I've described our walk from home to school many years ago, but as so much has changed, I thought it might be timely to re-visit it and this time reverse it to describe our walk back home in the afternoon.

We meet up on our shared third floor of the massive school complex, meeting in Cassy's block B which is the middle chunk of three interconnecting brick monoliths that make up the lower and middle schools. Passing twittering packs of schoolkids clumped together at various odd points in hallways, classrooms and stairwells, we drop down one of five staircases fanned throughout the building. This one leads past the ATM machine and beside the great lobby, always buzzing with parents, carers and kids meeting up after school or after-school activities. We exit from the battery of glass doors at the front of the school to be disgorged into the wall of heat baking the forecourt. The star spangled banner and the Taiwanese flag flap above us as we edge past the legion of guards and the guardhouse before wandering past the ubiquitous bank of yellow cabs with their milling, socializing driver pack at the ready. After beginning our trip down the road out the front, we are usually stopped at the pedestrian crossing leading to the first row of shops parading down this 6th section of Chung Shan North Road.

We usually see various groups of kids calling, "Hi, Mrs. Braggett, Hi, Mr.Braggett!" as they head back to school for more activities on their way from the local 7/11s or bakeries with snacks in hand. We wander past the "Best Buys" known for their sales pitch of "Buy one, free one" which always makes us feel very laudable by freeing the odd captive T-shirt or two! Onward past funky little hole in the wall bars and eateries, antique emporiums, convenience stores and the famous Wellman's store which stocks all sorts of delicacies and hard-to-find items for the foreign client.

Each block is covered by substantial awnings which keep the rain at bay in these sections as well as the searing afternoon sun. The footpath is wide, and could be quite luxurious except that scooters huddle in packs beneath the covering, taking up at least 2/3 of the available space, turning the boulevard into a bit of a goat track! The various shops pave their own footpath section so we cross a giddy mix of marble, tiles, concrete and bitumen at all different levels and angles: it certainly keeps us on our toes! Joe Laundry (dry cleaning) sometimes receives a pick-up or drop off from us and we're always amazed at his bargain prices. Our dentist, Dr. Fu resides in this block as well.

We quite often stop to buy some milk at one of the 7/11s and try to resist the French patisserie as it wafts out sweet smelling zephyrs and displays mouth watering treats! Cedric, the owner, also stacks great sacks of imported French flour at the door of his shop. We're now reaching the final block of shops before being thrust out from under the awnings and into the afternoon elements. This block has the cute ballroom dancing studio upstairs, a Subway, furniture store and various fine wine stores which we suspect are fronts for something else....how could they all survive in this quiet stretch?! There is even a shop dedicated solely to various types of honey! On a funny little raised up section in front of an apartment building is a stationery store and a wood fired pizza takeaway, before the shops fizzle out and we're greeted by the sprawling Shi Dong Elementary School.

The "pencil school" has giant replicas of pencils and pencil stubs in its front garden area. One pencil leans lazily against the second story of the main building as if it has been forgotten mid-sentence by a Gulliver sized author. The school is usually releasing thousands of students as we make our way by, scooters, cars and bustling parents compete with ecstatic bouncing students of all ages to crowd the footpath and road. We thread our way through eventually to cross the road and walk through our self titled, "Forest of Tranquility"! Officially called Lanxing Number 1 Park, it has trees with fairy-tale strands of vines dripping down from each one. There are noticeably fewer trees though every year, as the ravages of various typhoons uproot and damage them one by one. The concrete path is newly stamped and the park is full of Youbike stations, garden beds and the odd quirky sculpture competing for glances with the very odd garish Chinese style bridge and tiny amphitheatre. Faux grazing goats try to inspire a bucolic feel, but it's not really working as the traffic drones incessantly in the background as diesel fumes waft through the "idyllic" setting! Further along is a new kiddies play gym before we head out of the park and down Bessy's laneway.

The river runs close to the laneway, so we squeeze down beside the unusual little stand-alone photography studio and past Bessy's hair salon which she runs from her little back room facing the lane (both Cass and I get our hair cuts here). Almost immediately we're released into another pocket park, where we have our semi-regular "Moop" sightings. The shore bird has been noticeably absent in the recent heat, no doubt wading riverside till things cool down a notch or ten. We wander through this park to the multi-coloured, intricately carved temple at the end. This is the site of the previously referenced "tongue lashing dance" which occurs once a year in a delirium of beetle nut, beer and strident music with fireworks. At this time, as is the case on 364 afternoons of the year, all is quiet save from some burning of fake money in the temple furnace and the odd semi-homeless man practicing his ablutions in the outdoor wash basins.

