A Long Way Back Home

I must apologize to many of our blogging friends that we have not been active in our internet blogging activities for the last two weeks. The reason has been many folds. First, we lost our internet connection back in our house on Cape Cod. The only way we could get online was to go to the Mashpee Common Shopping Mall. The second was we were overwhelmed by the visit of our daughter's family during the last week of July. The third was our long journey back home to Taipei. Grace left for San Francisco for a conference on Friday, July 31. I left Cape Cod on Tuesday, August 4, to go back to Taiwan via San Francisco too. We had a brief rendezvous at San Francisco airport before she took off to Taiwan before me.

Due to various last minutes schedule alternation, I ended up to have to stay with my good friend, Dean, in San Francisco for two nights. It was good to see him and his family, especially his new grandson. Dean took me out to the north of San Francisco, across the Golden Gate Bridge to have an afternoon photographic tour on the Pacific coast of Marine County. These were pictures that I took of this beautiful and rugged coast line during the trip. Our final destination was an oyster farm on Hog Island. The oysters were very delicious.

When I finally ready to fly back to Taiwan in the morning on Thursday, August 6, I was told in the airport that my connecting flight from Tokyo to Taipei was cancelled due to typhoon. The next available flight will be on August 11!!! I finally got on a flight to Seoul, Korea, stayed one night and took a flight to Taipei the next day and arrived back home on Saturday afternoon.

Neither of us can sleep on Sunday morning due to jet-leg. We went out to eat at a roadside noodle stand at 4 AM. The place was packed with taxi drivers, journalists and late night party goers. After a satisfying meal, we went out for a drive then went to the traditional market for some grocery shopping.  After all these activities in the early morning, it was just in time for us to go to the 2009 Paganin Festival in Taiwan at National Music Theater.  It was hosted by Eva Air, with its own Evergreen Symphony Orchestra.  The guests were three Chinese violinists, Feng Ning, Mengla Huang and Bin Huang, all have won 1st Prize at the prestige Paganin International Violin Competition in Genova.  It was a marvelous concert.  Afterwards, we had lunch at the original store of the world famous dumpling restaurant, Dintafung (鼎泰豐). We were glade that we were finally home.

In the meantime, we had the worst flood in Taiwan history at the southern part of Taiwan during the weekend. In one area, the accumulative rainfall was close to 3000 mm!!