It never ceases to amaze us how cheap and accessible all services are here in Taipei. I've mentioned before the confluence of myriad small villages into a megalopolis, but neighborhood ties die very slowly here meaning that in each section of the city there is a representative of every type of service imaginable or needed. Restaurants jostle with doctor's surgeries, convenience stores are opposite car dealerships and hardware stores vie with electronic outlets for attention. Even more than that, birds of a feather definitely flock together, so there will be usually two or three outfits of a similar ilk in walking distance, sometimes even beside one another!

For us this means incredible levels of convenience and service: we don't have to travel more than 100 metres to buy a new lounge suite, get a tooth drilled or service a car. It is this wonderful atmosphere that led me around the corner to get my "dead" motor-scooter attended to through the week. Battery was indicated from the chugging protest from the starter motor but my little mate confirmed it for me when I kick-started "Blackie" and motored around. The front tyre was also bald and stretched so he replaced that as well as changing the oil. I'd had a rattling exhaust guard for months as well, but tightening it didn't do the trick: instead, he folded up some cardboard from the battery box and shoved that in the gap....fixed!

While I was in automotive mode, I decided to take the car over the pits for its six monthly inspection. The garage where I keep the car was immaculately clean as usual and I trundled through some peak hour traffic to the checking station, ran the car through its succession of tests on exhaust emissions, braking etc., then with a clean bill of health, I negotiated the car back to its underground home again. Rejuvenated "Blackie" was awaiting my return, so I hopped on board and whizzed home. Vehicles fixed: tick!

The kids in Grade 8 do various community service initiatives through the year, one of them a park clean up morning followed by various follow-up activities in the afternoon. We divide into a few big groups (about 70 kids in each one) then navigate to areas of public parkland in walking distance from the school. Despite the fact that these parks are fastidiously maintained by local government professional cleaners, we encourage the kids to "go a bit further" and delve into bushes and various nooks and crannies. It's always amazing to see the bulging bags of rubbish they manage to retrieve. It's not our most entertaining day of the year, but it was fun to get outside in some gorgeous autumnal weather.

We're in the middle of yet more grading, this time, guided paragraphs. It's not really the academic intensity of the work but rather the sheer volume: when you have to do nearly 100 each it becomes an exercise in logistics. Just how many can you grade in one session before losing total focus? We've discovered that the number is not that big, so we need to carefully plan a number of sessions over a number of days: oh, and we still have to teach...annoying!

The kids we teach are still an absolute delight, so this is some salve for us as we slog our way through: it astounds us how receptive they are to our tutelage and we are thankful every day that we have the opportunity to teach this crew and not be in some other situation! My period seven class is pictured above sorting out the nuances of Fahrenheit 451. Other pictures are of the clean-up day, my little scooter mechanic champion and some very expensive apples ($3 Au each!)

It's quite bizarre to be striding to work at 7 in the morning and to run across a slew of elders (mostly men) standing around in a random area of the park furiously manipulating their phones, brows furrowed in rapt concentration. My guess was confirmed by my homeroom kids when I got to school: they've been lured there in the hope of catching a pocket monster by the phenom app Pokemon Go! My guess is that the only people able to devote such time and attention to this at 7 in the morning on a work day are "retired types", hence the age of the participants!

I have a dearth of photos from this past week: as indicated previously, we were buried under an avalanche of essays to grade and only crawled our way out from under the flurry on Friday when we handed them back. It's deflating to see the scant regard that these papers receive from our little darlings: when they see the grade at the top and fill in a couple of goals, they're happy to move on. It's frustrating for us considering the endless hours we've devoted to giving them some worthwhile feedback!

Twice a year big Uli comes over from Seattle to cast his eyes over the remnants of his dominion here in Taipei. He established a German restaurant here more than 30 years ago and ran it successfully for a long time, but his interests in the States and time itself have eroded his stake here, and now the Taiwanese partners do most of the business. This doesn't stop him visiting his old restaurant when he is back, however!

