Another week just whizzed by here in Taipei, courtesy perhaps of a truncated week with the kiddies as we had two PD days to end the week. Cass was entertained by a couple of visiting experts on the subject of differentiation and I had a similar topic on Thursday, followed by reading comprehension on Friday. It was all so very humdrum, we can't believe how cynical we are, but seem to have this cynicism confirmed at every turn by so-called experts telling us what to do. It's just that when you have been teaching for a long time, everything old becomes new again, and due to our change in teaching environment, we've even seen the third coming of some initiatives and styles and approaches. It's kind of cool to see people get so excited about things: no doubt the first time around, we were enthusiastic too.
That said, we both admitted that we'd been to a lot worse, so not all was lost on the two days.

Australia Day saw a celebration of sorts when we watched the Aussies annihilate the Poms in the cricket and had an "Australian of the Year" presentation, put together by Josh. It was quite hilarious, along the lines of the recent ABC series "We can be Heroes", and we were in awe of the time and effort he put into the whole presentation. I was quite humbled to be awarded the Australian of the Year (Tienmu, Taipei version!!) and was given a bottle of wine with personalised label etc. It was a great laugh! We had a relatively early night, Cass not making it for the celebrations as it actually started to sleet just before she was to come down!

Saturday was bitterly cold and miserable so we decided to hunker down and watch a couple of movies that we've had ready to go for a little while. The first one "Babel" was an interesting movie, reminding me a little of "Crash" with its interwoven plot lines and characters and juxtapositions of time and space. It was pretty sad in parts, usually a choice of movie we avoid here, but beautifully photographed and thought provoking. Interestingly, I'd been hearing about a movie for a while which sounded very much like this from some of my colleagues: the plot sounded similar, the actors matched....the only thing was that they pronounced it as 'babble'! Now, I wonder what sound they think a brook makes??!! The other movie was the Australian movie, "Candy", another fairly tragic story, but again, beautifully acted and directed. All three principals were at the top of their game...it was great entertainment.
We went out to Cassy's favorite Japanese style curry restaurant here, "Aubergine" for tea. It is an excellent choice for us, with items on the menu to tempt Cassy's craving for something vegetarian and tasty and my "leaning" towards meat (boom, boom).
The city was alive and pulsing as usual: crowds all rugged up against the cold as if they're about to join Mawson in the Antarctic...it is cold, but do you really need the gloves, hats, scarves and full length puffy coats!

Sunday dawned as a sun shiny day, probably even colder with no cloud cover, but no wind chill as the gentlest of zephyrs was all that could be felt. Carl and I hoped that these conditions would suit the Pillbox, so we headed off to find a wave about 10 o'clock. There was a very enjoyable 2 foot wave at the Pillbox, the ubiquitous lack of any other surfer(which we love!), sun shining, water relatively clean and the pigs seemed to have had recent ablutions as their usual noxious odours were only sometimes caught on a puff of off shore wind. Carl supplied the cup of tea after we got out, our "Tobes" bottles cleaned us up and off we drove home. Cass and I settled in to watch the one day cricket between the Aussies and the Kiwis in the afternoon and evening and enjoyed some awesome Aussie batting and some spirited chasing by the Kiwis, nearly resulting in an upset. For some reason, the normal TV cable is only offering me a few ghosty Chinese and Japanese channels at the moment: very strange and something I can't seem to fix...I'll keep trying.

Full week this week. I have a field trip to the earthquake and fire museum tomorrow and I meet with a short listed candidate for the upper school principal's job on Wednesday. We have received the news that the school has not only employed our new superintendent for next year, but that she will be starting early, in fact, just after Chinese New Year. There seems to be a flurry of activity lately in preparation: dotting the "i"s etc as bosses make sure meetings are being held regularly and all tasks are being done. Does that sound too cynical again?!

Photos: Aussie of the Year!, Cassy with snuggling cats and chocolates, betel nut girl and car sales on the way back from the Pillbox.

