Well Jason has arrived and seems to be enjoying himself. More of this later but before Jason arrived, it was Chinese New Year.

Having experienced our conventional New Year and as stated in earlier blogs how wild it got, we were geared up for a hell of a night. CC (pictured above - aka Mr.S) invited myself and friends to his for a little dinner party. We had various eats including some roast beef, french cheese and hors d'ouevres. We drank Champagne and french red wine (second in quality only to the Aussie reds (according to the Aussies anyway!). We feasted and got tipsy before heading off to the River for what was going to be an unbelievable night. Just one problem - everyone goes off to join their families for New Year and therefore the pub was quiet !!!

An update on the face - as you can see it is healing quite well. I am however a little concerned that my looks may have been marred forever with a small scar above my left eye (aka a souvenir of Taiwan) and also my left cheekbone seems to be slightly protruding beyond where it should. Some will inevitably decide that this is an improvement !

JJ made it to Taiwan safely. His flight landed early in HKG and also was early in TPE. We jumped in a taxi and headed back to my pad. Sensibly and probably remarkably he had 3 hrs kip before we introduced him to Taiwan food. We went for a teppenyaki which he thoroughly enjoyed (so much so we went again the following day !). From there it was on to the River for a couple of beers and home for an early night before Taipei sight-seeing on Friday. Now I wouldn't like to say that JJ is jet-lagged but he had 10 hrs sleep on Thurs night and 14 on Friday night waking up at 18:00 (just in time for a Heineken breakfast !). JJ stomach also seems to have reacted with the local food - he managed to block the toilet ! Friday night saw Jason struggle with the alcohol. As you can see above - JJ found his favourite Greene King IPA in the Tavern in Taipei. I found it hard to believe that he didn't have one but settled for Strongbow instead. This was done during the afternoon before we went up Taipei 101 for a bit of a view of Taipei at night. The picture above is taken from 370m up! We returned to Jonghli by taxi and had an evening in the by now to Jason 'Amazon' and a couple of the Mafialand bars. We eventually helped Jason home at 04:30 ! It is now Saturday evening - JJ claims he is going to drink Coke all night - One assumes it is because he already has the JD inside him from last night ! Good effort my friend. Sorry Jan, we were going to call you but ................

Time for the sport update - Well the mighty reds were fantastic in Barcelona, The Aussies continue to be magnificent at 1-day Cricket (Pete Dog, why were you not in Taiwan when I needed you to be !). They still reckon they are the best in the world - But then they think they have the best everything .....

That is all for now, Got to take JJ out - omg !