Chinese New Year lived up to its reputation for miserable cold weather, although we both agree that it has been one of the most relaxing holidays we've ever had. The dreary conditions were just the right catalyst for guilt free sleep ins, pretty much total lack of exercise and just a little bit of excess in terms of eating and drinking!

Even though the rain and cold didn't relent for the week, until (surprise, surpise) late today, we did try to get out and about whenever we could. After my trips to the beach last Saturday and Monday, I'd pretty much given that up, so we planned to head downtown on Tuesday to check out the bright lights of Taipei East. Safely sequestered in a succession of gleaming warm trains hurtling beneath the city streets, after our underground changing and re-routing, we got a surprise when we emerged to see the rain had even intensified down here. Instead of heading further afield, we ducked into the first available building from the station, newly opened and lavish exterior suggesting something neat to spy inside.

Just as we expected, Hsin Yi's newest shopping building is even more plush and opulent than the last one. It seems that if you want customers to come in, it just has to be bigger and better! Inside, the use of space was decadent, the floor, walls, balustrades and ceiling adorned with marble, the cavernous space housing surprisingly tasteful displays of lanterns for Chinese New Year and various fountains and pools gurgling away in corners to keep the punters entertained. The usual mix of high end fashion and product boutiques were good for a window shop, but the B2 "Gourmet Food Court" was just that. We ate at "Fat Angelo's" where the wood fired pizzas looked good and our meals both made a pretty good attempt to emulate our yardstick restaurant, The Northern Star Cafe in Newcastle(they didn't make it!). The various other food outlets and speciality delis were pretty cool and one upmarket wine shop housed many bottles of Australian Petaluma and Henshkes along with the Penfolds range, which we were pretty impressed with. 

Another day we took the car out to B&Q, as I'd threatened last week. It was a targeted choice, mainly because of its underground carpark. We wandered around, bought a few supplies, bits of hardware we'd needed for a while and marvelled at all the "product". We extricated ourselves from there just at the end of my shopping breaking point, which isn't very long, and then headed to SOGO to eat some Thai food for lunch (you guessed it: also an underground carpark!). It was packed and they were turning cars away, so we kept driving all the way to Beitou where we entered the tightest underground carpark I've ever seen, straight below the Royal Host. 5 levels of underground parking rabbit warren had me fearful for the car's duco and also any mild claustrophobia we may suffer from. Luckily, we escaped unscathed, had a great relaxing mid afternoon meal before setting the GPS to find "home". Cassy seemed overly worried that I'd crash the car as I was pointing out all the remarkable (!) features on the GPS instead of keeping my eyes on the busy greasy road, but once again, we made it unharmed!

We eventually got to our Thai meal last night after I'd spent some time over at Wal's place setting him up with his new iPod and some good downloading software. Cass had been out in the afternoon too, but she had braved the Taipei bus transit system to visit her old mate, Joe the Jeweller. Joe has been working on some earrings for Cass for a while and she took delivery of them. They are to celebrate a very special milestone in our relationship which occurs next Friday, so I'll write more about that next week. All I'll say is that it involves the number 30(!)

We had a great meal and Cass pulled the lucky red envelope from a plastic case full of them and won us $500NT off our next meal there. It was the top prize and the waitress was very excited for us, so much so that we thought she might have won a prize too. Back home again today, we had Wal around for the UFC beamed live from Sydney, then a break for a couple of hours before watching the Twenty20 game between Australia and the West Indies. It's been that sort of holiday: not even tempted to set foot outside!

As karma usually has it, the weather is set to be warmer and dryer starting tomorrow for our return to work. Photos: Virg'nMary helping Cass with her school work on the laptop, various shots of the opulent interiors downtown and shots of our eating experiences! There's also an example of the Taipei peculiarity of straightforward labeling: noone is any doubt as to what this building is!

Cassy is reading the unputdownable Barry Maitland's Dark Mirror and I'm still on $20 a Gallon.

Chinese New Year holiday always brings out the very worst in Taipei’s weather conditions. We were sweltering in 30 degree heat a day before the holidays, but as soon as Saturday arrived, it reversed to type and became 12 degrees of drizzly rain and whipping, biting wind. It’s remained that way until today and is forecast to get even worse in the coming days!