With the Aussies playing the Poms on Friday, we were desperately trying to catch the score in between classes at work. After school we rushed home and settled in to watch the last few hours and enjoyed it immensely. We were joined by Wal and Josh and we had a few beers each, which persuaded us that we should put in an appearance at the school's board party, being hosted at the very grand Grand Hotel. This is an iconic hotel in Taipei, quite famous for its ornate architecture and also the fact that it half burned down some years back and was totally rebuilt to the original standards. The highlight of the party was an encounter I had in the men's room with one of the new board members. He seemed quite fascinated with my Aunty Jack T-shirt, said he loved it and said we should swap shirts. Before he knew it, I whipped it off and proffered it to him. He was no doubt regretting opening his mouth as I am now the recipient of a very flash Brooks Brothers cotton business shirt....I hope he loves that Aunty Jack!
Cass and I decided to venture down to the Hsin Yi district on Saturday night, home of the frighteningly tall Taipei 101. The MRT was our chosen option for transport, but we'd forgotten how many people go out on a Saturday night. It was mental! We had to stand up all the way to Taipei Main, getting jostled and bothered by humanity all the way. The crowd on the second line was mercifully thinner and we were disgorged at City Hall to 101 lit up magnificently against the dusky sky. The mall through to the cinema district was very vibrant, distinguished by marble statues and people imitating statues. I always have an almost overwhelming urge to touch or pinch these people: I wonder how kids resist?! Clowns and buskers, statuesque people and of course, all the young and beautiful mingled as they trouped off to whatever entertainment took their fancy. We were off to Romano's Macaroni Grill. Family and friends back home are aware of my penchant for eating veal: ostensibly as it is unavailable over here. Well, another one bites the dust! Not only veal, but Australian veal is on the menu at Romano's, at a premium of course, but there nonetheless.

I had an eventful Sunday morning. After traveling over the mountain, I was greeted by great angry monsters breaking way out to sea. It was cold, wet and windy, but I decided to brave the conditions at Green Bay. After getting a few super slams, common sense overtook valour and I headed for home. As I was at Green Bay, I thought I'd zip back via the expressway. So complacent by now, after having done it so many times, I managed to miss one vital "veer off", only to find myself rising and rising until I was on a high speed supper express ribbon, seemingly sluicing through the sky! It was a great view up there, but the next exit was 20 km past where I wanted to get off! Suffice to say, I eventually made it home after some scenic adventures in downtown Wugu and going back across the Bali red bridge.

Cass and I then settled in to watch the one day cricket and enjoyed a pretty close fought game for a change: something of a rarity this summer. Cassy seemed to be doing lots and lots of domestic activity this weekend with washing, shopping, cleaning etc. it was exhausting just thinking about it(!)

My camera has a mysterious "smudge" on it at the moment which I can't get rid of: it has got some dirt caught internally, making it near impossible to take a decent photo. I have included a couple of older ones: Gerri's class with whom I work, our new painting bought over Christmas, and a photo of the aforementioned Aunty Jack shirt, now not in my possession!

Our trip home was eventful, action packed and highly enjoyable in the main but we’re acting a little spoilt these days as we resent the great travel-unpack-pack-travel routine in the space of a few weeks. It all goes with the territory I suppose. Within a day of getting home I was already organizing payments for our next trip, this time to Bangkok in March. The mind numbing hours at airports, in hire cars, waiting, on planes, waiting, in cars and waiting (in Taipei traffic!) gets a bit tedious, but all in all, the joys of a mild Aussie summer outweighed the hassles.

Apart from catching up with family and friends, another attraction was the cricket. The Ashes series, even if viewed on TV was a major drawcard. Cass was a little taken aback when I was invited to the first day of the Sydney test by our friend Michael, who lives in the unit next door: she would have loved to come too! I had one of the most memorable days I’ve had for a very long time, being ensconced in the member’s stand and partaking of all the side benefits afforded to SCG members. I rubbed shoulders with lots of the rich and famous and took some great photos of the players and other interesting sights. I thoroughly enjoyed the day.

