The prospects for the future are very good

On Saturday, I went to the Taipei Hash, perhaps for the last time. I guess this is like the 4th time or so that I've gone to it. It was a lot of fun! One of the hares was a fellow white guy, so about 12 white guys showed up to support him. We went to Pingsi, an area about a half an hour southeast of Taipei. The run wound in and out of many tea fields, along a drainage canal in the jungle, through a farm, and of course, through someone's house. One of the hashers was whooping loudly like a howler monkey the entire run. It was pretty cold and rainy. The weather has definitely come full circle for me. I'm quickly nearing the end of my year, and the weather is making me more eager to leave. Anyway, the run was great. It was about 75 minutes long, and I would guess about 60 hashers were there. It was actually a pretty small turnout for that particular group. Some new names that were pretty funny that I noticed: Sea Turtle, Point, and Two-Head.

Yesterday, I went biking in Taipei with Dan, Lauren, Sam, and Jade. We rode along the Keelung and Danshui river. We were out biking for at least 4 hours. There were a ton of people out biking. The bike path was great and only crossed one road. The thing that was weird was how often the bike path changed its width. Sometimes, it was wide enough for like 10 bikes, while other times, barely 2 bikes could fit. It was definitely not all built at the same time. The highlight came when we got to the far end of our ride and we called the bike rental place because we were curious what time we needed to return the bikes. They said 4:30. We had called them at about 4:15. They grudgingly accepted our offer to return them by 6. After we hung up, the whole group got worked up in a biking frenzy as we tried to race back to return the bikes in time. Relaxed became manic in a matter of minutes. We made it back just in the nick of time, right as the sun was setting. It was pretty stupid that first of all, they didn't tell us what time they were gonna close, but also, that they closed at 4:30 when it didn't get dark until 6. Oh well. Only in Taiwan. Afterwards, we went to a great "western" restaurant in Taipei. It was good. Strangely, both cab drivers we used spoke English really well. We felt pretty bad after riding with one because we were making fun of his taxi that had funny water seat pad things. When we were getting close to our destination, I told him where to go in Chinese and he responded "I know where to go" with perfect pronunciation. I asked him if he had been listening to us, and he said a little.

Anyway, I posted a bunch of pics on-line from the last few weeks. The construction on our apartment was sort of finished today, but about 8 of the tiles are cracked in half and they have red-tape on them, meaning to fix. I'm not sure if they broke because the workers were clumsy, or if they were extremely fragile following the earthquake. Regardless, they're coming back tomorrow to do "detail work," so I'm eager to find out what that means and how they're planning on fixing these shattered tiles after they've fully installed them with grout and everything. Check the pics!