3rd 2 weeks
Dragon Boat Race recap.
I wrote a whole section on this with pictures for the end of my last blog and somehow lost it all.
The weekend following the 50th celebrations; was the Dragon Boat Festival. Hess had a team in the race which included Philip.
I thought the race was just to do with Hess but it turned out to be a festival celebrated through out Taiwan.
The Dragon Boat Festival, or Duanwu Festival, is a significant traditional holiday in Taiwan, celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. It commemorates the death of the Chinese poet Qu Yuan and is marked by dragon boat races, eating zongzi (sticky rice dumplings), and other cultural activities.
You can read more online. The reason for eating sticky rice is ,so the story goes is when Qu Yuan
was drowned
the local people threw rice into the river for the fish to eat to prevent them eating Qu Yuan's body.
I found my way to the river after a visit to the Art Gallery near Taipei Expo Park ,a central
point where folk meet to eat and drink beer.
I was touched by two pictures in the gallery which I will go back to see when I have more time to savour
everything.
One picture was of a woman sitting on her couch scrolling on her phone , she was wearing hair rollers
while there was a baby in a cradle with an angel with arms outstretched standing over her
The other one was a bit more disturbing. In the back ground there is a young woman on her phone
looking worried., in front a lot of discarded tissues on the floor and a little fetus ;at the side Mother
Teresa is praying.
I made my way to the river and got there just in time her hear that the Hess Boat was starting
it was very exciting
to be there to see the triumphant final of the race and to see the Hess had won their first race.
.
It was an exciting weekend altogether; with much beer being consumed and lots of food eaten.
On the Sunday the Hess team came fourth of four.. The main thing was they had lots of fun.
For some inexplicable reason after it was all over they had the opening ceremony with lots of flags waving; local music and dancing on the stage, with of course the inevitable speeches.
Since coming back to the Mountain House after the holiday weekend;I have celebrated my one month anniversary in Taiwan.
This has been one of the fastest months of my life so far. I feel very settled in the Mountain House in the Fontainebleau Building .. My day usually starts with watering Philip's plants on the balcony; whatever the weather I like starting the day out there enjoying the view.
I like some familiar things from home combined with the new experiences I am having. I listen to my music on Spotify and my audible books on my Alexa.
I go out on the shuttle bus about 5 times each week even if it is just the 6.00 PM shuttle to Zhongyi where take a walk along the main street in the cool of the day and usually I have a cold black coffee at the Family Mart. I use the Family Mart as my bank it is one of the few places I can get money out of the ATM. Local Banks ATM don't accept my bank cards; although many shops do. I have a yoyo card which I can top up at Seven Eleven or Family Mart. I use the yoyo when I travel on MRT or the bus. Many shops accept yoyo as payment including the Night Markets.
The Shuttle leaves every hour from 7.00 AM till 12,00 Noon then again from 4.00 PM till 9.00PM
If I want to get the MRT outside these times I get an Uber to the station which costs about 130 TW dollars About £2.50
Uber is much less expensive over here , it costs me under £20 to travel an hour in an Uber in Taipei.
One of Philip's friends Steve's father is over here for six weeks; I have met him at a few of the festive events over the last few weeks.
He is a regular visitor here, Brian is retired but his wife still works and is not keen on the hot climate here.
He is also Scottish and we share quite a few memories of Maryhill in Glasgow where we were both born. We are meeting up tomorrow at Taipei Zoo MRT. I have been before to see the Panda but it will be good to see her again. The park has lovely gardens from what I remember and some amazing animals.
( I am not really a fan of Zoos but I will make this an exception)
On Thursday I travelled about 90 minutes and crossed from the red line to the brown line to get to the Zoo.
Brian was waiting for me and said he had bought us tickets for the Gondola.
