Lazy days in our house this weekend as we wind down in preparation for our trip to Thailand in a couple of days. We're off to the EARCOS teacher's conference in Bangkok for 5 days then plan to relax at a slick hotel down the coast for another 5 days in Hua Hin. Our accommodation in both places is a little splurgy for us, supposedly 4 star, so we'll hopefully not get too spoiled.

We've both had a great kick-start to our mini break with respective book club meetings on Friday night. As is their custom, Cassy's club met at one of the girls' places for a home cooked gourmet meal and my mob met at the famous "Big Brother" pub out along the MRT line at Qiyan. We both had a great time in our different ways!

Cass also endured the middle school spirit week this past week, which explains some of the stranger photos on here today. Colour day with hair accessory is always a big hit with the kids when they see Cass transformed with the long black wig! Kristin and Cass also had similar outfits for pajama day (with accessory of course) and Louise took a good shot of them in the auditorium.

Other photos are of cuddling cats, super size dancing puppets at the temple round the corner and the famous beer tappers and squid balls at Big Brother. Of course, Cassy's new super diamonds are on show as well...they're her early birthday present. That's it! We're flying out on Wednesday morning, so it's probable I'll not write the blog new week. We'll be back on April 7.

As you know, I broke a rib and tore up lots of rib cartilage more than 6 weeks ago, but despite doctor's best advice and my own layman style researching on the internet, my ribs are yet to heal after this benchmark period. The problem is that most nights I manage to re-injure them in an unconscious state of sleep. I have a very weird sleeping default position which involves me lying spreadeagled on my stomach,with my arms under my pillow! This bizarre sleeping position has never been a problem before (except perhaps for Cassy having to view it, but I'm sure she's come to terms with it by now!), but now, when I wake, I realise I've once again done the very worst thing for my healing ribs, by stretching overhead. Despite my best attempts at change, I invariably wake myself up in pain at some stage of the night to register the fact that, once again, I've reverted to type in the night: frustrating! Added to my woes was my stupidity in challenging the increasingly muscle bound Cass to an arm wrestle the other morning on my "good" side. 99 times out of 100, she just weakly submits to my stupid challenges, but this time, she suddenly grabbed my arm with two hands and reefed it back towards her. I've now got strained shoulder ligaments to go with the ribs....serves me right doesn't it!! 

The sun peaked out from behind a drape of mist at times over the weekend, yet not enough to negate a very strange and unusual phenomenon from occurring. Dense fog was forecast for the 48 hours of the weekend, but it brought with it an extremely unwelcome side effect of heavy humidity. Our marble and tile floors were slick with moisture all weekend and everywhere we walked and everything we touched was damp and sticky. We needed to tip-toe around to avoid sliding all over, and each attempt to dry the slick lasted only ten minutes or so before the water returned. It was so bad we even started to look for water leaks at one stage! Mercifully, the worst appears to be over: floors were less sticky this morning and things are reverting to normal conditions. I hate to think what it did to our paintings and clothes....those "closet camels" would have been working overtime.

We had very unhealthy, but extremely delicious food treats on the weekend, with Maya wood fired pizzas on Saturday night and Chili's fare for a mid afternoon feast on Sunday. I even went so far as to eat my horded pack of chicken Twisties for tea later! (sent from Singapore by Lewy with another mate, Dave M). I reckon we can afford it every now and then: I think Asia has been good for us on the healthy eating frontline as well as the fact that we seem to have modified our body sizes to fit in with our hosts over the years. Cassy took another great armful of clothing round to "her lady" to get altered the other day: she has now had almost her entire wardrobe taken in, as the "lady" seems to be some kind of uber seamstress who can alter anything....she's even giving a swimming costume a go at the moment in preparation for our trip to Thailand.

We got over to Miramar to watch a movie, The Grey, and we were pretty impressed. Cass was less keen than I, partly owing to the graphic plane crash and subsequent stalking of the human survivors by a pack of wolves, but it was a cut above the usual offering in the wilderness, macho-survive against the odds genre. 

I had parent conferences through the week and Cassy persuaded me to leave my flowing locks on for them. Subsequently I got a hair cut: before and after shots can be seen above. Also, Chili's window seat, Gurecki toasting the sunset on Friday afternoon (a few "boys" came to visit while Cass was down at Joe's inspecting and modifying the prototype for her new earrings), cats dozing, Cassy winning a plush squirrel and a watermelon bonanza down at the Shi Dong!

