---

IN THIS ISSUE

• Kate Brookfield writes about flowers in Taipei
• Dick Monaghan shares his thoughts on dogs
• Rafiki sends a poem about the passage of time
• Valerie Parr tells the story of a Newfie hooker
• Gerrit de Leeuw forwards a solution to a mid-life crisis
• Anne Rahamut, Tom Kyle, and Tom Williamson suggest websites

Kate Brookfield writes: I hear that you are all now enjoying springtime with all the spring bulbs appearing and the trees blossoming, so I do not feel so bad sharing this story about

THE FLOWERS IN TAIWAN

This country is wonderful for people like me who like gardens and flowers. It is also great for people who like trying strange fruit and vegetables. I will have to do another article on the fruits and vegetables, many of which are new and strange to me. I have yet to learn their names and how to prepare them for eating. It will probably take the full year. I will confine this story to the flowers.

After the lantern festival, we had two flower festivals to take our minds off the cold and wet weather. The Taiwanese really go all out to make their festivals spectacular occasions. As pictures speak a thousand words, the best way to share these festivals is with the photo shows which you will find on my Picasa website:

http://picasaweb.google.com/brookfieldorama/YangmingshanFlowerFestival

The Cherry Blossom festival was a pleasant surprise. The weather was starting to improve with less rain and not so cold, so on Saturday, March 15th, we decided to go to for a hike in the Yangmingshan National Park.This is an extensive area of natural landscape, just north of Taipei. We took the MRT (metro) to the end of the line and then a bus ride uphill all the way to the foothills of the coastal mountain range. At the metro station there was a huge bicycle park with a novel idea for double stacking bikes. I like to see things that encourage people to travel without polluting the atmosphere. MRT stands for Mass Rapid Transport and having an efficient metro system encourages people to use public transport.

We were not the only ones who thought a day in the countryside would be a good idea. The bus was packed and we had to stand all the way. But there are plenty of bars and rings to hold on to when the bus lurches. All the buses have manual drive.

When we got out of the bus, we were ´gob smacked´! The place was packed with people and elaborate floral display welcoming us to the Yangmingshan Cherry Blossom festival. I don´t know the names of all the flowers and foliage used in the display, but it was certainly a beautiful surprise. The flowering cherries were the main attraction but there were other flowering trees. We took several different trails, one to a waterfall. In the distance we could see the delta of the Danshui River flowing into the ocean. Maybe later in the season the views are better, but there always seems to be a haze that prevents good clear panoramic shots. We keep reminding ourselves that we are in the subtropical rain forest region which is the reason for the lush vegetation.

Not quite the hike we imagined, but a pleasant day out nonetheless.

The second flower festival was the Calla Lily Festival. I had seen posters for this festival, which was also in Yangmingshan National Park. On Friday, March 28th, I decided to investigate this festival on my own. I knew the way. This time, I did have a seat on the bus. The lily festival was quite a bit higher up the mountain than the Cherry Blossom site. It was a scenic trip up a winding road to Jhuzihua, a small village that seems to grow only calla lilies. Again, you need to see the photos to get an idea of the vast acreage devoted to growing the lilies. The calla lily is the white one we call the Easter lily, but Easter had passed without much mention of it in Taiwan.

I had a lovely afternoon walking around the area. It was very hot and sunny so I also found shady spots to just sit and admire the view. There were a lot of nurseries growing many other plants and I enjoyed walking through the sites and wishing I could take some of these exotic plants back to my garden in Canada! I did buy a dozen lilies, then realized I needed a vase, so spent some time searching for one.

Photos http://picasaweb.google.com/brookfieldorama/CallaLilyFestivalAtZhuzihuInYngmingshnNationalPark

When it was time to be getting home, I took one look at the long lineup for the little bus and decided to treat myself to a taxi ride to the MRT station. I just couldn´t face the bus journey, probably standing all the way. Also I didn´t want my lilies to get crushed before I got them home.

I shared the taxi with a family from the UK. Grace and her husband, Ed, were born in Taiwan but had moved to the UK to study and stayed. Their daughter Jessie was born in the UK. It was nice for me to talk to people who understood English. They live in Melton Mowbray and were surprised when I knew about the famous pies. We travelled together on the MRT until they came to their stop and by the time they left we felt like old friends. They were only in Taipei for a week visiting their respective parents and were going back to the UK the next day.

This week, I had a wonderful experience when I discovered the flower market of Taipei. I had read about it in the Lonely Planet Guide to Taiwan. I asked the woman in the flower shop for directions to the flower market and she wrote the name in Chinese on a slip of paper. This is the usual way for getting somewhere as taxi drivers do not speak English. It was very good of her as she was selling beautiful floral arrangements, but they were over 1,000 NT. The floral market is the wholesale market, but anyone can go.

The taxi driver let me off and pointed to a little alleyway and said, "Flower market," to show off his English! When I looked to where he was pointing, I was a bit disappointed. All I could see was a stall with some pot plants and some rose bushes in pots. But as I approached I saw that this was just the start of a massive area of winding pathways through acres of stalls of flowers. Every kind of flower you could imagine - orchids, gerbera, carnations, paradise flowers, huge antirrhinums, roses of every colour - masses of each kind. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

What was even better was the price. One dozen long-stemmed roses for 70 NT (30 NT to $1.00 Canadian)! I bought a rose bush in a pot with three large roses in bloom and more buds to come for 100 NT. As well as all the stalls selling flowers, there were also little booths jam-packed with all the extras needed for making floral displays: ribbons by the yard, or made up in bows, cards, glitter, and all sorts of things that might add to a floral display, not to mention vases and pots. A pity I had to get a taxi there and back as it is not on the MRT route, but I have found it on the map now and should be able to get there by bus.