The great day at the cricket was complemented by the viewing of same on TV. Cass and I loved watching the Pommies getting carved up day after day, game after game. We both managed to catch up with our families and friends, but perhaps not to the extent that we could have. We’re taking the approach more these days that we need a holiday; especially in this short summer break and that we’ll just relax and bum around. If we’re specifically asked to go somewhere or join in some activity, we’re usually delighted to do so, but organizing events ourselves is just too much hard work in a short period. Suffice to say, we did our big walk up the hill most days, I surfed lots when the conditions allowed and the Harley got a few airings, going on long meandering trips through the hinterland of the valley, exploring lots of backwater roads and connections!

This week back at work has felt a bit like the Long March. The alarm rang at the crack of dawn each morning in pitch blackness and, often, we found ourselves getting home in the quickly fading light as well. A far cry from getting up when we felt like it, and reading the paper till our walk beckoned mid-morning! The days seemed interminable and even though we both slipped back into routine quickly enough, Friday always felt a long way away. I went with Josh to support Wal’s girlfriend Tina, as she gave her final grading concert for her Master’s degree in classical music composition this Wednesday evening. We went out to Neihu where Tina played and conducted orchestras and sextets through a range of her original compositions. It was quite entertaining and we were all very impressed with her talent (even if we were not sure what was really happening!!). On the opposite end of the cultural spectrum, Josh and Wal and I went to see the new Rocky movie in between catching a bit of cricket at the Green Bar on Friday night: we loved the movie and shared our horror at how long the week had felt! We’d managed to have 3 boxing sessions through the week and we were all feeling a bit bloated and out-of-touch after our 3 week lay off: nothing like a bit of Balboa to get the adrenalin pumping again, I’m sure our sessions this week will have just a little more zest!

Cass and I fired up the “Auburgino” for a drive out to the wind and rain-swept northern coast on Saturday with the vague idea that I would have a surf if we found anything rideable. This didn’t happen, because apart from the 12 degree temperatures, the wind had taken its toll on the waves and most spots looked more like the insides of a churning washing machine. Later that evening we discovered that there was a tsunami warning for the Taiwan north coast after the big earthquake out to sea, a fact we were blissfully unaware of as we drove along the flats right next to the ocean for mile after mile! We watched “Crash” on DVD on Saturday night at home and were most impressed: somehow, in all our movie viewing, we’d managed to miss this one, a Best Picture winner at that!

Sunday was very quiet…we watched the one day cricket from Hobart (7am start here!) then wandered out for a walk to Takashimaya to get a few supplies and “some air”. Wow, I’d forgotten what a pain writing this blog can be too…maybe I’m just getting really lazy!

Regular readers of this blog have been used to seeing a line of archives down the left hand side dating back to November 2002, 18 months after we arrived in Taiwan and when this blog began. They’re not there anymore! I switched to a beta Blog this week (apparently it is much better, more reliable and has other features), but I was reluctant as I didn’t want to tamper with the blog which has proven to be trouble free for so many years. Looks like I was right to be wary! I saved the template of the blog and all the back posts just in case something happened, but I can’t get those archives to appear on the public version of the blog. I’m trying to get some answers from some blog friends online (!), but so far, no success. Anyway, sorry, if you enjoyed looking back at any posts, you will just have the current page of posts for the time being. When/if I can retrieve them, it will be pretty obvious: they’ll re-appear. Stop Press: Done! One of the blog community very generously pointed out that I had been using a superceded template for many years, believe it or not! I put a bit of html into the template and voila, they're back. STOP Stop press!: brand new template necessary...hope you like it. It will let me add different images, links etc if we want.

The pointyhat blog, of lesser importance to me, and really just a bit of fun, of course, as is the way with things like this where it really doesn’t matter, transferred seamlessly into the new format without a glitch. Frustrating!! Stop Press: pointyhat blog also now has a brand new look and template.