We turn into another lane and then swiftly again into our own. The sun blazes from the west right into our faces as we make the last 200 metres and we crack the lock of the main door open before grabbing the advertising brochures from the mailbox and heading up to the third floor to greet the cats and crank up the air-conditioner. That's our typical daily reverse commute!

Photos: Cassy's and David's classrooms: mine demonstrating the digital power of mesmerizing colour and movement! The rest are of our walk home.

It's a dazzling display of tropical succulence at the top of the steps in the middle of summer. The track around the ridgeline is hallowed with drooping bamboo as lush, giant leaves float and cover all the spots along the path disguising the precipitous drops to the valley below. The temperature drops a few degrees as soon as the top step is reached and travel along the stone path begins. It's a merciful drop in temperature as we variously roasted and basted on our knee popping, sweat dropping trudge to the top in the middle of yet another diabolically hot Taipei weekend.

In stark contrast to our weekend hike of madness, we've luxuriated in the new air conditioners this past week. We've come to realise that our old equipment was partly broken, yet also partly ailing, as the living room component now throws out prodigious levels of frigid air in comparison to its predecessor. What's most startling is that we can raise the degrees time and time again and still be forced to go and source football jumpers and other coverings....the ridiculous to the more ridiculous.

We've very cunningly got the VPNs working with our lightning fast connection speeds to trick the internet into thinking we're sitting in Merewether somewhere to watch the Olympic Games from Rio! Channel 7 requested a postcode, and as long as I remembered to enter this, as well as the VPN before hitting the "live" button, we were able to gain access to a smorgasbord of sports for the duration, just finishing today. I've really missed watching the Olympic's coverage here in Taipei over all these years: looks like yet another international barrier has been broken down.

It's been an eye-opener for us in our first full week back at school. My seemingly mildly altered schedule has turned out, in practice, to be a bit of a shocker. I'm even unable to start or think about this blog on a Monday in my little break after lunch anymore, basically because the break doesn't now exist! When a meeting takes place after school as well, the blog posting gets pushed back to now, a Monday evening after school. I'm reluctant to change my Pavlovian habits as I suspect it might result in a cataclysmic abandonment of all things "blog": that would be a terrible shame after managing to maintain it for fourteen years, don't you think?! I'll tinker around the edges of my schedule and see if I can discover a few little windows of time to get the thing down each week.

Apart from chilling out, quite literally, in our newly air conditioned spaces, we've pretty much just worked, shopped and slept since we got back. Cass did manage to catch up with Kristin for a Friday evening meal, while I met up with Wal for a few beers on the same day. Wal will be off from school for six weeks from tomorrow for paternity leave, so it will be strange not having him around. He's quite determined to carve out some time on a Friday evening if possible and with footy finals starting in a week, I'll have plenty to keep me company in the coming weeks.

We were both quite chuffed with our hiking efforts yesterday and are both also chipping away at our holiday "puppy fat" as we fall back into our exercise and eating routines. Cass is busy cooking up her healthy vege curries again and also doing her morning weights' routine. I'm powering through my excessive regimen of pushups every other day and we both do our 30 minute round trip walking to and from work each day. The scales were taunting us with a few extra kilos after our trip back to Australia despite our determined exercise each day back there, but we're slowly whittling the excess away again. Apart from anything else, I have to squeeze into my tailored slimline suit in a few weeks time!

Photos: Cass hams it up in her "pod" class configuration, evil cakes for a birthday celebration from the French Patisserie and all others are from the steps and surrounds.

The glowing visages of the northern hemisphere summer beam out from the first photo above, indicating we're back in situ, despite my rather wan appearance resulting from the weak rays of the antipodean winter!

I was due to get the blog up and running last week, but we were flat out with the new school year about to open and the various tedious jobs needed to get the house up and running. The majority of the photos above are on the theme of air-conditioning, where we bit the bullet and decided to replace our ailing units, one of which was leaking prodigious amounts of water and the other of which was losing its daily battle to combat the heat, which in turn combined to make our lives quite unpleasant in the blistering heat which greeted us upon arrival!

