Sean's 9th Birthday Gifts

Although Sean's birthday is March 5, his Dad had some trouble arranging a visit near that date. It was Saturday, March 24th when he finally had a chance to see Sean and give him his presents. Sean's Mum had very kindly told Sean that his Dad would buy him a soft toy that Sean wanted very much. She only knew the Chinese name of the cartoon character and it rang no bells with Sean's Dad.

It turned out that even if Sean's Mum had told his Dad the English name, he wouldn't have known who or what it was. Sponge Bob is not well known in our household.

Sean knew of a store that had a large variety of Sponge Bob toys available, in at least five different sizes. Naturally Sean wanted the biggest and most expensive one.

After taking Sponge Bob back to his Mum's shop and adding him to his soft toy collection Sean still wasn't quite ready to go out. He had some gifts for his Dad! The cards are given away free to customers of a convenience store chain and feature pictures of Snoopy visiting tourist destinations all over Taiwan. Sean had three spares and he gave them to his Dad . He also gave his Dad some money from Hong Kong because his Dad had promised to swap some Euro with him. Sean keeps a small collection of foreign money but doesn't have any Euro yet.


After that little presentation, Sean and his Dad went to the soccer field at a nearby university where Sean was allowed to open up the presents that his Dad had for him. The first one he opened was an ultra-light remote control helicopter.


The other one was a t-shirt with a picture of Bondi Beach that shows the view as seen from a restaurant named Sean's.


Sean got straight to work with reading the instructions for the tiny helicopter.


But his Dad forced him to pose for a couple of pictures with the t-shirt. First, the back.


And then the front.


But, like most little boys Sean is not a man of words but a man of action. He'd rather kick a soccer ball than read instructions. Plus, he'd found out that the helicopter needed to charge its batteries for 20 minutes before it could be used.



After kicking the ball against the wall and having a penalty-taking competition with his Dad (sorry no pictures of that), Sean found a new game to play. The only problem with the game was that his father had told him specifically to not stick the pump in the water that had gathered around a sprinkler head beside the soccer field. Not only did he do it, he giggled while he did!



Despite only being Spring, it was almost 30 degrees outside and Sean insisted on playing with the soccer ball out in the sun. Even when he took a break he wouldn't go in the shade. Plus, his Dad had played squash with some friends for an hour before going to play with Sean. So, both he and Sean needed a cold drink and a sit-down after messing about kicking the soccer ball for a couple of hours.

Sean had two books with him that he wanted to read; both were about caring for pets. The first one was quite unusual.


But, since Sean does have a pet miniature pig, the book is very practical. His Mum is doing a good job of encouraging Sean to take care of the animal himself.


While Sean's Dad read the book about miniature pigs, Sean enjoyed a cold can of his favourite drink, sarsparilla, while reading the other book, which was about caring for pet dogs.


He then had one last go at making the helicopter fly but it just didn't want to lift off more than a couple of inches off the ground. He decided to seek help with it from his Mum's employees in the shop.


Then, it was time for lunch. Sean found a table full of toys just inside the front door of McDonalds. They were on sale at very cheap prices because they were left-overs from promotional activities. Sean found a Goleo for only NT$50! It was much bigger and much cheaper than the ones his Dad had seen in Germany last year during the World Cup.


Then, it was time for Sean to head back to his Mum's shop so he could have a quick nap before heading off to a class at 4:30pm on a Saturday. It would seem strange to some, but that's just the way he lives.

Sean's Holiday to Oz (Part 2)

On Day 2 of the trip we were awake early and given a hearty breakfast before being driven over to Sean's Aunty Annette's house. It was raining lightly and wasn't a good day for doing things outdoors but Aunty Annette knew of a good place to go.It was an indoor play centre. Sean liked the big area full of plastic balls and dropped on top first.


However, Bailey was amazing. He didn't just fall on top of the balls. He wiggled until he was half-covered by them. Then, after this picture was taken he kept wiggling until you couldn't see him at all!


Sean also found some other stuff to climb on and he even played nicely with some of the other children. After going away for a few minutes, Sean's Dad asked another parent if Sean was being good and the man said, "He's been very polite, actually." The man seemed to think it was a strange question. And, in fact, Sean is like that almost all of the time. All through the trip he was very well behaved.