Cass and I have had a very busy week, trying to tie up lots of loose ends before shooting back home for 3 weeks at the end of this working week. We’ve had a candidate for superintendent here all week and another one arrives tomorrow. This has meant that the school has been abuzz with all sorts of special meetings and added time demands as we sort out who will be the next boss. It’s an amazing process, unlike anything we have seen back home: I don’t know if Big Al would get past the very first hurdle here! The candidates are short listed by a “search team” of interested admin, teachers and parents and brought to the school for interviews. The entire faculty and various constituency groups then have a chance to grill the candidate, including faculty, parents and students. Everyone fills in a feedback form and hopefully, that input goes a long way to deciding who the next boss will be. It’s quite a marathon: I’ll be having a meeting with the next candidate on Tuesday for an hour to talk all things ESL, after a similar meeting with the last candidate this week.

We went downtown after work early in the week and enjoyed getting out into the exciting inner city streets at night, which we don’t do often enough. There are just so many people about, all doing their individual things; meeting, shopping, browsing, chatting, drinking eating, walking, looking and a million other things…it was very exciting! We bought some Christmas presents and ordered some more, as well as a wedding present, but I won’t say too much just in case those recipients are reading! I’m going back down on the MRT on Thursday night to pick up a few items, while Cass stays home to pack her stuff. We’ve got Lily organized to look after the girls again which is great: she is reliable and trustworthy.

Our weekend was relatively subdued, but we caught a movie, Déjà vu, which was pretty good, nothing to rave about but entertaining with Denzel Washington in the lead. He always gives a very polished performance. We watched a DVD this afternoon which was a great laugh. Many of you have probably seen it, but it didn’t make the “blockbuster” cut for the cinema here, so we’ve only just watched it. “Little Miss Sunshine” with Toni Collette was just fantastic….we’re still laughing at some of the scenes! I went out and get some reasonable waves at the Pillbox today: it’s turned cold and I wore my wetsuit for the first time this winter season. It was raining and quite bleak and I wondered aloud as I sat out there by myself why on earth I had decided to go out! It wasn’t bad actually and blew a few lazy weekend cobwebs away. I spied one of the ubiquitous Taipei County chicken roasters on the way back so paused to take a couple of shots…just by the side of the road, dirty old farmers with dirty old roasters: bird flu anyone??!! I reckon they’re great! Photos: Virg portrait, the girls together and a couple of those great chicken shots.

mexican wave

cricket viewing and xmas tree

wal enjoying his snacks!

toucheng entrance


Report writing is so much easier when you have a template to work from, so this week, I’ve had to spend a fair bit of time writing my comments as I wrote them all from scratch. When you’re teaching the same grade level and similar ability and characteristics are shown by kids over the years, the natural tendency is to rely on previous reports for some inspiration. The inspiration is occasionally just that, and occasionally the opportunity to copy slabs of that comment into a new one. I decided that I’d recycled my present comments just too many times, so I set out to write individualized comments from scratch, about 1200 characters each for my 21 kids. To cut a long, and extremely boring story short, it was quite a pain, but done!

We’ve had the 2nd Ashes cricket test on here this weekend, once again, via streaming video over the internet. We seem to have ironed out all the kinks and even today, high traffic Sunday, it didn’t miss a beat. As I mentioned before, the secret is threefold: get everything possible off the hard drive, have the latest and greatest software and hardware, and lastly have a superfast connection. It’s been well worth it and I’ve just signed up for another year of 3M connection speed on the cable modem, so it should continue. Companies really reward loyalty here as I think the locals are very fickle and tend to gravitate to new operators offering very attractive looking honeymoon deals on connections. We’re paying about $280 Australian per year for uninterrupted, unlimited download and upload and speeds which are not even offered in Australia yet. I just hope they’ve got it sorted properly by the time we get home! It really is the tyranny of a small population base: while we Aussies enjoy the lifestyle, prices and services just can’t compete with these teeming masses over here in such confined spaces.