When we arrived here, the secretary of Mike´s department had done a lot for us - finding us the apartment, helping sort our visa applications, etc. - so I went to a local florist and bought her some flowers. I was asked how much I wanted to spend and the florist put together a magnificent floral arrangement. I could not have created something so beautiful, so I will still use the local florist for special gifts, but I will be going to the flower market to treat myself!

Dick Monaghan muses on the subject of

DOGS

Someone sent me a list of the "smartest dog breeds." (The border collie ranked first.)

My advice, if you´re looking for a dog, is to ignore the list. Smart dogs are like smart people; they have agendas. Stay away from them. What you need, if you´re anything like me, is an amiable companion that doesn´t smell too bad.

I recommend the shih tsu. I once had one named Charlie, and he, now that I look back on it, was an ideal pet: friendly, loyal, and rock-stupid. He liked to run after a ball you´d thrown, but having caught up with it, he was stumped as to the next step in the program. He couldn´t grasp the idea of returning it to be thrown again; nor could he see the need to drop it. (If you picked him up by the tail, he´d drop it, but he never connected the dots between "retrieval" and a new game.)

Actually, Charlie´s attitude was that he´d been bred to guard Chinese temples, and if you didn´t have one, that was your concern. If you get a shih tsu, don´t, as my daughter did, assume that all dogs can swim. A shih tsu has about the same density as a brick and floats about as well. They only have three-inch front legs, and swimming is not their thing. (My daughter dropped him in the lake, only to see him plummet to the bottom, off which she rescued him. Come to think of it, she isn´t much smarter than Charlie, although she can do dishes. But as she said, "What can you expect from a dog that has Queen Anne front legs?")

We´ve had a lot of dogs over the years and I´d advise staying away from terriers - their brains lock out when they´re on a scent; purebreds - too edgy - they´ve had everything bred out of them but the looks; or any dog that demands exercise, whether you feel like it or not.

And by all means steer clear of Yorkies: "Yorkie" is shorthand for "animated schizophrenia." Andy was a Yorkie who wouldn´t let Miss Kate into her own bed - bad move; he was "designated for assignment," as they say in baseball, right after that.

Rafiki forwards this poem:

HOW TRUE IT IS....

Another year has passed
And we´re all a little older.
Last summer felt hotter,
And winter seems much colder.

I rack my brain for happy thoughts
To put down on my pad,
But lots of things that come to mind
Just make me kind of sad.

There was a time not long ago
When life was just a blast.
Now I fully understand
About living in the past.

We used to go to weddings,
Football games, and lunches;
Now we got to funeral homes,
And after-funeral brunches.

We used to have hangovers
From parties that were gay;
Now we suffer body aches
And while the night away.

We used to travel often
To places near and far;
Now we get sore bottoms
From riding in the car.

We used to go out shopping
For new clothing at the mall;
But now we never bother...
All the sizes are too small.

We used to go to nightclubs
And drink a little booze;
Now we stay at home at night
And watch the evening news.

That, my friend, is how life is,
And now my tale is told.
So enjoy each day and live it up...
Before you´re too darned old!

Valerie Parr sends this story of

THE NEWFIE HOOKER

A Newfoundlander is walking home late at night and sees a woman in the shadows.

"Twenty dollars...." she whispers.

Perry had never been with a hooker before, but decides what the hell, it´s only twenty bucks. So they hide in the bushes.

They´re going at it for a minute when all of a sudden a light flashes on them. It´s a police officer.

"What´s going on here, people?" asks the officer.

"I´m making love to me wife!" the Newfoundlander answers, sounding annoyed.

"Oh, I´m sorry," says the cop. "I didn´t know."

"Well, neidder did I, ´til ya shined that light in her face!"

Gerrit de Leeuw forwards this one about a

MID-LIFE CRISIS

After being married for 56 years, I took a careful look at my wife one day and said, "Honey, fifty-six years ago we had a cheap trailer, a cheap car, slept on a sofa-bed, and watched a 10-inch black and white TV. But I got to sleep every night with a hot 17-year-old gal.

"Now I have a $300,000 home, a $45,000 car, a nice big bed and large screen TV, but I´m sleeping with a 73-year-old woman. It seems to me that you´re not holding up your side of things."

My wife is a very reasonable woman. She told me to go out and find a hot 17-year-old gal, and she would make sure that I would once again be living in a cheap apartment, driving a cheap car, sleeping on a sofa-bed, and watching a 10-inch black and white TV.

Aren´t older women great? They really know how to solve a mid-life crisis....

SUGGESTED WEBSITES

Anne Rahamut reminds us about this video of people frozen in NYC:

http://www.maniacworld.com/frozen-in-grand-central-station.html

Tom Kyle writes: This is a test page I have for a podcast and highlights a notice on a CD I have been working on for an old friend of mine, 84 years old, who was in Winnipeg and on the Seniors radio program I took part in. She is now living in California and could not complete the process of producing a printed book, so we produced a CD of her biography. She read it, and I now have a CD of the 14 chapters. Perhaps your viewers will be interested in these clips:

http://www.mts.net/~oldguy/radio/clips.html

Tom Williamson writes: This site tells you how many hours and how many seconds you have been alive on this earth and when you were probably conceived. How cool is that?

http://www.paulsadowski.com/birthday.asp

"If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies, heneeds the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy,excitement, and mystery of the world we live in." - Rachel Carson

"If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies, heneeds the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy,excitement, and mystery of the world we live in." - Rachel Carson