I left Cass home snug in bed on Saturday and again yesterday as I searched the northeast coast for surf. Dan and I met up on both days, yesterday had the whole family with him. We got some pretty good, pretty big stormies on Saturday at Green ball, but had a futile search yesterday and just chased the waves from beach to point. It was very frustrating!

One thing that did lighten my mood a little was my fancy new GPS system, which I bought a week or so ago and hadn’t had the chance to test drive. It works really well, and even though all the names of the roads are written in Chinese, it still does the trick. It has a pretty small screen and is fairly basic, but it does everything I want it to do. Testing it out on known routes it has done an excellent job, so I’m confident when we travel farther afield it will help out.

Of course, we’ve been treated to a cacophony of firecrackers at all hours of the day and night, but we’re so used to it now that it has little effect. One thing I don’t think we’ll ever get used to is the droning constant singing that drifts across from the temple on the other side of the river. It’s hard to describe, but perhaps imagine a vinyl record slowed down to about a tenth of its original speed, lacking any kind of tune or musical merit and mix in the wailing of a cat on heat and you’ll get some idea!

Cass has cooked up a big batch of pumpkin soup which we’ve enjoyed for a few meals already and we’ve managed to get out and about during the breaks in the rain to stroll around the neighbourhood. There’s not been a lot else to do as all businesses have been closed for the last 4 days. We’re pretty confident a lot of them will start opening up again today, so we’re going to take the car out to B&Q (hardware house kinda thing) and then maybe even onwards down to the HsinYi area of 101 to get some late lunch/early dinner. We’ll see how energetic we are at the time!

We slept in till 9.30 this morning. You know how the accumulated effects of work, life etc build for a while and when you get a break it all just hits? It’s a bit like that for us this week. I’ve managed to succumb to a minor cold as well, so the dreary conditions are extra incentives to pretty much do nothing at all. We’re reading, watching movies, petting the cats, getting out for some exercise when the weather permits and pretty much doing nothing else at all…..bliss!

Photos: a very strange and very large bird we spied outside the tennis courts opposite, some Chinese new year decorations at school, the famous “pencil” Shi Dong elementary school near our house (see the size of those pencils?!), some wild Green Ball surf, a man praying in the park and the garden of our neigbour out the back. You can see we haven’t strayed too far from home this week!

 

The Twenty20 cricket match between Australia and Pakistan was the catalyst for a great together at our place on Friday afternoon/evening.  Wol, Lewy, Gurecki and Dave Millard all attended along with me and Cass of course and we had a rollicking good time. I got a stack of pizzas from a new and very bargainous pizza joint nearby (Mayan Pizza) and we feasted on them and various other snacks and beverages as well as a few refreshments. I made a conscious decision not to have any beers because I was very keen on doing a dawn patrol out on the coast to try to catch some swell. The game was frenetic and entertaining and Dave is slowly warming to the charms of cricket after a life-long affair with his national Canadian ice hockey. Gurecki had to leave about 2/3 of the way through to deal with his garbage (the quirky system we have as explained on these pages quite recently) and the others made it to the end.

Saturday found me driving out to the northern coast alone very early, with Cass still home snug in bed. Dan was meant to be joining me, but his wife Nicky was pretty sick so he had to stay home to look after the kids. I was really surprised to find I was the only surfer around and eventually spotted a pretty good wave rolling in off Jinshan Point. I haven’t surfed Jinshan for a long time: unlike the good old days of eight, nine years ago, the beach is far from deserted normally, with every would-be surfer and their entourage making a bee line straight for this iconic northern break. Saturday was a different story however. It was a little spooky paddling out through the harbor, punching through the main break and sitting on the point all alone in the early morning mist. Sharks?  Other perils? What is going on? I enjoyed the consistent glassy four footers for a couple of hours, and then paddled in, still all alone. I finally figured out the possible reasons. It is Chinese New Year next week and everyone is furiously preparing their houses for an influx of visitors and also all weather reports indicated a very strong wind for the morning session. There was hardly a breath, in fact, what there was turned offshore and cleaned up the waves. Anyway, apart from the spookiness factor, I was well pleased!