 

It's a little freaky experiencing an epiphany on a looping overhead freeway while traffic whizzes and wails past you on either side. Taipei is like that sometimes: it can lull you into a false sense of comfort and suddenly, BANG, it reminds you with a hit and a jolt that yes, you really are driving on a downtown traffic-dodging overhead ribbon in a seething, pulsing city of six million people crammed into a tiny land footprint, all very busy getting where they need to go very fast!

We were on our way downtown to visit the exhibition of new Australian contemporary art at the MOCA, Taipei. It was another cold and blustery day, of which we've had more than our fair share on recent weekends, so we'd decided to kill a few birds with one stone. Due to the fact that my rib and surrounding cartilage are still groaning at any real stretching physical activity, the car has not had an outing to the beach for more than a few weeks. Needing to make sure I didn't repeat my battery draining neglect of a few months back, we wanted to get the car out and about. Cass suggested we visit either the MOCA Aussie exhibit or another at the National Palace Museum, featuring works on Greek and Roman legends from the Louvre. MOCA won out on this occasion, but as we'd left our run a bit late, we decided to eat on the way if we could score a precious park anywhere near a restaurant.

We'd just about given up any hope of a park when a gap at the curb, a loading zone mid-week and an ambiguous sign combined to allow us to stop. We tried a new spot but we'd have to wait about 30 minutes. Undeterred, another new restaurant beckoned us around the corner and we had a magnificent  7 course meal at "Toros". This place was pretty impressive, and even though we felt a little under-dressed, we enjoyed a fine meal with beautiful ambiance and doting service for an amazing price. The steak was first class, but chef's suggested cooking time for the cut of meat was under what Cass would have preferred. That slight problem notwithstanding, Toros was certainly a standout. Paying more than usual, we were a little surprised at the cost until we translated back into Aussie dollars: just $70 for two, all those courses and a glass of red wine each on top...we'll struggle again this year coming to terms with Australian prices I suspect. Check out our set menu here: we'll definitely be back.

The squalls hit again as we left the restaurant and the wind and rain were a towel flicking our legs and a watering can showering our coats until we again found the warm shelter of the car to motor further into the city's heart. The parking station at the MOCA surprised us by asking for our "easy-card", Taiwan's electronic chip held value card that we use on buses and trains and increasingly, for lots of small transactions just like this one. It's very handy. 

The exhibition itself, held within the beautiful red-brick Japanese designed and built museum was an uplifting and impressive array of all the best from Australia's current crop of cutting edge contemporary artists. There were a few artists and styles of work we recognized, one in particular (Joan Ross) did a similar video work for the "Curious Colony" collection at Newcastle Art Gallery when we were home June before last. There were electronic flowers that reacted as you approached, an eerily authentic lyre bird, electronic imaging beds that analysed your mood and an interactive art space to do your own work interpreting your experience. Morphing video of Taichi masters, giant electronic crickets in swarms on the walls and tiny peep holes with altered video tracks to disorientate and surprise, were just some of the treats for our senses. The best parts of all were the soundtracks of the bush and the wide, impossible blue skies that greeted us around every corner: we got a little homesick!

Very satisfied, both gastronomically and spiritually, we made it home in time to pick up our Papa Poulet chicken and take advantage of having the car (that very rare element in our day-to-day lives here) to transport lots of cat litter home in style, instead of the usual, which is me balancing a silly number of packs precariously on the scooter along the main road to home! A great weekend and we're re-charged to face the challenges of another working week...bring it on! 

P.S. photos are fairly self explanatory according to the text, but I did snap a couple of shots on my phone of the beautiful sunset on the way home last week. Also, apologies for all the hyper-links today, but the story seemed to call for them, and also apologies for the pattern I seem to have fallen into of writing this on a Monday afternoon. I do the photos on Sunday night, leave them as a draft, then come to the writing on Monday: seems to be working well for me at the moment so I might keep it going for the time being. I'm reading, "So Much For That" by the incomparable Lionel Shriver...she's awesome! Cass is re-reading everything she can get her hands on from the old bard (work related).

Cass had some real excitement through the week when she went to pick up her early birthday present from the perennial talisman (or as I like to call him, "The oily snake-oil salesman": no, not really!!), Joe the Jeweler. Sequestered in a tiny shopfront with some massively heavy hidden fortification in a thread of an alley down in the Japanese quarter, Joe has done some big business over the years with the bejeweled dolls of Tienmu and wider Taipei. Cass herself has done some pretty serious business with Joe over the years and his product is always superior and, according to Cass, right on the money. Maybe Cassy's idea of price and mine are slightly out of kilter: all I see are great wads of notes flowing from my hands straight into Joe's and only a few shiny trinkets are given in return. It just doesn't seem like a fair trade to me, but Cass always seems mighty pleased with the transactions, so perhaps I'm missing something! The words, "pilgrims" and "Indians" spring to mind, but I won't delve any deeper on that one! Suffice to say, she now has some more diamonds to adorn her fingers and she has some "in the pipeline" to be picked up after our return from Thailand.