Our "summer" winter holiday was as wonderful as usual. We seamlessly zippered into our Newcastle lives this year, possibly aided by the presence of Chris and Val after their absence last year. After a whirlwind unpack and set-up, we quickly re-established our daily routine of walking, surfing, reading, shopping, visiting, relaxing. Despite the amazing food related temptations, our daily walk seemed to combat any weight gain during our stay, and we stretched out over 6-7 km each day, tackling the hills and the Anzac Walk, while never tiring of the coastal vistas. While on many occasions we did precious little else, we felt quite chuffed with our efforts!

We had a late surprise of a holiday within a holiday when Ross contacted and we decided to continue our tradition of meeting up in a suitable venue. We tripped across to New Zealand's Dunedin and their spectacular views and wonderful home, where we were spoiled by great company, lots of wine and food as well as log crackling fires and sights of interest and wonder. We had a "holiday within a holiday within a holiday"(!) when we tripped up the coast to stay at Moeraki and dine at the famous Fleurs after a visit to Oamaru's steam punk splendour during the day. On the way back, Ross and I scored a super clean private surf at Murderer's Beach and the Jimmy's pies to warm up afterwards were as delicious as we remembered! Here are some shots....

Cass had always wanted to go to the opera at the Sydney Opera House, so when we spotted that her favourite, Carmen, was scheduled, we planned an extravagant stay down in Sydney for the event. I have to admit, it was quite magnificent: the setting and pomp were incomparable and the performances faultless to my untrained ear. We took the opportunity to visit the Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of N.S.W. while we were there and explore the cafes and haunts of Potts Point and King's Cross, a fun day and evening, and it's always so satisfying to revel in the iconic big ticket items permanently on display at the gallery.

Apart from those big events, we had not really enough time to catch up with everyone. Apart from a couple of dinners together, it was difficult to find a lot of time to meet up with my sisters and their families in particular. These young families get super busy, not to mention working for a living as well! It was  easier meeting the "retired folk" (!) and we met up with Mum and Cassy's parents a fair bit, Cass spending days out with her Mum and we all going to dinners and chats at various venues and homes. We got to visit Mum a fair bit as well and got out a few times for a meal and to the Art Gallery. Cass met up with the "Big Four" a few times, her wonderful close friends from Grammar, and we met various other friends for lunches, coffees and drinks as well as getting to a few Knights games. Our non NZ holiday pics can be found here.

Summer is roasting Taipei and apparently has seared the landscape right throughout June and July, the heat unrelenting as I write, and the forecast indicates, for the foreseeable future! Our new aircon is keeping the heat at bay at home now and we're very glad we made the decision to purchase new ones for the living room and bedroom. My rudimentary Mandarin skills were stretched to breaking point in the research, discussion, purchase and installation of the equipment, but incredibly it seems to have turned out OK....a miracle!

Photos: My team members for this year, air con installation, Taipei fruit and young Logan......Wal and Annie are expecting the arrival of number two baby any day now.

You can tell how happy Cassy is at the moment from some of the photos above. As we slowly wind down the year here, high school kids graduating and middle and lower school kids and teachers fizzling out on the run down the home stretch, the finishing post can't come quickly enough. This will be my last blog post till mid August when we return after our "summer" break in Australia. All the fun of shutting down our lives here for a couple of months starts now!

Cassy has compiled a great list of things that need to be done before we fly out next Sunday. Mostly mundane, but all necessary, many of them revolve around the "girls", their supplies and their carers. We also have to do some rent payments, credit card reminders and various other temporary shutdowns or postponements. We've managed to cross a few things off the list already, but have a pretty full week of doing the rest of them.

A very annoying and untimely distraction has been the breakdown of our air-conditioner in the bedroom. Just when the temperatures have soared into the high 30s, the unit in the bedroom has decided to leak water inside at an alarming rate. We've had it fixed twice beforehand and had been previously advised that it was on its last legs, but it has come at a very inopportune point! Our solution has been to keep the main unit going in the loungeroom, open our door but close all the others and hope a little cooler air filters through to us. If we keep the fan going as well, it seems to be working OK, so we'll try that for a while, at least for this week.