We had a nice lazy Sunday, our usual late and long breakfast accompanied by selected clippings from The Herald which Mum continues to send religiously….thanks Mum! We then began to watch the one day cricket before I decided to watch UFC 109. Quite magically that seemed to spur cassy on to do something different, so she got ready and then wandered over to Mingde Rd to do some shopping! When she arrived back it was time to once again watch some cricket which we did in the afternoon. At about 5 o’clock I took off for the train station, destination Luxy nightclub, the flash and the hip of Taipei’s Dunhua district. Was I losing it? Clubbing on a school night? Mid-life crisis? No, in a very clever piece of marketing to fill their otherwise pretty empty club on a Sunday night, they were the venue for  “Destiny v Demons” a mixed martial arts extravaganza, much like the UFC, but a definite step down in class. By the time I got there I’d talked to Dave on the phone while on the train (Dave Ivo) who couldn’t make it and Wol, who could, and would meet me outside Xhongxiao Dunhua station for the short walk to the venue.

It was a crazy scene all night. There fighters of some accomplishment being mis-matched against guys that looked like they’d just walked off the street. Wol and I were convincing each other that we could have taken care of a couple of them (a wild exaggeration, no doubt!). As the program moved on through the night, we saw some very skilful action and some great fights. The in between fight action was entertaining and bizarre. The Luxy dancers were trying their best to look sexy, but even though very cute, appeared more like 14 year old girls playing grown up. The ring girls had spectacularly obvious fake boobs, the Taiko drummers were solid, but the entertainment of the night came from the famous Taiwanese “Face Change”. This incredible guy danced around in a cape to some traditional music and at regular intervals would change his face mask, seemingly at will. It was a dazzling display of sleight of hand, and nearly elicited the applause of the night! There was a strange mix of people there too: dedicated fight fans, both foreign and Taiwanese, obnoxious foreigners who proceeded to give all of us a bad name by yelling out all sorts of inappropriate rubbish, and the general Taiwanese curious, who must have gone away scratching their heads at this strange new brutal but completely mesmerizing sport. Anyway, suffice to say it was a long night and I wasn’t exiting the MRT station at Mingde until nearly 11 o’clock. Another terrific, but certainly off beat Taiwan experience!

I’ll include a few great shots of last night’s action as well as the deserted Jinshan Point. Virg ‘n Mary have also recently commandeered “Mike’s Chair” so there’s a shot of them on that as well. Cass is reading The Abstinence Teacher and I'm reading $20 a Gallon.I've also just published another article with my writing partner, the great Gurecki, called The Power of Reading Transcends the Trends. You can read it here if you need a sleeping pill!

The Yangminshan national park really is an incredible natural asset for us to have so close to us, the lower reaches nestling in just above section six of the main north south road, just a 5 minute scooter ride from our place. Within minutes of entering the lower reaches of the paths and trails, you can feel worlds away from the hustle and bustle of Taipei, and the perfect weekend weather was a great opportunity to get out amongst it.

I did just that, despite nursing a bit of an injury, and it was terrific to get out in the sublime conditions amongst the greenery and beside the rushing streams. I find myself drifting off a little walking these trails: it’s a good thing, because sometimes I snap out of my revelry and realize I’m nearly at the end of a section and have somehow solved a few minor problems without even giving them too much thought. I also have a rather strange habit of replaying Chinese phrases in my head and sometimes (not always!) have a little better understanding or memory of them at the end of the walk.

Cass took the opportunity to have a little sleep in on the weekend after a big week preparing for and then hosting her book club at our place on Friday night. It was a great success, even though I think she’s getting a little sick of cooking a pavlova every time they come. Some of the other members love it so much they just insist that it be on the menu! She cooked them some Tex-Mex bean entrée kinda thingy (no doubt this is a very strange description of the dish for which I’ll be chastised) and the old faithful “Salmon muck” (same!), also known as Salmon Mornay, which is one of our all time favourites. The “girls” didn’t eat it all, so I’ve been the beneficiary of some very tasty leftovers this weekend..yeh!

I’ve suffered a flare up of an old injury I had back in the triathlon days unfortunately. My regular aerobic regime of either climbing stairs, or replicating this climbing on a seriously inclined treadmill was going extremely well until I recently started feeling an odd pain in my right knee. It seemed vaguely familiar, but I knew it wasn’t a medial ligament problem (which I had surgery to alleviate some years ago) so dismissed it as just a training ache. Soon enough I realized why it was so familiar: it was the old overuse injury of the iliotibial band stretched down my right leg over the outside of the kneecap. I’d stupidly stopped wearing the orthotics that had corrected the problem originally, as I was “just walking” and not doing the crazy distances I used to pound out on hard surfaces. I was so stupid! I’ve had to start using the orthotics again, and I’m slowly building up strength ….I just hope I haven’t worn it away too far! Anyway, I’m getting the idea that I have to just be a touch more careful in my training as a person of advancing years!

