November 5, 2012

Couple of things I keep forgetting to mention.

First...if you should be thinking about a visit to Taiwan, October and (so far) November has seen absolutely perfect weather.  Highs in the low 80's/upper 70's and never getting lower than upper 60's at night.  A bit humid, but manageable.  Not sure if I would recommend it as a vacation destination on its own, but you could spend a few days to see it all,and then head onto another locale.

The other thing is a recommendation.  If you are a lover of good/bad TV like me, go rent yourself the Charlie's Angels series reboot from a year or so ago...the one with Jeter's ex Minka Kelly.  It only lasted 4 episodes on TV in the States, but they made 8 eps and just showed them in a marathon here.  Such great bad dialogue/wardrobe/plots...you name it, it had it all/nothing.  When you hear of a storm coming through, grab it and snuggle up in front of a fire with the Angels. 

Paul had his first baseball tournament this past weekend.  His team is made up of middle and high school age kids, but there aren't many of those teams in town, so this tournament was open to all ages of recreational caliber teams.  They had two games, and while there was a sprinkling of similar aged kids on the opposing teams, they were primarily made up of older guys.  As the second team was waiting to play his squad, saw some of their players having some pre-game smokes.  This guy was one of the pitchers they faced.

Was a decent junkballler, but they tagged him for a couple runs.  Paul's team were all kids in the field, bout their coaches pitched for them and they were both on fire.  Our team won both games by 4-0 and 4-1 scores.  Paul said he was a little freaked seeing how old the opponents were before the first game, but once it got going, he and the team settled in confidently.  He went 3-5 with a walk and RBI and played solid 3B.  They played with those goofy rubber balls, which takes some getting use to, but all in all, was a fun time and they are ranked #1 going into next weeks Championship round.  Some snaps...the field is along the river with a very lovely background.

 

So nice to watch baseball in nice weather after years of sitting in crappy cold Seattle spring temps...



 

I think that one of the main reasons Paul likes baseball is that it is 5% action, and 95% BS time.  With him being unable to flip shit to the Mandarin speakers, he pretty much whistles his way through the game.

The kid has a nice stroke (credit to Frank Meirer of Seattle Select baseball for that).



 

My favorite part of Chinese baseball is the post game group tipping of the cap to the other team...very positive mojo and a thing that should be adopted in US baseball.

I had to run before the end of the second game to take Carolyn to her soccer game.  She is on a U-10 club team...she has speed galore but needs to work on her aggression.  We have some time to work on that, but for now, it's all about the exercise and having fun...and fashion.  Tell me she doesn't look good in red?

She is #4...which is the unluckiest number in Chinese.  The sound saying "four" in Chinese is very close to the word for death, so is treated much like the #13 in English.  Many buildings do not have a fourth floor for instance.  We are embracing it on the field of play...who wants death bearing down on them?