CNY Eve

Thanks to Clyde the computer expert, Sean's blog can now be updated.

On the eve of Chinese New Year (Feb. 17, 2007) Sean and his Dad got to have a day together. The first order of business was for Sean to open a long-delayed Christmas present from his grandparents in Australia. The package had the words, "Missent to Malaysia" on it, so that gave some indication of why it had taken so long to arrive.

Sean liked it a lot. He spent a couple of minutes flicking through it and looking at the pictures of Australian birds before he finally agreed to get on his Dad's scooter to ride away.

The first stop was for breakfast. Sean insisted that he wanted a McDonalds breakfast.

It turned out that he wanted McDonalds not because of the food but because with every child's breakfast there was a giveaway. A toy dog.

On the way out, Sean took pictures of a display in the front window of the store where the whole collection of toys could be seen. He's not greedy, he just wants all 30 of them!

Then, Sean and his Dad rode all the way up to the Guandu Nature Park only to find that it was closed for the day. The park's website had said that it would be open but you can't always rely on information from websites, can you?

So, Sean and his Dad headed to a nearby soccer field. That might sound like quite a normal place to go to our overseas readers but there are only 3 places that have decent soccer fields in Taipei. If you asked the average Taipei resident the way to the nearest field about 50% (or more) would be unable to help, I reckon.

Anyway, after playing for more than an hour they sat down for a rest.


Sean was supposed to pump the ball up but before he did that he decided to check that the needle was clear. On his nose can be seen a large scratch that was made by his pet parakeet Shakespeare.


At breakfast, Sean had not only received one dog as a freebie, he'd bought two others. So, now was a good time to get them out and take a picture.


Then, because it was Chinese New Year's Eve, Sean received a "red envelope" from his Dad. He seemed quite happy about that.

Sean and his Dad played a little more football and Sean finished up the winner 6 - 4. It was a good game but pretty tiring. While Sean's Dad had another rest Sean decided to play with the dirt on the field.

They then went to a convenience store to buy drinks but Sean was more interested in taking pictures of the advertising outside of the store.

Before Sean's dad took Sean home thay made a quick visit to a book store where Sean was encouraged to look at some English-language books. He seemed to have a lot more fun reading Chinese though.