As Chinese New Year rapidly approaches, our thoughts have turned to how to get rid of a stealthily rising amount of “stuff”. In years gone by, residents would just start dumping all manner of unwanted furniture, appliances etc etc on street corners where city workers would come along in trucks to collect it. The trouble was that other people would join the party until the piles of rubbish would start encroaching on the road and inhibit traffic flow! In order to stop this, individuals can now telephone to have stuff picked up. We have arranged for a truck to come tomorrow morning, so we’ll leave the stuff out tonight. We have old computer monitors, keyboards, fans, a clothes dryer, an old TV and DVD player etc etc. This was a little confronting for us as we realized that all this stuff was bought brand new when we arrived and it has gradually either broken down or become obsolete…how long have we been here now?! Anyway, we’re looking forward to a good old “spring clean”.

We’ve just got this week and next before we get a week off for Chinese New Year, and that will be welcome. Photos: (I’ll post this evening) are all of little spots along the trails of lower Yangminshan.

I’ve been consumed by my own inertia today, so this will be brief, because it’s relatively late and I’ve got very little to report! We’ve been watching the one day cricket streaming live from the SCG today, where Australia has just beaten Pakistan comprehensively. We’re now watching the Australian Open night session on TV. You know the old saying, “You can take the boy out of Australia but you can’t take Australia out of the boy…”? Well, living proof right here!

Cass and I have both enjoyed the day, partly because it is dreary old day outside and very uninviting. The surf has been sloppy and unappealing too, so what to do? We did make a sortie out last evening to go to one of our favorite restaurants, Aubergine, and it didn’t disappoint. After that, we went across to the cinema complex and saw the very quirky, entertaining movie called “The Men Who Stare At Goats”. It had the proverbial galaxy of stars, all doing something more bizarre than their peers,. George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges were just some of them. The plot is far too complicated and strange to describe, but Cass summed it up quite neatly when she said this morning that the main theme appeared to have been, “Please be nice to one another”, yet they went to very convoluted lengths to say it! Well worth a look though, quite thought provoking.

I’ve been drafting another article all about reading, electronic readers, libraries and sustained silent reading that Gurecki and I will publish somewhere hopefully. We take it in turns to get the first draft out and then pick away if necessary (often we think it is not). It’s good to collaborate on these things though: we think it adds a touch more gravitas to our drippings! With a PD day coming up for both of us tomorrow, hopefully I’ll get some time to “take some notes” with the laptop while some “expert” is droning on…might get a bit more done.

Well, that’s about it for us this week….a very standard week at work and neither of us got motivated to plan anything special for the weekend…maybe next week! Photos are from our day a while back on the far side of the Danshui river at Bali. I'm reading The Colossus of Maroussi written by Henry Miller in 1939...it is absolutely brilliant.

Taipei has slowly dipped her toes into an icy bath and her feet are now submerged as well. The feeling is uncomfortable but bearable, but you get the sense that the cold and damp are slowly soaking into your body, chilling you from the inside out. It’s not that cold thermometer wise, but the bone chill factor is way up there. The other possibility is that after years watching the Taiwanese dress up like Douglas Mawson whenever the temperature drops below 15, we’ve turned into nauseatingly weak cold weather wimps!

I have been taken over by iPod touch fever this weekend as I finally discovered latterly that I could indeed upgrade my iPod’s software to partially replicate many of the iphone’s functions. That’s the trouble with being a sad tech geek who eagerly anticipates the “next big thing”. Even though I bought what could well have been the first iPod touch sold in Taiwan (after having been on a waiting list for a month: I know, if it wasn’t so sad it would be tragic), I also fell victim to the geek’s curse of early uptake. Of course to boost the initial flush of sales, the 2nd and 3rd generations can do all sorts of things the early models can’t. Anyway, the super new software update has allowed me to put all sorts of applications on the iPod as well as finally working its GPS capability which until now had lain frustratingly dormant somewhere in all those tiny little diodes and chips (I obviously have NO idea what I’m talking about!). Suffice to say, that apart from my incredibly romantic side coming to the fore on Saturday evening, Cassy has been an iPod widow apart from the few times when I’ve exhorted her to check out the “wonders” of my various “apps”…she’s a very patient woman.

