We’ve arrived. We left Tainan around noon, a taxi to the HSR and then a train ride to Taoyuan. It was the usual one and a half hour, which seems to be the journey time in Taiwan, regardless of where one is going. At the station we were met by the Boddhisattva and the Woodland […]
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City of blood and roses
Two years ago and a day, we arrived in Beirut. This morning I woke to the news of the cataclysmic explosion in the city, heard in northern Israel, which has devastated so much of it. Had it been two years ago, the GF and would have been waiting outside one of the destroyed hospitals, hoping […]
Waste of a day
A terrible day and a terrible night before it, much of it awake and in pain. Woke up and got dressed, and threw up out of pain, then felt too drained and weak to even make my tea in the morning. When the GF woke up he made me some tea and a slice of […]
Last weekend in Taiwan
Today was our last Sunday here and we visited a few favourite spots: the Matzu, Confucius, Koxinga and God of War temples, a stop at Kaffun for coffee, and of course collecting our pre-ordered cake from the bakery downstairs. We also popped into the Lady Lishui temple, which is dedicated to childbirth and indeed, in […]
A minor correction
The night before this Eid is not, technically chaand raat, which means ‘moon night’, referring to the sighting of the new moon, which one sees before the other Eid. This Eid takes place on the 10th of the month, so the moon is heading towards fullness, but I still think of it as chaand raat, […]
Great disaster
Eid began with leftovers as I ate the daal from a few days ago for breakfast. Rather pitiful, since it was stale and old and not at all Eid fare, but it was what I had that felt like home. Also, two cups of tea instead of my usual rigidly rationed one. When the GF […]
Chaand raat
It’s chaand raat in Pakistan, officially if not actually (it should actually have been last night, but the ongoing spat between the Moonsighting Committee and the Minister for Science and Technology led to Eid being declared for tomorrow in Pakistan instead of today). I ended up with something quite similar to the chaand raat of […]
Bean counters
Taiwan appears to have a surprisingly large number of people for whom a major part of their job description is to sift dust out of coffee beans, pick through them (in extreme cases with chopsticks), roast them in batches of about a half cup each, empty them into a little jug covered with a loose […]
Slip of the tongue
This evening, over dinner, the GF observed that I was less grumpy than usual, less prone to become annoyed at my usual bugbears perhaps (leadership was today’s). Without thinking, I said “maybe I’m happy” and then he blushed and I blushed and we both avoided each other’s eyes. Did make me wonder, though, as I […]
Monkey say, monkey do
There is something destabilising about the playacting in politics these days, so much of it seems to take place in a no man’s land. On one hand, there is a dismissal of norms that normalises new ones, and on the other hand there is this peculiar monkey-say-monkey-do business, a robot or an alien creature pretending […]