We were both suffering from a cold this weekend after a week of spluttering kids and two days for cass at least of shaking hands with over 100 sets of parents. She endured her "stadium style" parent teacher interviews over the past few days, so it was no wonder she got a sore throat and little wonder that she icked up some lurgy. In my case, eight year olds are not famous for their hygeine and after the third or fourth time I was sneezed all over while helping the little charmers, I knew I was going to cop something bad!

We did struggle out against the germ-filled tide on Saturday afternoon and feasted on our favourite "Eat Burgers", before wandering across to SOGO and Wendel's to get some specialized supplies for the week. (By specialized, I'm referring to bread that tastes normal and isn't overloaded with a cup and a half of sugar and some plain yoghurt: Taipei's not completely normal just yet!) After that, we were both pretty exhausted so we drifted on home for some more lounge time.

Sunday, we didn't feel much better, but Cassy spent a vast majority of the day, tweaking and re-vamping her newly written Shakespeare unit for school. They've been tasked with an introductory unit of a smorgasbord of all things Shakespeare which is a pretty tough ask at Grade 8 level. She spent a lot of time on it yesterday and seems pretty satisfied that it will work well, so she feels it was time well spent. I watched a plethora of sport on TV: I was streaming the surfing final from Snapper Rocks, flicking across to the rugby league, then watched the cricket final with Sri Lanka. In between, my stir-crazy tendencies went into screaming overload so I took the scooter out for a bit of a ride-around. I went through some back streets in and around the surrounding suburbs and found all sorts of interesting nooks and crannies and discovered some potential new walking trails in the hills up behind the area between Beitou and Guandu.

I've finally finished that Stephen King book and it was a bit of a marathon but well worth it: a throwback to some of his early classics, with some plot gymnastics that had me totally flummoxed. Photos: Cassy snapping a fan of cash pre "Joe", Eat Burger, Buddha and blue truck, a crumbling house up behind Guandu, a crazy sign in Beitou central(!), scooter, lazy cats and a gelato affogato on a lazy Saturday afternoon...very European!

 

This weekend was an another exercise in equal measures of frustration and patience, basically because the weather again proved to be extremely un-cooperative. When we wanted/ needed to get out to do some errands or entertain ourselves, the heavens opened with torrential downpours and swirling gusts, while the gods seemed content to leave us in peace when we arrived back or didn't feel like going anywhere: "February made me shiver, with every paper I delivered..." or something like that!

We did break free of the synoptic shackles on Sunday to brave some fairly intense cold and annoying drizzle to travel down to the Shida area of town. The blocks, laneways and streets surrounding the Taiwan University campus blossom with indie clothing and bookstores, quirky cafes and restaurants and all manner of establishments catering to the relatively down-at-heel but needy university student. It's an exciting part of town and one that we've only really brushed around the edges of. This day, we dived right in, no destination in mind, perhaps a bite to eat if we saw something interesting, but more to wander and get lost before (hopefully!) emerging from the labyrinthine maze of winding alleys and pathways to wend our way homewards.

We passed by our much loved KGB burger and thought we'd save it for later if we got stuck, but we were confident of finding plenty of other spots along the way. Early Sunday afternoon must be one of those hibernating times for the local uni student, as we passed lots of interesting shops and eateries, but many were closed for the day. A little like the Shilin night markets, all indications were that this place really comes alive, not just when the sun goes down, but well into the recesses of the night. It certainly was enjoyable checking the scene and after we were rejected by a couple of spots because they were full up (probably because of the paucity of open establishments), we cheerfully made our way back to KGB for the best burgers in Taipei city!

They have re-vamped the menu and now include some setts and combos and their new homemade tomato vegetable soup was hearty, spicy and delicious. Neither one of us could tear ourselves away from the "Kiwi Mate" with its unusual (for Taipei)option of added pineapple and beetroot, Cass with the lentil patty while I opted for the 100% pure NZ beef....what a feast! We each got a brownie to take home and Cassy's chocolate and my peppermint slices were mouthwatering for supper later that night.

We strolled onwards after our filling repast across to the western end of Shida Road and established that a restaurant/bar we'd visited many years ago still seemed to be surviving despite our lack of custom, although it too was closed up against the uninviting cold and rain. We walked through the backstreets further and further from the station until I resorted to firing up the GPS on the phone to get us out of the backstreets! We weren't far away from the station just down the line, so we eventually found our way back via Mingde Road where we did the grocery shopping together on the way home.