There was some talk of doing an early dash to the beach for a surf this morning, but the cam showed a big, messy slopfest out at Jinshan. The Pillbox leapt straight to mind, but I have to admit, I got cold feet almost literally at the thought. I went out to get some mouthwatering wood fired pizza takeaway last night and noted that almost overnight, as is the way in Taiwan, the temperature has dropped, the wind has begun to scythe through outer garments and it is really quite cold!

I put the Christmas tree up today (an arduous task of removing the tree from the box, fluffing the branches and plugging it in!). We really love this Christmas tree: it spins around on a base and the fibre optic threads light up and shimmy and shake and put on quite the show. I’ve been known to stare at this tree for extended periods, I’m sure it has some kind of hypnotic power! We had a great crowd here this afternoon for the cricket, including Josh, Lewy and Wal. Minus Lewy, this also makes up our boxing club at school and some combinations of the three of us have a good workout on the bag, speedball and focus pads most weekdays.

Cass “enjoyed” the annual candlelight winter wonderland dinner at school on Friday night. It’s a very strange affair, where all the middle school kids get tizzied up to the nines and eat together in the muted lights of a cafeteria quite miraculously transformed for the night. It’s not compulsory, but everyone attends…one of those types of shows.
Photos: the big gate at Toucheng and the cricket crowd, including a Mexican wave attempt! We'll be home in Merewether in less than two weeks! Hurrah!!

dawn gold

nice but crowded

girls relax


I mused some time ago that if the cricket was broadcast here, I just might not go back home. I will change my mind and state that we will still come home at some stage, but the virtually unthinkable has happened: we watched the first Ashes test ball by ball live over this long weekend.

Having ramped up the computer’s speed and memory and replacing the video card and sound card, I had made some great strides towards this momentous event some time back. I also had a huge external hard drive to which I transferred nearly everything, allowing the internal hard drive to function as well as possible for streaming.
We subscribed to an English site which broadcasts all sorts of sport over the internet on a pay per view system. To watch this test we had to buy it for $30 U.S. on credit card. It seems steep when you’re used to getting it all for free, but in a country that just has no access to these broadcasts, we thought it was a pretty good price for so many hours of entertainment.

Cass was riveted to the lounge for most of the 4 days play as was I except I dashed to the beach before dawn one day and in the lunch break on another to maximize the time we had to watch it! The dawn dash was just fantastic: I got wave after wave of fairly good quality, the best part being the lack of any other person at all. It was quite blissful out there and very "UnTaiwanese" I suppose as it was so calm and peaceful. Anyway, back to the cricket. Shaun and Lewy dropped in to watch a session or two as did Wal and Tina. Carl subscribed as well and he and Hiroko and the boys enjoyed it immensely. It was just what we needed after a very long semester with only one other very short break. We did manage to get out of the house at some stages (!) and enjoyed some great meals and fantastic autumn weather. It’s usually starting to get a little cool by now, yet Cassy is lamenting the fact that she can’t break out her winter wardrobe just yet, as the temperatures are just perfect during the day, with a hint of a chilly breeze when the sun goes down the only indication that winter is approaching. I’m sure we’ll just start getting used to the cool when we hop on the plane to come back to a scorching Aussie summer: not that we’re complaining!

We both had a wonderful long weekend for Thanksgiving, it was so relaxing. Our friends from Hobart, Shaun and Katie, whose wedding we attended 2 Christmases ago, had their first baby yesterday. They are doing well, but Shaun looks just a little shell shocked: he’d been sitting on our lounge watching the cricket on Thursday, blissfully unaware of events about to unfold and was a father the next morning after a whirlwind labour and mad taxi dash to the hospital. It makes us tired just thinking about it!! Photos: The “Rocket” just after dawn, a crowd at the rocket the next day, and the girls relaxing.

