Cassy had her book club out at a fancy restaurant this week, the girls breaking from their usual routine of dining at different houses. They do this a couple of times a year, usually around high stress times like end of semester/report writing etc. Cass has been over to Dazhi/Neihu multiple times in the past few weeks, with a baby shower for one of the newer book club members, a dinner at said member's apartment, and now this meal out at Osteria

Appropriately, considering we'll be in Italy in a week or two, the whole experience was very authentic. Chefs and many of the staff are Italian and the fusion cuisine was apparently near perfect. With our world certified Pizz Oggi and now this place, we'll barely need to visit Italy, for the food at least! She caught up with all sorts of interesting gossip which is not for these public pages (!), and they had a relaxing and convivial experience.

I'll neatly segue to another convivial experience that I attended on Friday, that of the lower school Chrsitmas party. Upon arrival, one of my friends was struggling with the two mini-kegs of craft beer that had been ordered. I put my extensive bar experience to good use and manned one of the kegs, constantly adjusting the gas levels to keep the beer, and not the foam, flowing crisply. It was a bit of a juggling act, but things went smoothly and it gave me the chance to have a brief interaction with heaps of people without getting too caught up in minutia!  It was a pretty fun party in the end: the division certainly has a more relaxed and inclusive vibe these days.

We'd heard tell of yet another custom burger experience in a nearby suburb lately, so we did a little explore on Saturday evening. Just a couple of stops downtown on the MRT found us at Shilin, a pulsing little hub of restaurants of all cuisines sandwiched in between cute shops selling umbrellas, all manner of cat-branded goods, second hand books or even sad, hot noodles! (see photo above)

Burger Ray was a great find a short stroll from the northern exit of the station. It has a signature draw-card of a gourmet foie gras and truffle burger, but neither Cass nor I are too enamoured of foie gras for all sorts of reasons so we chose differently. Cass ended up with the veggie version which she declared "best ever"...high praise from an aficionado of the form! Mine was right up there with the same status. The set-up is simple and clever. You order the base burger of your choice from a street-front window then select "extras" that you want. After that, you go inside, sit and wait and serve yourself drinks. When the burgers arrive you go to the salad hub and load up your burger with whatever quantity of other extras and sauces that you want. It truly is a signature meal in the end....great stuff!

We thought we'd wander along to 1Bite2Go to get a couple of pieces of their melt-in-your-mouth sour cream cheese cake to eat at home later on. On the way, we marveled again at the changes we've seen in the city and how just everything is almost literally at our doorstep. I suppose to emphasize this, we realized we were just a few steps away from the big yellow tech barn of 3C, so we went in to buy a new wi-fi router as ours has been on the blink necessitating a re-start every hour or so. A pack of blank DVDs and we signed up for a membership whereupon we needed to select "free" gift, so a new toaster in hand(along with DVDs and router), we went to get our cake then wander back to the MRT and home.

We'll be madly preparing for our trip next Saturday as we make our way through this last week of semester. Cats to be organized, clothes and tickets and info to be selected and secreted and then we'll be off. The blog will shut down for a few weeks, I'm anticipating resuming regular service on January 11th.

Just to remind us again that we're living in a Taiwanese neighburhood, the local temple went right off on Thursday night. I missed a lot of the firecracker action but made it for the "tongue lashing giant god's dance" practice. Hilarious! Photos: temple antics, beer wrangling, Burger Ray, sad noodles, sun cat and a couple of shots from the top of the stairs on Sunday. Cass is reading A Little Life and I'm enjoying some violent pulp Jack Reacher with Persuader.

Taipei is an evolving, organic entity and has been constantly morphing since the moment we arrived here 14 plus years ago. The two photos above fascinated me from that perspective and while not exactly in our time frame, they both show dramatic changes in a short period of time for a big city. The top photo featuring Taipei 101, for a few years the world's tallest building and still the number two, shows a counter shot taken about 1970. Despite the obvious differences in the foreground Hsin Yi district, the most amazing are the views to afar, with the burgeoning sprawl suburbs across the river of Sanchong heading all the way to Wugu just a twinkle in a developer's eye at that stage. The photos both appear to have been taken from the popular hiking spot of Xiangshan (Elephant Mountain).

The second shot is even more striking as it sums up a lot of the progress we have seen literally evolve before our eyes. The scene is at a major intersection in the heart of the city, but similar scenes have played out here in our "bucolic" northern suburb in the past few years. The shot was taken about 1980 and shows a predominantly mid-rise clog of buildings of no architectural appeal or flair facing a grid of already choked streets. The second shot at the same location shows a few interesting developments. Taxis bloom on the streets like wildflowers after rain, motor-scooters buzz rampant and an MRT suburban rail rises from its subterranean home just for this little section. The most common sight, however, is the steel and glass department store monster on this corner (and every third corner these days). While the restaurants and bars huddle and nest down tiny alleys and lanes to avoid the big street rents, these commercial juggernauts flaunt themselves on all the big city super roads.

We had a quiet weekend again as the burdens of the end of semester weigh heavily. Cass had doorsteps of essays to grade, I was preparing replies for disappointed parents (just a few!) after the results of the semester's study had gone out for students in the ESL program and we recovered after a full week back teaching after our mini break. This week should be slightly easier though we both seem to have meetings and appointments after school for various reasons.

We're visiting Austria, Slovakia and Italy in a couple of weeks time, notably Vienna around Christmas, Milan for the New Year and a little buttering of Bratislava in between! I've booked a few more dream tickets for Cassy including premium seats at the incomparable Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the Musikverein in Vienna and we're even seeing the Vienna Boys' Choir on Christmas morning. There are a few other big ticket items as well: one of the most interesting might be our uber slick Italian contemporary apartment in the shadow of The Duomo! We'll report afterwards....

Photos: old and new Taipei, the ever-improving master potter Wal and his wares, Cassy has discovered a chocolaty heaven and a couple of exquisitely hand carved local dragon dogs!