We zipped over to the deliciously tempting burger haunt in Shilin, Burger Ray, on Saturday after our shopping run. We've reached our annual point of no return I think: exhausted after a week's work, we've found it hard to rally to do anything much at all on the weekend in these last few weeks! It was superb and tasty and fresh and they've obviously realized the hypnotic beats played at ear-splitting volume were all a bit too much: the thwump-thwump staccato is still there, but you can actually now have a conversation as well! Our grocery shopping trip was mercifully short and resulted in very light and relatively empty bags as the shopping and food commissioner runs down supplies for our imminent departure.

Cass had her final Book Club meeting of the year at one of their preferred restaurants, Sonnentor, on Thursday evening. As usual, she got all sorts of gossip and caught up on the latest and greatest in this strange little community of which we're a part. The girls also selected all their books for next year, many of which have already been sourced and loaded onto Kindles and iPads. She also had her last extra duty of the year, helping out at the middle school BBQ which preceded the dance on Friday night. I spent Friday evening with a succession of likely fellows at various establishments around town for the purposes of drinking beer and watching various codes of football: as usual, tall tales and mostly true were the order of the day!

The air has been heavy and moist, afternoon thunderstorms have dumped prodigious amounts of water in rapid bursts of fury and the sun has variously roasted and cooked. The flora and fauna in the parks and beside the lanes and roads have flourished in these conditions and we've had multiple sightings of "The Moop", (even to the extent of large, roughly fashioned nests high up in the canopy of park-side treetops) as well as the very rarely spotted Taiwanese blue tailed magpie, which has brought a little nesting family to camp in our park, even dive-bombing Cassy "Aussie magpie style" the other day!

Freakishly and frighteningly, I'm supposed to receive an award at the recognition service on Friday afternoon for long service to the school: the scary aspect is that it is for 15 years service. I'm just going to let that fact sit and try not to analyze that too much, except to say that we definitely have exceeded our original two year plan! We're both looking forward to our trip back home, but as usual, we'll also miss our Taipei Life...see you soon!

Photos: blue magpie, flora, graduation, cool car, happy Cassy. I'm reading the third in the Dennis Lehane Coughlin trilogy, World Gone By and Cass continues with her Ferrante. Video is of the incomparable Chiesa di San Maurizio al Monestero Maggiore in Milan which was just a stroll from Da Vinci's The Last Supper...what a day that was!

Taipei 101's baby brother is attached at the hip to his big sister, yet rises just a measly 5 storeys compared to the lofty heights of 101 floors. You can see the little attachment in the photos of the colossus above: it's the annoying little add-on in the mid to lower left of the day and night shots! Despite it's tiny comparative size it pulls immense financial weight and houses branches of most of the ubiquitous luxury brands to be found anywhere in the world.

This rarefied atmosphere is one which we occasionally pass, sniff the breeze, then vacate quickly as if the lack of oxygen might swallow us into a vortex. If we do stop and sticky-beak, it's always to wonder at the type of person who shops in these glittering palaces. Their liveried and impossibly beautiful attendants, looking so snooty and entitled, wander the deep pile carpeted stores re-arranging the already perfect, flicking imaginary specks of dust with gloved hands. The impressively muscled "guards" squeezed into designer suits, possibly wondering what all their iron pumping had been for, as they courteously open and close whispering glass panes for the curious to come in and gaze in awe.

Well, I'm horrified to report that we've now experienced all the fawning, posturing and preening which we'd previously wondered about, as Cass bit the bullet and acted on her months of research with her very first purchase of a top designer level handbag. Cass had decided to pool various funds from Christmas and birthday this time into something other than jewellery, which was my first surprise! She vacillated about her purchase, not sure she was doing the right thing, although she did do mountains of electronic research along with real, hands on looking and touching of various alternatives. She settled on this bag when she spied it with Valerie on their visit here in April and has only this weekend set her plan in motion!

We began our quest with a 40 minute subway ride down to the glitzy eastern reaches of the city. There are two Dior shops of note in Taipei, but the sparkling palace is located at 101. In contrarian fashion, we decided to predicate this grand purchase on a meal of opposite worth in the food court on the B1 level of the building! Despite the paucity of seating available in the early evening crush, we went ahead and ordered our Japanese curry set (for me) and Indian vegetarian (for Cass) before meeting back to search for a seat. We finally spied a tight spot and oddly sat opposite another couple at a very narrow table: when you lent over your meal we were uncomfortably close! To continue the metaphor, we then traveled from the bowels of the building, up sets of escalators, the designer goods becoming more luxurious as the floors went higher till finally, we were wafted onto the marble forecourt of the top floor and the dazzling wall of light that was Dior, beckoned.