We celebrated our 22nd wedding anniversary in style on Saturday evening. My aforementioned romantic streak extended to booking the famous Taipei 101’s Diamond Tony’s “Panorama” restaurant for our dinner date. Yes, this is the same restaurant I named in a drinking session a few years back, the same one we went for our 20th anniversary and I believe, even though 101 has just slipped into 2nd place as the world’s tallest building, it is still the world’s highest restaurant from the surrounding ground. I had booked a booth this time on the south side, which had a great view of the city action to the south and west, so even though not quite as special as last time, it was still very spectacular.

We got all dressed up and cabbed down, were let in by a security guard to a huge private lobby on Hsin Yi Lu, before clicking across the vast marble interior to an escalator. The check in girls escorted us to the first elevator which took us to the 60th floor in no time at all, before we changed elevators to get to the 85th floor. It was all very swish, as we were greeted by name at every juncture then shown to our booth. This restaurant is all class, but somehow without the slightest hint of pretension: a good mix. The menu had changed a little (for the better) and all our courses (6 of them!) were superb. We had a 2005 Victorian Greenpoint Shiraz as an accompanying wine and the whole evening was fantastic. The décor in the place is just out of this world: the full size Venetian gondola as a bar centerpiece is exquisite and the amount of marble in this place rivals the most palatial of Roman venues.

Today, we’ve spent indoors pretty much watching the cricket streamed live from Hobart. The subscription I took out a few weeks back is really paying off: unbidden, the people who run the site have just increased the size of the feed so the picture is even clearer when we beam it onto the TV. Wow, I just love technology! Before I go too geek nerdy again, I’ll finish the tech talk with just one more comment. Using Facebook via the iPod to update my status produced some really unexpected results. Heaps of people commented on the update concerning our anniversary, friends and ex-students alike…it was really quite touching. When I need a little boost next time I’ll have to remember that!

Photos are all from before, during or after our Panorama experience: portrait before we left, Taipei by night 85 floors up, vertigo inducing urinal experience, the gondola, Cass with some of her favourite wines and my Facebook page (double click on any image for a slightly larger version).

Stop Press: We just received an articulate and entertaining email from our nephew Michael and he tells us he just received a 3rd gen iPod touch for his recent (12th) birthday. I despair of the hard work I'll have to do to keep up with these digital natives!

We’d threatened to walk along the meandering seashore of Keelung County before, but spied an opportunity and made the best of it. The weather was abysmal last time we visited so we did a scout by car and planned to get back one day. The small car park at the start of the walk held another small treasure across the road, a trail that wound its way through some impossibly steep looking slopes before descending again just a few hundred metres from the starting point: next time! The walk was as pleasant as we’d hoped and we admired the craggy outcrops of rock and the deep colours of the China Sea as a foreground to an unusually diverse set of sea craft bobbing up and down in the light swell. Just about at the end of our walk we spied the unexpected “Mykonos” in its 3 stories of “Greek” glory. This is a must return visit in summer when the umbrella deck up top will have endless views of the coast. As it was we took advantage of a coffee and cake and even though we might have a little trouble with the all Chinese menu, we’ll be sure to give it a crack next time.

Sunday’s sensational weather was another lure to get into the great outdoors, so after a leisurely morning of sleeping in and slowly breakfasting, we hit the road. Our destination was Ilan County, about an hour’s drive away, the hitherto unremarkable flat plain of endless housing, shops and typical Taiwanese city living. The jewel in Ilan’s crown is the town of Jiaosi and more particularly the waterfalls and mountain trails of Wufongci (Five Flags).

We were quite dazzled by Jiaosi’s charms on the way in and the way out of the waterfalls. It is a really bustling metropolis, full of hot spring hotels of every persuasion, budget right through to 5 stars. It had a really good vibe and we would never have guessed. Our normal practice is to whizz through with scarcely a glance on the elevated expressway heading south to Nan Ao, dismissing Ilan as a horrible slum…how wrong we were!

