It's oppressive in Taipei at the moment, the weather somehow matching our mood as time very slowly drips away. The skies gushed most of the weekend, yet we somehow, just by chance, managed to secret ourselves inside during showers and travel when there was a little respite. The temperatures are warm to hot, the humidity high and the comfort factor very low as the year slowly leaks away to our summer holiday.
Cass got her "Bookies" rallied for one more meeting before the end of the year on Friday evening, and Rhonda's hosting skills were appreciated as she cooked up some of the girls' old favourites. They "Skyped" Paige who was preparing for her day's work in Canada in the early morning, having a good look around her new apartment from some electronic visuals and catching up generally. I, in turn caught up with Wal and Shaun and we were joined by very special guest Trev, who had made the journey back from New Zealand to attend his long-time secretary's retirement dinner. We'd been sworn to secrecy about his visit and it seems we did a good job, as Jenni was completely bowled over when he walked through the door to surprise the gathering!
Cassy and I had a trip to the Thai restaurant down at Sogo in between downpours on Saturday and we had a delicious feast. We went to Uniqlo and I ended up making two purchases to Cassy's one, which was a little unusual: the fact is we're almost exclusively outfitting ourselves from this store these days, which is probably a little weird. Please let us know if we start to look too much like Japanese 20-30 year olds, which I think is their dominant market demographic! We managed to pick up some bread and cake on the way home and dropped down the driveway into the garage just as the bigger drops plopped and then bashed away on the corrugated iron awning just below our verandah.
On Sunday, we decided to get down to the southwest zone of the city to visit "Danish Warehouse" which has been storing our 1950s era Danish dining chairs. I reported a while back that we'd sourced three chairs through their online store and that Jack, the owner, had found another in Denmark to round out the set. Shipping costs to our place in Newcastle were prohibitive to say the least (mainly the Australian land component: the last 150km!), so we've decided to get them delivered here and just store them in one of our bedrooms.
The "warehouse" is really a very chic gallery with revolving exhibitions every couple of months and this month featured some unique and amazing hand made spectacles. The incredible aspect of these items is that they are all made from wood! Wood of all types were used to form very fashionable frames, one pair was even faced with a thin slice of shale! We were lucky enough to meet the artist and she guided us through the process of making them and showed off some of the pieces. After this little bonus, we paid Jack the remainder of the money for the chairs: unlike the airconditioner mechanics from years ago, they didn't beat us home this time, but they are delivering them today when we get home from work!
As we were in the general vicinity, we wandered the Shida Road student haunts for a while and thought we'd visit the ever-popular KGB (Kiwi Gourmet Burger). It was so popular, however, that every table was taken and we were forced to search further afield. After a few initially promising leads down this alley or that, we stumbled upon "La Pizza No. 2" which had a cozy ambiance and some really tasty food as a lunch time set. Still raining, of course, we were glad to burrow along under the city streets all the way home on the ever-slick MRT. One more blog entry next Monday and then I'll be taking by annual sabbatical (in a very rough sense of the word: I certainly won't be doing any academic training....quite the opposite!)
Photos: Some Penny Farthing style bike racks and wildlife sculptures in a local park, Chee Chee broke his arm and had his "cast" signed, a bespectacled Cassy readying herself for the Thai feast, and part of her Book Club crew on Friday night.