It's a bit of a double edged sword for us as he is a raconteur with wonderful stories of the golden days of Taipei and early expat adventures, but he certainly dominates proceedings. Marcus and I usually prefer to have a few quiet beers and discuss our own issues, but the "big marn" usually has other ideas! Nonetheless, we were thoroughly entertained as usual and plenty of beer was consumed and tall tales and true were proffered.

We had an extremely quiet weekend just doing a few chores. We entertained the possibility of heading downtown on the MRT, a relatively easy excursion, but in the end, we couldn't rally enough energy or enthusiasm for that either! We watched a little Word Cup Rugby, the inevitability of Australians whimpering exit only matched by New Zealand's total and utter domination of their opposition. Who can stop this juggernaut?!

Somehow, first quarter has ended at school and we've started teaching the second quarter's material.....time flies when you're having fun they say! See you next week.

Overhead wires are a seething nest of vipers and live wire electrocutions seem inevitable at any moment as we brush past junction boxes and duck underneath knotted and stripped strands. Dust storms whiz around our feet as we trek the streets, literally, as we dodge traffic and boldly engage rider's eyes as we navigate street crossings at speed. Scooters and motorbikes and tiny blue stools, cooking pots and open fires and steaming woks, people and goods for sale and dirty urchins all block the footpaths forcing the pedestrians into the chaotic traffic. But the worst of all, by far the worst, is the incessant din!

Hanoi's riders and drivers just cannot stay off their horns for the briefest of moments. The honking and clanging are interspersed by personalized, electronically enhanced, hooters and "musical" horns. Upon observation, they seem to randomly test their horns at regular intervals to announce their presence to the unsuspecting rider or driver in front. If it served any practical purpose you could understand it, but they're so jaded by tooting that it becomes gratuitous and just simply extremely annoying!

We'd jetted to Hanoi on Wednesday afternoon after work and arrived at our hotel at midnight after an "interesting" airport experience! Everything went smoothly on the Taipei end and budget airline Vietjet was efficient if not slightly overzealous in their bag weighing. On the Hanoi end, however, and despite quite extensive preparations, we were stymied by a distinct "Soup Nazi" attitude by the customs' officers! Our paid-for visas and four colour photos were not enough, and a basically incomprehensible form was thrust at us with a grunt and a dismissive wave, along with our passports being whisked away with no explanation. We waited a good 50 minutes before we were very relieved to be called out for form delivery and the payment of $50 U.S dollars (also pre-prepared). Luckily, our little champion local driver must have experienced this fascist carry-on in the past and remained in the arrival hall for us. Some ill prepared foreigners were treated with even more scant respect than us....these guys need to work on their people skills big time!

Our hotel was magnificent and on a grand scale. The surfaces were sheathed in thick marble and the accommodations vast and plush. The lobby reflected the area's French influence and dazzling chandeliers bathed a reception area and lobby buzzing with liveried porters and smiling desk staff. We were quickly processed and escorted to a beautiful, generously sized and immaculately equipped room for our 3 night stay.

After a decadent and luxurious sleep-in each day, reluctant to leave our king sized bed, we wandered down to the Jasmine Restaurant for our breakfast. There was an extensive and wonderfully stocked buffet, but we could also order anything a la carte to be prepared by the chef and brought to the table. On various days we tried various different options, all magnificent, but Cassy's flambe banana maple syrup infused pancakes were the overall winner! We tended to end the day of travel back at the hotel with a drink or two overlooking the chaotic street scenes, before we prepared to go out for our dinner later on.

Our days were spent navigating the labyrinthine street grid checking various spots of interest. We wandered down less trod alleyways and lanes partly searching for spots and partly trying to escape the bustling traffic! We were armed with a map both days and we wandered independently most of the time although Cassy's suggestion to do a full city bus tour was an excellent one as we could get our bearings a little better and decide whether to venture back to certain spots under our own auspices. We managed to traverse all the "walking streets" recommended on the city guides and were overwhelmed by the amount of foreigners around. We're used to being the only, or the rare breed, of non-Asian in our travels here in Taiwan: it's a melting pot in Vietnam and most of them seemed like clueless tourists as well!

