Week of October 25th, 2013

Couple of fun times were had this week.  On Wednesday evening, our buddy Mike (you may remember him from his doppelganger Chinese Spranger that sideswiped our car a couple weeks ago) came to town for work.  He came into train the local Expeditors office on something on Thursday before moving onto Thailand that night, so we had a few hours with him Wednesday evening.  So what can one expect to be shown of TPE in 4 hours?  Mike implied to us via email from his connecting airport that he was hungry and sore, so our first stop was for ramen at Ippudo (natch).  Spranger said he had never been for proper ramen before and it looked like it hit the spot.  Felt better to know that I was not the only human on earth that had never experienced this wonderful Japanese black art before and was glad to be the one to share this delicacy with him.  He seemed to enjoy it and it filled the hole in his belly. 

Then we had to address his "soreness", so it was onto to our neighborhood for a late night foot massage.  Our local place takes customers up to 11PM, which fit our limited schedule.  Betty and Mike settled in for an hour of some paw manipulation.  They do work you over pretty good and about 45 minutes in, Mike said that he would be OK if it was over at that point, but he didn't dare tell them that as the  masseuses were star struck with him.  They (really the ambiguously gay masseur) kept telling (through Betty's translation) him what a good looking white man he was and wondered if he was some movie star, so Mike's ego was thoroughly stroked.  For the rest of the night, I kept calling him Tom Cruise.  Actually, referred to him as such with a Chinese accent...Tom-a Cruise-a.  They were so smitten that they asked for a photo.  I swear, if I see this framed and displayed in their wall of fame on our next visit, am gonna hurl.

I didn't join them for the massage, mainly cause they hurt me more than making me feel better, but also as I wanted to play with my new iPod that Mike muled over for me.  I bought the Classic, with 160gb of space a few weeks back in anticipation of his visit, so was hanging out with them during their rub down to play with it.  It is so great...put everything I hve on iTunes onto it (85gb, 8900 songs and just about a month of continuous music).  So far, have just hit 'shuffle all' and am hearing things in my collection that I had only played a couple times, but didn't really appreciate the first time around.  Love it love it love it so much.  Combine it with the new HTC One phone, that can live stream almost any radio station on the planet, my subscription to NFL Game Pass and Netflix, and now being tuned in properly is now complete.  We live in a truly great time.

The other good time was at the TAS Food Fair on Saturday.  I was kinda bitching about the workload and disorganization of it the other day, but the day of was a great time.  Tons of work for yours truly...got there at 6:30AM to set-up the three drink booth stands, and a lot of hustling throughout the day keeping them supplied and staffed, and then tearing down till about 4p, but it is a day long party with everyone you know being there.  The Fair is a huge deal in town as there are not only food offerings are from all corners of the planet (some being excellent...can't remember the last time I had a falafel), but there were also games, crafts, a Haunted House, etc.  I think they estimated the crowd at 8,000 and at prime time, there was a 20 minute wait to get in and bus loads of people were getting dropped off.   The Netherlands booth didn't have the best food, really, when was the last time you wanted to go eat Dutch unless you didn't want to pay the whole bill, but their workers definitely had the best looking outfits...had a  Catholic school uniform meets Hamish farm girl vibe. 

I have to call out how awesome the family was in helping.  Carolyn took a shift as the 5th graders got to use helping at the booths as part of their 10 hours of service they are all required to give.  Betty and Paul offered to take a two hour shift, but I mentioned to Paul the night before that I could use some help early (6AM on a Saturday) moving drinks and such.  He was reluctant when I went to bed, but as I'm getting ready to head out, he wakes up and tells me he's coming along.  One of his female friends was there early too, so his motivation to give dad a hand might not have been pure, but his help was invaluable.  Then he and Betty took over the main booth from 9-11am.  Their booth was in the middle of the main food section and it did 3 times the business the other two booths did combined, and they were busting it from the opening bell.  At 11, their "adult" volunteer replacement didn't show, and they hung in there through the lunch rush from 11-1pm.  Paul had also enlisted a couple of his buddies to help too, so they were having a work party.

Then, the 1PM replacement parent didn't show either, so Betty was tabbed for another shift.  That's a lot of work for both of them and while I think they had a good time, I was still very grateful for their efforts.  Toward the end of the fair, some booths had a bunch of food leftover, so we took home a huge pile of samosas for a couple bucks, and the bake sale gave Paul a big bag of goodies that didn't sell, so we had a relatively free dinner.  As we sat around eating our bounty for dinner, we all got to share our collective experiences from the day of hard work.  After dinner, we turned off the lights and watched the latest episode of our favorite family guilty pleasure show, NCIS.  We have done a lot of cool things together, but cannot remember a more satisfying family day. 

Since I'm blowing smoke, have to puff a little more about Paul.  We had our parent-teacher conferences with his on Thursday.  So far, he is pulling in straight A's, but the impressive part is how all of the teachers say how much they love him.  They all appreciate his energy and humor, and how much they enjoy him being in their class.  Apparently, he tells the English teacher jokes and says to her that he wishes he could tell her more inappropriate ones.  He goes into her class early and writes one on the chalkboard every morning.  Genius.  Am sure the fact that she's cute helps with the motivation.  She said that she was out with another one of his (female) teachers the night before and were talking about how they have a mutual admiration for him.  Am so damn envious of the kids way with the chicks.

Finally, I mentioned a few weeks ago that Carolyn is on a new (and improved) soccer team this year.  The parents of the girls saw a need for their own club, so a few us got together and formed one called the Taipei Heartbreakers.  We hired a professional coach and fill in the assistant ranks with very high quality parent coaching.  It is a terrific organization and the girls are really liking it while getting good instruction.  My role is in team communications, but was also a consultant on the uniform design.  I did very little work in sourcing a vendor or working with the designer, but did have a little input on the color scheme and some of the trim design.  We had our first game last Sunday, and while the girls played well, they looked awesome.  I truly believe these are the best looking uniforms for a female team that I have ever seen.