We wended our way through the backstreets of the town, ever higher and heading west into the mountains from which our expressway tunnel had just burst. The countryside was fresh and gorgeous, the sights and smells particularly different. After parking down the hill a few hundred metres we made our way through the obligatory alley of specialized stalls, little eats and local curiosities. One couple were selling what appeared to be the engorged roots of some mysterious plant, painted up to (supposedly) resemble certain animals…weird! Another man had a huge photo of his father as a backdrop to his local honey stall: but Dad was covered head to toe in bees. Places like these do tend to set the scene for something special to come!

The first two drops of the waterfall were very spectacular and although not at full flow, the crescendo of water dropping from a great height, the spray-making rainbows shimmering near the base and the clean fresh feel of the place were quite dazzling. They’ve done a surprisingly tasteful job of the viewing platforms and pagodas as well. Garish colours were non evident and the simple red sloping roof of the little pagoda was a great entrée to the waterfall itself. The highest drop was off limits to visitors unfortunately, due we think to building works or repairs to the stairs and paths. Not to worry an excuse to re-visit and also the reason we discovered another trail and a picturesque hidden church higher up the mountain.

We kept walking higher and higher after being disappointed with the closure of the high trail and discovered a delightful Christian church, completely circular and set amongst manicured grounds with panoramic views all the way down the valley and out to sea. It was most impressive and Cass spied a road winding away ever higher at the rear of the church. It quickly petered out into a rough track and was on an incline all the way. We walked along here for about 45 minutes, all the while wondering where it was going and meeting parties of folk coming back down the trail, all kitted up with packs and supplies and most of them a fair bit older than us! We thought if those old tools could do it, so could we! (That reference was for you Xris). As it turns out we didn’t find anything more than a path that just continued and continued, but we enjoyed the bush walk, the amazing views and the serenity immensely.

The car then navigated its way back to Tienmu, contending with a mild traffic jam in the 13km tunnel and delivering us safely home in the early evening. I think we’re both ready to face another week of work after all that outdoor activity. I’m still reading “The Portrait of a Lady” just a little at a time at night so it will be ages before I finish it and Cass has been captured by the large feline beast in “The White Tiger”.

Sumba is a spectacular island, an amazing mix of stone age animist culture, villagers fighting against poverty, malaria and lack of water, a high end eco resort and an array of surf breaks unrivalled anywhere else in the world. We were privileged to spend the first part of our Christmas holiday on this barely discovered Indonesian island and it will be a destination to which we will return.

The villagers of Sumba have a fierce pride in their traditional culture and until barely 40 years ago still practiced brutal tribal war and headhunted their enemies. Many of them have now converted to Christianity but retain strong links with the traditional culture, including their incredible thatched roof huts with the vaulted roofs, where ponies and livestock live on the ground floor, the family above on a raised wooden level and the grain sacks above that again. We had the pleasure of visiting a village, seeing the Ikat weaving in process, meeting the kids and seeing village life in action. Watching kids with hands full of chickens, fishermen stringing fish on poles of wood, watching women and children carrying huge earthenware jars of water on their head as they made their way to and from wells was an otherworldly experience. We also attended the local weekly market and saw all manner of things being bought and sold, including great swathes of marijuana and betel nut along with live produce. Cassy bought a live chicken from a little girl, then promptly donated it right back to her when we realised we were supposed to slaughter and eat it: I’ve never seen a happier kid! We visited a medical clinic run by the generous benefactors of the island, the Sumba Foundation, who are doing superb work in treating and trying to eradicate malaria. Donations from foreigners, including a large slab of the fees we pay to stay at the resort, sustain this very worthwhile program.

The surf was just sublime. I have never before witnessed such mechanical perfection. The glistening water, pristine coral reefs, light off shore winds and good sized swell just didn’t relent during our stay. At the end of the week, I was totally exhausted after 3 sessions a day in the water. The only thing that saved me from collapse was the need to eat and the assurance that on rare occasions the tide wasn’t right, even though it still looked fantastic to me! On the first two days, I travelled with the only two other surfers staying at that time to Wanakaka, a 30 minute drive away. Here we pulled up at a traditional fishing village and were quite the hit, then paddled out to a right hand reef break about 200 metres off shore. Wave after wave just rolled in, hit the reef and barreled, making it out to a deep channel where village fishing boats lolled…I could feel every bit of tension just melting away in that first morning. The famous Nihiwatu left hand break, sometimes also referred to as “Occy’s Left” of even “God’s Left” certainly lived up to expectations. The wave while a fast sectioned left hander was also amazingly forgiving, almost looking after you if you got your feet in the wrong spot, or misjudged a turn or two. I got a lot more confident with my surfing as each day went by: if only I could wrap this wave up and take it with me wherever I go!

