It's amazing how time flies. This corresponding week last year we were rail-passing around Kyushu, having an eye-opening adventure on tiny mountain railways, quaint little country trains and hurtling shinkansens, visiting towns and villages that were cute and surprising, all the while as peak cherry blossom time saw the sakura drift like snow all around us.
Not this year, however. We're apart for the week and two weekends, Cassy jetting off to Shoal Bay for the duration and me holding the fort and looking after grand old Mary right here in Taipei: it's been an interesting time from my perspective!
Cassy's parents are world cruising during the entire June/July break so we won't see them at all during that time which will be highly unusual. Normally, we wouldn't make the trek anywhere too far especially as the break seems to be only just after we returned from our Parisian adventure. With Chris and Val's looming absence on her mind, Cass decided to investigate some flights to see them in this break with the intention to just hang around at home and not have any other agenda than catching up with them.
I've had email and phone communication with Cass this week and it sounds like they've had a fun and reasonably relaxing time, certainly enough to shake off the 3rd quarter at work and get some quality time with her parents. Val has been cooking up a storm and they've enjoyed some lazy days in and around the Bay, doing just enough to keep themselves amused and not enough to enervate. I was surprised to see that Val and Cass had hiked all the way to the top of Tomaree headland however: that's quite the workout! They also managed to get up to Cessnock to the famous "End of the Line" shoe-store and discovered it's finally become eponymous! With the looming closure just days away, they stumbled on the final throes of the shop, and Cass bought up large at greatly discounted prices: she's stoked! Check out their adventures here.
My week has played out in a very loose state of consciousness by and large! Sometimes the days flash by without me realizing the sequence of the day has really played out and concepts such as time for meals and activities get very fluid. On other days, I've exhausted my itinerary and activity list in an hour and the rest of the day seems quite interminable. Most of the time I seemed to flit from thought to thought and activity to activity with a random pattern, but I've managed to fill up the week quite adequately.
I did lots of little jobs in the first few days and also went downtown to the Hsin Yi district, better known as the home of the ex-tallest building in the world, Taipei 101. The weather was stunning and there was a zephyr just fanning a full sun, mid 20s temperature and encouraging the pedestrian to stroll around the district which was what I did. I deliberately caught the line to disembark at 101 in order to walk across the suburb to Bellavita where a quite stunning display of Banksy's works were hung for just one week.
The exhibition was more extensive than I'd expected, and although we'd seen some of the works in Amsterdam the previous Christmas, many of them were new to me. I spent some time there before wandering in and out of the intersecting streets in the district marveling at the new buildings that seemed to have popped up, or at least "matured", since our last good look around down there. Check out the album of Banksy ad Hsin Yi architecture right here
I've scootered up to the lower slopes of Yangminshan National Park on a couple of occasions before hiking further through the spring grasses, which sang a soothing swoosh as I tramped by. I was surprised to come face to face with giant buffalo at the top of one of these climbs: the giant beast just took in my petrified frozen figure, then turned its great eyes of dark pools away from me and shuffled off into the grassland again, disappearing from sight in seconds. I almost felt as if I dreamed the whole incident, but caught a waft of his musty odour as I continued on the path to confirm it did, indeed, occur!
On another day I broke the car free from her garage across the way and motored through to Jinshan. I spent some time at the petrol station doing a little maintenance before discovering a lake-like beach and swell at Jinshan itself. Undeterred by this expected event I changed into the boardies and set out to test my shoulders. I was kind of glad that there wasn't enough swell to warrant releasing the board as I was determined to test out my slowly improving shoulders with a gentle swim at best. My frozen shoulders have slowly improved under twice daily exercise routines and I thought they could handle a little test. I was stoked to swim a few tentative strokes without pain then did a few hundred metres: that was too much as they ached the next day, but the tide is turning!
I watched every game of football in the first round and quite a lot in the second! Normally, Cass wouldn't tolerate such decadence so it was a good chance to get my eye in early and learn some of the new line-ups. I think I learned a lot! I also learned a lot about introverts left to their own devices for set lengths of time. I didn't speak to one person apart from basic interactions in shops and restaurants from one week to the next: this is not healthy for the mind, and unusual for me. I didn't particularly enjoy the experience but I do know one thing that it has confirmed: I miss my wife in all respects! She'll be home tonight and I can't wait to see her again...