The grand official buildings and memorials were impressive, like Lenin's statue and Ho Chi Minh's tomb, but the really interesting sites were the, crumbling at times, examples of old French architecture and French influenced Vietnamese buildings. In the back streets we saw many examples of ramshackle, lemon-coloured 3 and 4 story houses. They were shielded from the roasting sun by bamboo blinds or wooden shutters and cute little Juliet balconies jutted at seeming unplanned intervals from their facades. A  few were in good condition and maintained faithfully, yet most showed signs of decay, tropical weather encouraging mold or even small plants to grow from roof tiles, gutters and cracks in the stucco.

We ate some delicious food at little street stalls in back alleys, in pubs in laneways and at the hotel's restaurant. We had our fill of pho and other noodles, fried rice and hot pots. Of course, the trip wouldn't be complete without a little product to take home. Cass negotiated a rock bottom price by doubling up her leather jacket purchase and the tactile soft garments are teal blue and matte black respectively. We also stumbled across a shop selling just the right coloured navy silk scarves and were intrigued to spot a photo of John Kerry with the owner above the cash register. He told us conspiratorially that, on his next visit, Kerry brought Obama himself to the shop to make a few quiet purchases!

After widening our carbon footprint again getting back to Taiwan, everything went smoothly and we've had Sunday to relax, do some grocery shopping and other chores (including blog writing!) and generally get prepared for another hectic week at school. 60 essays down, 130 to go before Friday hand-back deadline.....wish us luck! Here is the full photo album.

These 4 pictures neatly sum up another eventful week in Taipei, although they don't reflect the horror of grading nearly 100 essays each in the past week. We had a respite over the weekend and yesterday, but the next round of essays (more involved and longer format) will reach our desks a little later today. I'm sneaking this blog post in as they write, as I know I won't get another chance for at least a week and a half.

I celebrated the grading of said essays on Friday by having a few beers with Wal and de-calibrating the events of the week. On the way, I was reminded again of the different way people live here in comparison to Australia. The photo up top was snapped as I waited at a traffic light and is not an atypical sight. Not only is the tiny baby being cuddled in mum's arms, but a toddler is also wedged in-between mum and dad (see the leg sticking out the right hand side??) Families on scooters, often without every member helmeted, are a common sight here. Somehow, despite not being sequestered away in the latest baby capsule locked into the back seat of a giant SUV, babies survive the mad traffic here. Admittedly, I'm not aware of traffic fatality statistics: I might be horrified if I was!

Military sight of might is unleashed every year in the lead up to Taiwan's national holiday and the metallic muscle regularly flies over our apartment in various rotor churning and ear splitting formations in the weeks leading up to the official day. The awesome power of this sight doesn't really transfer to photo or video: we're always in awe at these flyovers, although, cynically, we wonder how long these mighty machines would withstand a full-on Chinese attack.....best not to contemplate that one!

The NRL Grand Final was a magic game and we had a couple of guests to watch as well. The game was slightly spoiled by one of the most awful refereeing blunders I've seen in a long time: the correct decision was made eventually, but not before Canberra altered its attacking option. We felt this could have led to a change in the ultimate result. Oh well, it wouldn't be the same without a bit of controversy. Mind you, I'd be ropable if it was Newcastle on the receiving end in such a big game!

We've not often been in possession of U.S. dollars. Our upcoming trip to Vietnam necessitated that we have some cash to pay for visas at the airport, along with photos, documentation and forms. We'd forgotten about all this rigmarole in Vietnam as it is a long time since we visited last. We've booked what looks like a delightful hotel solidly positioned in the midst of the French Quarter, so we're looking forward to a few days of strolling, sightseeing and eating delicious food, albeit at a very sedate pace. We'll be trying not to think about our doorstep of essays awaiting us back home!

We'll be rushing home from school on Wednesday afternoon and in Daniel's car being whisked to the airport at 4 p.m. with a return on Saturday night. Sunday should be food shopping and preparing for the following week before getting into grading again.