Still fairly consumed by a heavy workload at the moment, neither one of us has been reading a lot: I'm still plowing through my Kennedy "King" while Cassy perseveres with her Japanese gentleman! Photos are a mixed bunch: we took 150 third graders to the pictures to see "Hugo" mid week through the Tienmu streets producing a kaleidoscope of umbrellas. Shida sights, included the uniquely Taiwanese "running man" on the walk signal. Chocolate and cake collections were diametrically opposed to the succulent fresh fruit and vegies at the local supermarket, while Taiwan metro phone etiquette and puppets on the back of a truck vied for strange sight of the week. I've also included a new video which I think is kinda cool...check it out above or here.

Oh, and how about this? It was 32 years ago yesterday, that two 17 year old uni aspirants met at a welcome BBQ: we're still having lots of fun!

 

We were greeted by the plaintive wailing of a fire engine as it hurtled into our tiny lane just ahead of us midweek on the way back from school. after a momentary panic until we assured ourselves it had stopped just short of our place we proceeded to watch the firemen swiftly and efficiently cut through the security bars on the apartment down the way (makes you wonder why anyone has them: they went through them like a hot knife through butter) and extinguished some kind of smouldering fire that was pumping smoke from the big silver kitchen vent. Check above photo for the ingenious way to get fire trucks down all these narrow nooks and crannies: just make them in miniature form...they're kind of cute!

This weekend was cold! We're not sure if it's the last hurrah of the long winter, but we hope it is. As is the way in Taiwan, the mercury drop is not quite as dramatic as the "real feel": the saturating humidity makes it a dank and unpleasant cold, seeping slowly through to the bone. It's certainly not as dramatic as a European sleeting cold, or a still, serene Japanese freeze, but in a lot of ways it feels so much colder. As Cassy often says, maybe we've, "Turned Taiwanese"!

We rugged up and glided down to Ximending on the MRT on Sunday. We changed at Taipei Main Station and took our usual off-shoot line, but unusually this time, we went west instead of east. The old suburb of Ximending grew up around the now razed west gate of the city and is known for the historic Red Theatre, along with the more recent attractions of KTV and movie theatres along with the plethora of stores and restaurants catering to the young people of Taipei. Many of these youngies are also trying to emulate the pop culture of Japan, so stores have an eclectic mix of fashion and trinkets and everything in between. If it's cute and crazy-trendy, you can find it (usually many times over!) in Ximending. One of the lesser publicised areas of the suburb, especially round the red theatre, is an enclave of shops and bars catering to the young gay population of the city, and we had an interesting experience here, which I'll save for a bit later.

We wandered the streets and found all sorts of weird and wonderful things to check out before eventually getting a little peckish and deciding to have lunch up on the 5th floor of one of the buildings in a side street. Cucina Italiano was a pretty standard set-style restaurant with a nod to all things Italian, but offering a fusion menu of Taiwanese/Italian and extras. It was crazy cheap and surprisingly delicious. After a set including salad, soup, main meal, dessert and coffee, we paid slightly less than $20 in total. For that you'd expect some lesser quality gear, but my dinner, for example, was exactly the opposite: spicy prawn fried rice with 7 large fresh prawns on top!

After lunch we drifted across to some market marquees that Cass had noticed being set up in and around the Red Theatre since we'd arrived earlier. All the stalls had great quality handmade stuff of one variety or another, but all of it was top quality. Unlike a lot of fare in the night markets, which can be cheap and tacky, these stalls were housed by real artisans. There were all sorts of one-off design T-shirts, soups, jewelry, artworks, lights, hair combs etc. etc. I tried on an amazing T-shirt, but even though it was extra-large, it was still a bit tight. I know, I'm huge! Seriously though, it caused quite a stir as I tried it on and tried to make it fit!

Drifting out the end, we wandered past shops with some seriously raunchy and graphic photos of impossibly well-toned and hunky men really getting it on. One such shop stocked an amazing range of men's underwear but also had a rack of Billabong board-shorts on sale outside. After trying on a pair in the miniscule curtained off area inside, I'm now the proud owner of two pairs of top quality, genuine board-shorts. The undies looked pretty good too: might get some of them next time!

Cass got herself some seriously hot high heeled suede boots at the local SOGO on the way home: she'd had her eye on them for a little while, but finally decided to take the plunge and get them. So, we had a little retail therapy, but most of all just enjoyed the day out in a very different part of town than the ones we usually inhabit. The excitement was all a bit too much for us later in the evening as we were both exhausted, again necessitating the late arrival of this blog: I'll try to get back on track next week, promise!

Photos: the fire drama and some of the sights from the streets of Ximending.