Get your jam on

The school year is thankfully coming to an end, but for my school that means we have to work two Saturdays in a row to make up for time taken off during Chinese New Year. Last week was a little messed up because we got Wednesday off for Dragon Boat Festival, but then had to work a full day on Saturday.

Friday night I went over to Marilette's to spend the night with her and a couple other friends. I thought she lived right near the red line on the MRT which would have made my morning commute to work really easy. She did not in fact live anywhere near the red line, but she was a ten minute walk from the blue line. I still got up ridiculously early after barely sleeping because I was paranoid about over-sleeping and being late for work. Lucky for me, Saturday at 6:45 am is a pretty slow time on the MRT and I had no problem getting to work 40 minutes early. Next time we have a sleep-over it will be on a night when I don't have to be at work the next morning.

I ran into Julie (great co-worker :) and we went and got breakfast together instead of sitting in the office for half an hour before work started.


The day went as any other day at the end of the school year would go. Listening to students nervously recite their speeches without making any use of the posters they must make and display to help them remember their speeches. Gets pretty painful after a few classes. I have to say that their English ability is pretty amazing in general. We have high standards and expect them to be speaking fluently by the time they graduate. Many of the students can speak English pretty fluently by that time, but I think a majority of the ones that can have families that travel a lot. You definitely notice a difference in the levels. If you ask students in the lowest levels what they are doing over the summer many will say nothing or visiting grandparents. The students in the higher levels are often traveling with their family to different countries.


Anyway, after work I had been planning to just go home and vegetate watching a show or two before passing out from lack of sleep. Then Tom invited me to go out with him and a few others to a place in Danshui to listen to some live music. It sounded like it would be a fairly early evening and even if the rest wanted to stay later I could easily get myself home.

So after work Julie and I loaded up into Tom's car and Tom gave me a lift to my place so I could drop off my bag that I didn't feel like lugging around all evening, and then we continued on to the Danshui MRT to pick up a friend of Tom's and a friend of Julie's.

At this time we are apparently still unsure of where we are actually going and phone calls are going back and forth. It is finally figured out that the place is a little ways out of town and Julie realizes that we will never be finished by the time she needs to get home and take care of her family so she and her friend abandon ship and the rest of us carry on.


We locate the restaurant without too much trouble and head on in. It's right next to the ocean with a nice beach and the view is great. We head in and Tom wanders off to find an ATM. I follow Sebastian (Tom's very quiet friend) to the table and quickly head back to the bathroom where I discover there is no tissue of any kind. Swell.

I wash up and head back to the table and get to meet the band. They are also friends of Tom.

Fun laid back guys who just love to play music. Loudly. I didn't want to sit right next to the bands speakers because it was pretty loud, but once I sat down, met everyone and had a few beers it was all good. At some point early in the evening we also met Chuck. Chuck is a Taiwanese guy who lived half his life in L.A. He is definitely not a typical Taiwanese guy (this is a good thing). I thought he was a friend of someones there, but it turns out that he just lives near by and likes the music the guys were playing. He was a fun diversion to the evening as well.

The band was playing covers of great older bluesy songs and were clearly just having a great time. They were supposed to finish playing at 8:30, but were having too much fun and finished at around 11.
It was just a nice chill night and we didn't leave until 11:30. I ended up sleeping much of Sunday away, but it was great.