The resort was astounding. Cassy and I both gave it 10/10 on all levels. The “bungalow” accommodation was 5 star stunning. The size of our bungalow and the appointments were beyond anything we’ve experienced before, but the hardest thing to get used to was the service. There just seemed to be people around to do anything you wanted at any time. We could eat our meals at any time we chose. We could request private dining by the pool or at a deserted beach. We could order from the menu, or just request anything else within reason if that didn’t take our fancy. We found it very hard to get used to, but by the time we left, we were getting into the swing of things! Every meal was gourmet, lunch and dinner 3 course (plus anything else you wanted) and breakfast buffets were just the start before you ordered your eggs how you liked them, or perhaps your mango pancakes? They had a little boutique shop, where Cass bought a beautiful silver pendant in the logo design, made by French jewelry designer Lorenz, who was staying at the resort with his family and was a great guy to surf with. There was a book exchange, two pools, 2 spa huts (where we both had a full body massage…wow!) and yoga hall. When I got out of the surf, a man came and took my board from me, racked it for the next session, then got me a drink from the bar after handing me a towel: it was a little unsettling at first, but we realised soon enough that it was a way to employ lots of villagers and give even more back to the island community.

The week was very, very special. We have so many memories, so many highlights; I can barely scratch the surface here. Suffice to say that after returning, we’ve been quite content to just potter around home with a few little outings through the week, really chilling out and letting our Sumba experience sink in and take hold. We don’t think anything they throw at us at work this week could possible dent our spirits: Or could it?!

Photos are courtesy of our slide show (without surf). For surf shots, check out pointyhat and also this movie I made, which has some video and stills Cass took as well as some experimental video I took with a little camera strapped to my head…interesting! It was a lot more interesting before YouTube stripped off my audio track…something about copyright: who knew you couldn’t use the latest Wolfmother tracks on your own video!

 

We’ve had a busy week and are expecting a similar one next week as the term hurtles towards semester break. Reports to be written, meetings to attend and normal teaching commitments will have us very ready for a holiday. We’re going to Sumba, to stay at the Nihiwatu resort there. It’s an unusual trip for us as we don’t go for the 5 star luxury as a rule, but this place with its combination of sensational accommodation and food with exclusive access to one of the world’s very best waves was impossible to ignore. We hope it lives up to its rep! We’ll fly into Denpasar on Saturday; spend a day and a night in Kuta, then take a tiny domestic plane for an hour’s flight to Sumba. We just can’t wait to get there.

Dan is going downtown on Tuesday to pick up my board (along with several of his) which has been getting its tail section reshaped and fixed after its heavy beating at Nan Ao. I’ll get to Indonesia not having surfed on it for ages, so I hope I get a day or two of gentler swell to get used to it again.

Cass had a great Saturday night out on the town. On of our colleagues gave us two tickets to a piano recital at the National Concert theatre, I was otherwise engaged, so Cass arranged to go with her friend, Kristin. They booked in for dinner at a Chilean restaurant near the theatre, “Salsa”, and had a superb meal with just the right touch of class without being too stuffy and formal. The pair of pianists was celebrating playing together for 30 years, a remarkable achievement. The concert was held in the outwardly impressive concert hall and the interior design was just as impressive and comfortable. They thoroughly enjoyed the concert by Wille and Yeh, the piano duet seamless and playing music for two pianos by Poulenc, Brahms, Rachmaninov and Bach.

I was also out and about on Saturday night, but at the polar opposite end of the cultural scale! We introduced Taipei to the concept of the Santa Claus pub crawl and had a rollicking good time. Little kiddies on the street were amazed to see the 10 or so Santas walking along and we took the time to talk to them all and sent them all away very excited. The night was a great success and even though we only had a relatively small contingent (mainly because of other end-of-year parties etc), I’m suspecting that if we do it again next year the numbers might swell when word leaks out about the great time we had.