4 and an orchid!

entrance

new palace

field day


The Model United Nations Convention held here at school this week thwarted my attempts to hit the bag this Friday. As the representative for the Congo shared the concerns of his country about multinational oil companies’ exploitation, the staccato sounds of bashing the bag or the speed ball probably wouldn’t have gone down too well! I went into the weight room for a while instead, before joining a few of the boys for a beer at Diamond Tony’s. We had a great afternoon out on the terrace looking down the hill towards school as the sun went down, but I went home pretty early as Cass and I were booked for an important task the next day. Cass had gone with Kathy down to the bag shop to pick up some goods which looked fantastic, after spending the day in professional development, the highlight of which was a lunch at Chili’s!

Saturday, we were booked up to do one of the tri-annual ESL admissions tests. Even though we’ve had over a hundred applicants in the past and this time just a dozen, I made an executive decision, and decided we needed two people on deck to proctor the exam. It’s just not safe to have one person: if someone, teacher or student falls ill etc. what could be done? Anyway, I’ll claim our daily rate of pay (for each of us) as we then graded and sorted the exams. It took all morning for the exam and a time afterwards to grade so we felt pretty tired at the end of it. Casino Royale, the latest Bond extravaganza beckoned later in the afternoon, so we bought our usual seats and scootered over to Miramar. It was superb! I’m ranking this the best Bond film ever. Not only did it have the most exciting of Big Bold Bond stunt scenes, but Bond himself was slightly vulnerable and as Cass pointed out, the women in the film slightly more than just two dimensional babes. Model and computer generation skills added to an amazing climactic scene which had to be seen to be believed…great fun! We had dinner at Aubergine then headed home and had an early night, only to get up again at 11pm in time to watch the Aussies smack the Poms in the delayed rugby league test.

After a late night due to the footy and a very busy Saturday, we were pretty tired this morning. We’d planned to head to the coast if there was any surf at all, but the webcams showed a beautiful sunny day, no wind and only a six inch swell. Knowing this, we luxuriated in a long, relaxed breakfast and then both had a good read of our books, Ian McEuan’s “Saturday” for me and P.D.James’ “The Lighthouse” for Cassy which are both clever and captivating. I fell asleep on the lounge for a little while after that (!) before we decided to go over to the National Palace Museum. The National Palace has been going through a long and costly renovation and though the façade looks exactly the same, the interior is a gleaming new, stylish interior of muted colour and gorgeous marble. The gift shop alone is worth the visit, items ranging from the kitsch (pens and mouse mats decorated with pictures of Chinese treasures) through to the stupendous (beautiful centuries old C’hing dynasty pottery pieces at premium prices). A Starbucks snacky lunch was relaxing, and we even picked up a little bottle of caramel sauce to add some pizzazz to our Thanksgiving treats!

Short week this week as we will truly give thanks to working in an American school: Thanksgiving gives us a 4 day weekend starting on Thursday. We’ve ordered an apple pie and a blueberry pie from food services, bought a 5 day pass to the internet rights to the 1st Ashes test which starts 7am Taiwan time on Thursday! (We really hope we get an uninterrupted feed…fingers crossed) There will be some of the Aussie boys here at that early hour, hopefully to see Glenn McGrath bowl that first ball of another Ashes summer: it will be surreal watching it from here, raisin toast and coffee early in the morning but, oh, so sweet!
Photos: Dave on field day with three of his enthusiastic third graders! Two shots of Cassy at the National Palace Museum and another of all 4 of us with Cassy’s orchid!

Not another Tienmu restaurant biting the dust! We went out on Friday evening ready to taste the Thai delights available at the Orchid and the Elephant on Tienmu East Rd. only to find the ominous red sign with black characters drawn asking for a new tenant. Why, we asked ourselves? This was great authentic Thai food served in beautiful clean and tasteful surrounds: it always seemed packed and popular. Well, I suppose we hadn’t been for a few months either. Taipei residents are so spoiled for choice in eating establishments and very, very unforgiving for those that charge what they feel is a premium. The poor restaurateurs must have such a low margin, I don’t know why anyone gets into it. Anyway, we went off to “Bird”, but the sign was off and no-one seemed home so we scootered off to the west to find the “heard of, but never been to” Thai Town. Bad move! We couldn’t find it in the maelstrom of Friday night traffic so made our way back to ye ole faithful Café India, where we enjoyed an absolutely mouth watering array of Indian delicacies.

