this plane!
We received a terrible shock when news broke of another TransAsia jet plummeting out of the sky, this time in a congested and heavily populated section of the city, just east of the inner city airport midweek. It seems there are conflicting reports about the pilots' role in this disaster: either they're heroes who deliberately threaded the crippled plane through high-rise buildings before tilting it to crash land in the river, or they're the villains who turned off power to the wrong engine in panic. Perhaps, both? Anyway, suffice to say it was the talk of the city, and after another of our oft traveled roads got consumed by a deadly landslide a few years ago, we are feeling very fortunate.
After our "Indian Summer" of a few weeks ago, we were seized by the bear of winter this weekend, wakened from her hibernating slumber to roar and tear with ferocious power! We were hunkered down most of the weekend and it is even colder today here at school, the temperatures dipping easily into single figures. We're pretty much masters of the cold winter these days and we get lots of experience as our real taste of summer is taken up by our trip back home to Australia's mild winter and we've made a habit of traveling to northern Europe at Christmas time. The difference of course, is that those aforementioned countries really do cater for their climates. Taiwan's few power cold days are suffered in light, uninsulated apartments built for blazing summers: with barely an overworked blow heater to disperse the freeze...may as well just wave a cigarette lighter around!!
One possible plus from this blast of arctic fog is that the Chinese New Year holiday at the end of this week, may be, for once, relatively mild. The lunar alignments are particularly late this year, meaning that this frigid week is when we would normally have our week off. Instead, next week's long range weather forecasts indicate quite mild temps and sunny skies....we can only hope!
We took a little stroll round the neighbourhood on Saturday to source some trays to put all the cleaning products and other paraphanlia that accumulates in the under-sink cupboard. We had a pipe blowout when we discovered that pathetic corrugated plastic piping doesn't like getting Drano poured down it: it melts! Anyway, all fixed (by a 72 year old plumber who is studying Chinese literature at university...we feel so lazy!) and ready to be restocked we dived into the Alladin's cave that is the De Shing Road double storey hardware store. I'm guessing this is about 100th the size of a Bunning's back home, but I think it might have even more stock.....you can get anything there!
We got some Oggi pizza for takeaway and settled in for a bit of a televisual marathon with our favourite Morinaga caramel ice-creams for dessert...yum. Sunday, we welcomed back Insiders from the ABC to view over breakfast, beamed over Apple TV, and all seemed right with the world: even if it was just a tad frigid! Photos: I thought I'd just leave the one shot of the air crash for a bit of impact. Video of same.