Today we saw the rather forgettable, although it was enjoyable at the time, movie called Law Abiding Citizen: Janie Foxx was very smooth. After, we took advantage of the stellar weather to go for a spin over to Beitou on the scooter, where we checked out a big clothing warehouse. We’re glad we did as though even though it had endless racks of rubbish, it also had some great gems hidden amongst them. We spent very little and came away with two Ralph Lauren jackets, Cassy’s a pure wool tweedy style blazer and mine a plain black jacket with a parka lining. We also bought a fine knit wool jumper and a cotton shirt for me for work…
We’re both looking forward to our Papa Poulet chicken for tea, about now, so I’m finishing! Photos: Cass and Kristin at Salsa, inside the concert hall, Cass in the clothing warehouse and some santas on the loose!

We’ve been here so long now, that it’s easy to forget that there are still some really weird and quirky things going on in Taipei that we’ve slowly got used to over the years. Many, many other things have changed a lot and I suspect will continue to change at a rapid pace, but there are some customs and cultural peculiarities that I’ve been thinking about that stand the test of time.

We don’t have a garbage bin. We put the garbage outside the kitchen door on the back fire escape till one or other of us gets motivated to take it to the garbage truck. These days, we recycle nearly everything into separate bundles, so at any one time, apart from the slowly rotting stuff outside, we have lots of huge bags full of “clean” stuff, like paper, flat plastic, bottled plastic, glass, styrofoam etc. It’s all quite hilarious. We could do even more, but we’ve drawn the line at the red and blue buckets. You are meant to put all your food scraps and waste into little coloured buckets, one for pig swill and the other for stuff the pigs won’t eat. Then, at regular intervals, we’re meant to take these buckets and empty them into bigger buckets which are slung behind the garbage truck.

The garbage trucks can’t get into all the tiny little lanes and alleys here, so we have to take the refuse to the main roads, where there are drop off points. We have to wait with our bags and throw them into the back of the truck. You cannot leave your stuff for others and you need to use special bags from the 7/11 that have our district marked on them. It’s kind of cool because it becomes a user pay system and means that the local people are recycling to the max to avoid paying for more bags. The amount of stuff some people can jam into these blue bags is unbelievable! The little recycling truck follows the big truck and we then wait in line to deliver our recycling. All the different categories have different days and they never overlap. Luckily we have an old lady who intercepts us and takes our paper and plastic bottles, but she’s not keen on the styrofoam, flat plastic or glass, so we take that ourselves. When there is a decent crowd waiting for the truck, or it arrives a touch late, the wild scenes have to be seen to be believed: I’ve been hit in the head with flying blue bags and little old ladies have almost knocked me down in their haste to get their bags into the truck. The other bizarre thing is that the truck plays various classical tunes through its speakers and the unwary or uninitiated foreigner has been known to rush out to try to buy an ice-cream!

Car parking is at a premium in Taipei City. The oft heard rumour is that there are not enough parking spots, public and private, to house all the cars in Taipei, so the city relies on a certain number always being driven around at any given moment. People who live in our lane have taken to using white paint on the road to paint their own car parks on the tar and used Chinese characters to denote a private parking place, hoping people will leave the space free for them. The incredible thing is that it actually seems to work. About a year ago, one of our neighbours actually installed a huge heavy steel gate that he could swing across “his” park…on a public thoroughfare! We’re lucky that we have a park in the school’s basement car park, but that necessitates of course, that we need to get to school to use the car. Sometimes we walk, sometimes we scooter, but all the time it is an inconvenience many at home would wonder at. If we need to park anywhere in the city environs, it is just about impossible to find a park on the street anywhere. Basement paid parking is the go and entrepreneurs all over the city have made lots of money in this business alone.

Well, just a couple of things: there are plenty more, so I might re-visit this theme from time to time. We had a super lazy weekend this weekend: we’re in the throes of grading stuff, writing reports etc, so took the opportunity to do plenty of that while watching a couple of days of cricket. We went for a stroll in the perfect weather here this afternoon, but apart from that, have pretty much done nothing: bliss! The cricket picture has been sensational because we had to get our computer helper/ super hero Dick here through the week as our beaming system from computer to TV had gone on the blink. He installed a new high frequency job which is amazing: any streaming on computer now looks like a regular TV show when we beam it across. Photos are a bit sad today: lots of fish down at Carrefour (you can tell we’re in Asia) and a shot of one end of the new beamer. I’ve just finished a sensational autobiography of Gary Paulsen’s first 10 years….couldn’t put it down. It’s called Eastern Sun, Winter Moon. Cass is now going to pick it up. She is just finishing our David book: it’s fantastic.