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.