As it happened, our worst fears were not realized and the delightful girl who served us was very understanding as Cass looked at a number of possibilities before deciding on her favourite. The girl was, however, adorned with pristine white gloves! That part of the stereotype aside, she helped us through the process of a drawn out purchase, packing and explanation of the tax rules as well as letting us spend some time swanning around the store as she "attended to business". I'm sure the relaxed pace is all part of the experience! Taking the obligatory commemorative photos with our attendant and then outside, we made our way back through the multilayered marble maze to slip quietly on to the MRT and home. Cass was so so consumed by "bag fever" that she had trouble sleeping on Saturday night! She now has to keep it packaged till presenting at the airport for a tax inspection till she can finally unsheathe it in all its glory. She's looking forward to it!

Photos: all of "bag fever"! Inside the Duomo in Milan up top for now or here later

 

The middle school production was the all consuming theme of our weekend, Cassy in the thick of it as I merely played a supporting role on the periphery. It was a runaway train, a rollicking trip of good vibes and a tour de force, if critics are to be believed. Cassy's team of girls did a magnificent job under her direction as you can see not only from the "Big Four" characters above, but from the cast of thousands who needed three costume and makeup changes through the course of the show. Despite the cast swelling beyond any before witnessed limits, Cass had an even smaller team than usual, so the 11 girls did a fantastic job in the production line of Munchkins and Jitterbugs along with the intricate hour long jobs on the Lion, Tinman and Scarecrow.

"Dorothy" was the star of the show and her performance was mature and talented. As it happens, the girl who played Dorothy is the oldest daughter of Cassy's great friend, Kristin! This young girl has done incredibly well after transferring from local school just two years ago at the start of Grade 5. Imagine that....a young Aussie girl, fluent in Mandarin and transferring to an English speaking school before becoming the lead in a middle school production while still in Grade 6? I'm thinking there are great deeds ahead for this kid!

Cass was desperate for distractions during her minor breaks from the action this week yet  a series of unexpected and unwelcome distractions rocked us during the week. A series of earthquakes of quite significant proportions rocked the east coast not 40 kilometres from where we are, a little closer than the usual epicentres. The school buildings, despite their monolithic bulk, were jolted and rocked and quite the queasy feeling ensued. I wrote a poem about this last time and felt like writing another one!
With Richter readings in the mid to late 5s, we'd be quite happy without them. On Friday evening, as we snacked on paninis down at Letitia before the performance, there was yet another 5+ shudder...it's all very unsettling!

We distracted ourselves with a delicious Thai lunch/dinner on the weekend, sneaking down to SOGO in the afternoon before the dinner rush began and before Cass was on duty in the late afternoon to get ready for the big Saturday night show. We couldn't tear ourselves away from our usual signature dishes: they really are terrific and authentic. If you close your eyes and imagine yourself beachside in Chon Buri or Hua Hin, scrunching sand between your toes and listening to gentle waves crashing on the shoreline, it really is a beautiful experience!

We celebrated the last show, the Sunday matinee, with a similar early dinner, this time at the peerless Din Tai Feng. Extending the them of the weekend, we resorted to the familiar chicken Xiao long bao for me and Cassy's mushroom dumplings along with shrimp and egg fried rice, stir fried cabbage and pickled cucumber....oh, heavenly!

Mr. Lee, our landlord who live downstairs, had lent his car to be part of a wedding party so there was a little commotion in our laneway at one point over the weekend. The cute insignia was still on the car sometime later, so Cass posed with it!

I finished "Go Set a Watchman" and despite it needing a good edit (which can happen when the author dies on you!), I hail it a worthy companion piece to "...Mockingbird" despite the fact it will always live in its elder, more sophisticated sister's shadow. I also sat through every one of the 62 unanswered points inflicted on the poor, outclassed Knights on the weekend....how devastating for those young boys! Photos: some production shots, the makeup team in action, cute cars, earthquakes and the first signs of real Spring....baby birds hatching under shop awnings on our walk to school!
Video: Christmas time in a very crowded Duomo Piazza in Milan up top, or here later.