We walked along to the Z00 which is minutes away from the MRT and paid the princely sum of £2.50 to get into the Zoo. We started with a coffee and a catch up then headed to see the Pandas. There are two now, perhaps there were last time I was there but I only remember seeing one.This time there was only a few people there so we were able to take our time watch the pandas playing and eating. The are lovely animals and it is a privilege to see them yet it made me feel sad that they were not in the wild where they belong. I saw many amazing animals birds and insects, including Hippos ,Rhinos, Giraffes, a Lion ( Aslan) Camels, Turtles, tortoises, frogs, toads, penguins, flamingos and many beautiful birds. In the end I was torn between being delighted to see the animals and sadness about their fate. My favourite sight was a family of gorillas playing together in there garden.They had somehow got their hands on a red tartan scarf and were having such fun with it.
The Zoo is set in the Taiwanese mountains and has a beautiful trees ,shrubs and flowers .They all seemed exotic to me. There are plenty places to get a cuppa and food scattered around the zoo, rest rooms too. Most loos offer a choice between the local toilets which you have to crouch over and western toilets which I am always happy to see. There are notices everywhere telling you not to put loo paper in the toilet, they have a bin beside the loo for that. it seems strange to me . We always think our ways are the right ways. Of course they are just our way.
We eventually went on a wee train to the Gondola. It poured down relentlessly with rain all day, everyone had umbrellas up. We stood in the warm lashing rain waiting for the train then the Gondola.
It was a lovely slow ride in the gondola to the top if the mountain over the tea plantations, of course we could not see anything because to the heavy mist. I liked it it felt ethereal. At the top we walked for a while under our umbrellas looking for the right place to have tea. After passing a few modern tea shops we finally found a place that did a little tea ceremony. All the plastic windows were down when we arrived. She sat us by the window and rolled up the blind. The mist had lifted a little and we had a nice view of the lush surroundings.
We had oolong tea which I am becoming very fond of. The woman who served us was quite bossy but she was smiley a lot too. We went with the flow and enjoyed the experience.
At the end of the day I said goodbye to Brian and set out on my 90 minute journey back to the Mountain House.
We had walked 13,500 steps at the Zoo and my feet were a bit hot and achey.
On the second train I was to travel nineteen stops retracing my journey of the morning. I was counting the stops on the map on the train. A woman noticed me doing that and asked where I was going. I said Zhongyi, but my accent was not too good. She kept and eye on me though and when we got to Beitou she jumped up and took my hand and took me off the train. I protested that I knew where I was going and pointed to it on the map. she insisted I go with her. She pointed to a moving staircase and told me to go up there , she waved me off and went on her way and she was right, the last few stops to Tamsui , my line, went from there. It was one of those things you just had to know.
There are guardian angels everywhere.
The Friday of that week was the first Friday since I arrived that was not travelling to Philip and Teresa's
It was a good thing I was quite tired after the big day at the Zoo and I had got quite badly bitten and felt very itchy. The cream I had was not much help. I asked Teressa if she could get me something stronger , she said she would and bring it on Saturday. It continued to pour down all day Friday and the mist stayed almost all day. I quite liked it because it helped me feel its OK to stay home and rest and read Toroko Gorge which I am enjoying.
On Saturday Philip's company Hess were having a Staff BBQ which I was invited to.
I had to get the MRT to XingTian Temple.This was another journey I had not done before .This time I had to transfer to the orange line.
It was all relatively straight forward till I got the the Orange line then I was not too sure which direction I was to travel in. I showed a young man on the platform a pictures of the temple on my phone, and he showed me which train to get.I am so touched by how willing people are to help.
I was to meet Steve, Kelsey and Brian and the Hess head office and from there we were going in coaches into the mountains once again.
I was very impressed by the head office building, very modern quite luxurious in fact, with a lovely air conditioned coffee shop/ restaurant on the ground floor, where we had coffee while we waited for the coach. I met once more, the crew of the dragon boat and many new people. Four coaches of Hess staff were whisked off to the the head of and founder of Hess's home . His English name is Jo; Taiwanese people have a Chinese name and an English name.The BBQ was in his grounds.
