de rest of the week through Monday - no wait, Tuesday Sep 27

Time flies when you're having fun. Let me think what we have been up to...
It is Tuesday morning (27th), I'm at Henk's desk at the moment. The Teradyne van picked me up from the hotel and I'm in a holding patten for about an hour, which gives me the chance to say goodbye to a few very nice people; and at 10 the same van will drop me off at the airport. I'm leaving at 12:30 for Taiwan via HongKong. When Henk booked my ticket he couldn't get me on the same flight as his own; he was picked up by the same van before 7 for his flight to Taiwan via Manilla. But, there's a typhoon west of Manilla with lots of rain and wind, so that plane didn't show up and he's now trying to book himself onto my flight. We'll see how that develops...
Last week I was at two schools that were interested in Destination Imagination, and yesterday I did an after-school workshop for the teachers at one of them. It went great and fun was had by all. A catholic school (we are in the Philippines, after all) and because of their thank-you gift, I now own a lovely little Sacred Heart statue. Fits exactly in the suitcase, between the jigsaw puzzle and the shoes. Other than this, we went out for dinner a few times with Henk's co-workers and we went to a housewarming party of one of them. Also great fun, good food and karaoke afterwards. I never sang with a microphone before, it's not as easy as it looks!

 

My last few dives were spectacular. We saw, among others, a stippled moray eel, white with yellow and black, maybe 18"? Which, IMHO, is the right size for a moray that I meet in the wild. I found it myself even, quite an accomplishment. Henk didn't get a picture because this other diver, the belgian etc woman, well, enough said about her. She's nice, but. She poked the eel "to get it to move to a better spot for Henk to take a picture". So it disappeared in one of the many holes between the corals, all of which it knows intimately... Also a small school of small sardines and a large school of large sardines. An 8" sea slug, different nudibranches and flatworms (the pink one is one of those). The pics are Henk's, he's starting to get the hang of it better and better.
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Meanwhile it's Wednesday early morning in Taiwan. Henk did get onto my flight, although with the usual problems of being rerouted. We made it to the hotel in Taipei before 8. Had dimsum for dinner and rolled into bed. No, eh, actually, rolled onto bed. The mattresses are like planks and the pillows are like rocks. But when you're tired enough it doesn't matter. Henk just took off for work on the train - the hotel is opposite the station. I can see it from our 14th floor window. No tracks or anything, everything is underground, we checked it out last night, there is a laaaaaaarge underground shopping area too which I'm going to check out later on. Especially if it rains. Right now the first sunshine and blue sky in a week!