Saturday’s lazy morning passed pleasantly as we fired up the coffee maker and ate raison toast and pancakes while enjoying lots of news from home via Herald clippings which we’re still receiving with great glee on a regular basis from Mum. Cass had arranged with her friend Kathy to visit the megalithic Taipei Jade Market (which Mum would also remember!) to have a look for some items. She went and saw her sapphire man, Kumar, but was disappointed in his lack of wares and lack of prospects for any more under a reasonable price. They also went to the adjoining flower market which is modeled after the jade market and is on the same gargantuan scale. How individual stallholders make a go of it is perplexing to say the least: perhaps they used to be restaurateurs! Cass arrived home with no gems (unusual!), but with an exquisite orchid instead, which we’ll try to keep alive as long as possible, neither one of us claiming to have anything remotely resembling a green thumb! I went off with Carl at midday to find the elusive expressway route to Wanli. We threaded our way through some traffic mayhem at Neihu before seamlessly sluicing onto the number 1 expressway north. From here, we went through the tollgates before transferring to expressway 3 and then exited at Wanli. “Backdoor Benny” style, we then traveled the last few Ks of the mountain road to the sea and popped up at Green Bay. Hurrah, we’d done it! We had a surf at the Rocket, not much good, but we managed to attract quite a crowd unfortunately. On the way home we missed the Neihu turnoff and experienced a few nervous moments in the guts of Taipei, but we made it out alive!

Sunday was almost a déjà vu of Saturday. The same lazy brekky followed by various plans, which all ended up being shelved as the sun came out again. We decided to take the mountain road to the activity centre at Jinshan. It was big and wild and even though we were expecting nice warm weather and had optimistically brought the beach umbrella, it was a little chilly and overcast. We ended up at the Rocket after checking Green Bay. It was pretty big and wild, but I went out by myself, safe in the knowledge that Carl was just a few minutes behind us. It proved to be really big and wild, but thoroughly enjoyable and I managed to get a fair few good waves. The best thing is, I just love the crowds here: when it gets above about 4 foot on the set, most of the local boys just don’t want to know!

We had a great weekend, topped off by finally finding the last few episodes of Australian Idol on an unexplored torrent site. I’ve dutifully downloaded same and we’ll have our Sunday dinner watching them, just as if we were at home. This overseas life is not all hardship(!) Photos: Cass with goods, Dave on a Rocket wave, Dave’s new fish and Cassy not too sure about Dave’s lovely new “hair”!

Writing this blog each week can become, well, tedious. For that reason and that alone, I gave it a miss this Sunday/Monday and said….”no, not this week”. See how long I lasted?! That said, and unlike previous times when I’ve said this will be a short one, then gone on to wax lyrically about the minutia of our lives, this one will be short!

We’re in a pretty cruisy zone here at the moment, both very fit and healthy and enjoying the change of weather. I’ve started walking to school each day again with Cass and I hit the bag and do some focus pads with either Josh or Wal (or both) most afternoons. I’d got into a very bad habit of riding the scooter to school, but we both really enjoy the walk: it clears the head both ways, in the morning from a good snooze and in the afternoon/evening, gives us a chance to dissect the happenings of the day and plan what we’ll do next whether it be socially or professionally.

The surf has been pretty crappy even by Taiwan standards lately, which you can probably tell looking at what I’m posting on Pointyhat. I’m putting all sorts of rubbish up there, much of which has but a very tenuous link with surfing!

We paid for a live stream of the Champion’s Trophy final in cricket the other day and it was very disappointing. We got a much interrupted feed unlike the week prior, when you could have been forgiven for thinking we back home in Australia watching the Aussies strut their stuff. We’ve already paid for the first two tests against the Poms, so we hope we have much better luck with the feed.

Anyway, that’s about it. Photos sparse as well, so how about Dave “hard at work” in the office, and directing traffic on the upper field on grade 3's field day.

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electric!