We had a rare dinner party last night. Correctly speaking it was our flatmates who had the party and made all the arrangements, we just showed up. The guests were a Taiwanese couple who was known through work. He was a teacher, quiet and a bit inarticulate, and she was the precise opposite: an entrepreneur […]
Drowning
The Boddhisattva had been given two tickets to the new Paul Chiang exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts. She did not intend to use them so we took them off her. Off we went down to Yuanshan where the museum is located (also the big farmer’s market in the expo centre), stopping first for […]
Treasure hill
I left early in the morning into cold rain and wind as I had an appointment with a hairdresser in Xinyi. This is just on the edge of downtown-y bit with all the malls and megastores, a sixth floor office in an office block turned into a hairdresser’s salon. This sort of setup seems quite […]
Deadline
Yesterday was the submission deadline for a document that had been badly disrupted by the coronavirus outbreak. We squeezed it out under the wire. In the process I managed to annoy my oldest colleague/ friend at the organisation who doesn’t like his indolence to be brought to attention. Some years ago I think I would […]
News of a lockdown
So Pakistan is now also in lockdown, after days and weeks of ostrichism and prevarication. I have one sister in Islamabad, by herself in a flat in the Diplomatic Enclave; another outside the enclave, a father mostly by himself (though, happily, his house help returned from vacation just in time, hopefully not bringing the pest […]
Flower shopping
The GF woke up late and I waited for him, so we parted ways with the Boddhisattva and the Woodland Creature for the day, planning to meet up in the early evening at the Jian Guo Flower Market to buy some plants and flowers for the flat. So off we went, first for lunch at […]
Sakura hunt
We woke early in the morning, before sunrise, to climb up behind our bed and breakfast to what we were told was a beautiful place to watch the dawn. We made it up just as the sun was coming out. It was not the sea of clouds, but it was a sunrise over hills and […]
Mountain train
Early in the morning – well, around 9 – we took the train up to Alishan. This was a small Japanese era train which passed behind small houses and flowering trees, passed little wooden stations from that era, and left all signs of people behind and climbed up the steep central hills towards Taiwan’s most […]
Fish soup
We took our bags to Chinese lessons today – it was the other teacher who is much, much better than the one on Monday. She took our Line accounts (which I created only for the purpose of Taiwan travel as I don’t use it otherwise), and has been sending up pictures and videos all day. […]
Leashed rabbit
This morning we went to Tamsui, a town by the sea and a river and visible from our windows. The day I arrived was the final day of the Chinese New Year and I watched fireworks all along it, far below our condo building on a hillside above the town. The Boddhisattva is in Vietnam […]