It was a lovely coach ride in an air conditioned coach which had rather ornate curtains at the windows.
When we arrived we all got off and followed our leader to the venue. I notice by the side of the road a pop up stall with lots of teddy's with cap and gowns on. I learned later that there was a university near by where students were graduating. These pop up sellers are always there on Graduation day.
We arrived at our venue in the mountains for the day. We were the last coach to arrive so the gardens were filled with the people who had arrived before us.
It was so well organised were were directed to a long low white building which had once been used by the military ( American I think) Someone said" Philip is in there." and indeed he was ,standing among his work friends in a very colour fancy shirt.
We hugged and he took my case and stored it away for me. I said hello to some old friends (of four weeks) and we all headed out to the grassy area where the welcomes began.
Steve welcomed everyone then split us into Group A and Group B. Group a went of to their have food first and we in group B went back into the white building where we met some good fun entertainers/ team builders.
We sat at a table they gave us uncooked rice and socks ,and small kitchen scales.He showed us how to make juggling balls with the socks and carefully weighed rice.
He then taught us about 10 exercises to do with the juggling balls one at a time, Starting with throwing and catching them ourselves and built us to throwing and catch more than one they throwing to each other then walking round the room and throwing to people we had eye contact with. It was a great fun exercise and a good team building exercise .
After that the dragon boat team including me and Brian Steves dad were in invited to have coffee and cakes with Jo the founder and Anna the CEO. They were honouring the Dragon Boat Team which was lovely.
There were more encouraging speeches of thanks.
Them we team B got to go to the BBQ and team A did the fun exercises.
The food was lovely for Vegan and Vegetarians too. We were invited to go on a walking tour of the grounds. I did not go it was very hot and I was grateful to drink ice cold water and sit in the shade with Philip and a few friends.
At the end we were all asked to go back to the garden area and have lots and lots of pictures taken with a professional photographer and a drone.It was all good humoured and fun in the sun. After the pictures there were more thank yous and more speeches.
I was honoured by Jo ( my first time meeting a millionaire ) by being given two golden packets of Taiwan tea.
We then all got back on the coaches and were taken back to the Hess Office. We went up the the spacious office with it glamorous loos and we had ice cold water( me) and ice cold beer.( the lads)
We had a lovely time of reflection and I enjoyed talking with Gavin one of Philip's Australian friends.
We then met Teresa'a at a Camping themed restaurant which served steaming platters of seafood and platters of meats ,along with cocktails. I had one made with oolong tea.
After the food and criac, we went on to a crazy bar run by an Australia man and a Taiwanese woman . It was decorated cleverly with stuff found in skips and elsewhere; what was clever was it was all brought together creatively.
It was the end of another fun filled Saturday. On Sunday we all sept late after being until 3.00AM
Monday it was very hot and I rested all day. Tuesday It was still very hot and I lay low and went out at 5.00 th the campus pool but it was closed .It turns out it closes on a Monday. Monday evening P&T and I had a zoom call and planned the changes that are happening in July.
Tuesday I had a brilliant three hour zoom with Susan in Australia. The three hours just flew past; it is nice that while I am here we are only two hours apart.It was 9.00 AM with me and 11.00 AM for me.
It is 35 degrees today and I have put the a/c on for the first time. The a/c is in one room in the mountain house yet when it is on it helps quite a lot of the apartment.
I was at the PX Mart the other day with my trolly and an elderly gentleman , perhaps older than me ,came over to me and took the trolly off me and took in downstairs for me. I am amazed by this kindness.
Today I was on my way to to Chiang Kai-shek memorial hall when I got off the train I was unsure which exit to take; A woman seemed to read my mind and asked where I was going , I told her and she said OK Exit 5. As I came into my apartment this evening; a man I had not seen before said " I know you you are welcome in Taiwan "
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