One thing that Sean's Dad really liked about the play centre was the way all the kids mixed together while they were playing. Big kids took care of little ones even if they weren't relatives or friends. Plus, Sean was just another kid when placed in the mixture of people from different cultures and places. When he goes out with his Dad in Taipei it's quite different. People will just assume that he can't speak the local language and other children often treat him very differently. The play centre crowd was very international (but I'll bet the children there were all locals) and it was just really nice for Sean and his Dad to be just a part of the crowd.

Sean's Holiday to Oz (Part 1)

At the beginning of this blog I mentioned that I would be doing some "retrospectives" and the time has come to make good on that promise.

Way back in July 2004, Sean and his Dad travelled back to Oz for a 2-week holiday. After some excitement when it looked like Sean's passports had been lost, we eventually arrived at the airport in plenty of time, passports in hand, After getting through Immigration Sean and his Dad found a place to sit for a while. Sean decided to try out the new colouring pencils that his Dad had bought just for the trip.


They even had time for Sean to pose for some photos.


The first port of call was Sean's Great Aunty June's new flat in Sydney. It was lovely. Very quiet and a perfect place to relax after a long overnight flight.


In order to try and adjust our body clocks we thought it best to go out and fortunately Aunty June knew of an exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum that was just the trick. Tibetan monks were putting on an exhibition and their handiwork was surprising for its complexity and just plain beautiful to look at.




Sean managed to get lost inside the museum at exactly the time we had set to leave. But, it was a very good day and a perfect start to the holiday.

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.

Computer Troubles

Sean's Dad is still having trouble with his computer but now that the Chinese New Year is over either the computer will get fixed or a new one will be purchased within a week. Pictures of a day out that occurred just before the New Year break are stored on Sean’s Dad’s phone and will be uploaded for everyone’s perusal very soon.

The Last Movie

So, Sat. December 30 dawned as a beautiful sunny day but the weather forecast said that would change. The last movie in the four-part series was to be shown at the Guandu Nature Park and Sean was ready to go when his Dad arrived to pick him up. The first order of business was Sean's Dad giving him an 8 x12in print of the "team" picture that showed Chien-min Wang and the "Yankees" with Sean's Dad in the team. It's pretty cool.

Sean had already had breakfast but his poor starving Dad hadn't. He had to wait until they had ridden on the tiny scooter almost all the way to the nature park before Sean was happy to stop. It was almost lunchtime and the McCafe they had been to before had seats free outside and that suited the hungry travellers just fine even though a cold wind had started to blow.

Sean chose to have a kind of sweet and sweeter brunch (as opposed to sweet and sour) by having an apple with a cup of hot chocolate. It looked like quite a taste sensation and is probably hard to find in any nutritionist's handbook.

They arrived at the nature park very early and had more than three hours to kill before the movie was to start. Sean decided to educate himself by reading some of the information boards around the park.

Some of the boards were located inside shelters near the many ponds and lakes in the little wetland. The whole place is well set-up and nicely maintained.

Finally, they went inside to hear the lecture be given and to watch the movie. Sean did his usual note-taking and was as keen as ever to put his hand up to answer post-movie questions. But, there were so many children in attendance that a special prize-giving was held for any child that was willing to get up on stage and imitate a portion from the movie where caimans (alligators to you and me) were eating fish.

One assistant to the lecturer showed how it should be done.

Sean was far too proud to receive a prize in such a childish manner. He wanted to answer questions and he did. He was rewarded with another box of National Geographic pencils.

After all the questions were answered there was one last presentation to be made. It was a special one that Sean had been looking forward to very much. He was the only child to have seen all four movies in the series presented by the National Geographic channel at the park. That might not sound too special but it made his Dad pretty proud. His Dad thinks that it's really good to see him take an interest in nature and environmental protection at such a young age.

The lecturer (the woman wearing the black top) was one of the main people behind the creation of the Guandu Nature Park and is quite famous in Taiwan for her environmental protection work.

Sean's special prize was a National Geographic key-chain with a compass on it. In fact, his Dad received one as well. Sean very helpfully put his Dad's keys on it straight away.

Then it was dinner time. Sean insisted on going to a different restaurant but it looked very familiar. In fact, it's owned by the same person that runs the Spanish restaurant that they had been to before and it has exactly the same menu! However, Sean insisted on ordering an adult size steak and chips. His Dad knew that he wouldn't finish it so they shared. That was a good plan.

While his Dad had coffee and dessert, Sean amused himself by taking pictures of the decorations in the restaurant again. He particularly liked the hanging wooden birds in the restaurant proper and some carved wooden ducks in the restrooms!



It was a really good day for both Sean and his Dad and the best part was that the forecast rain never fell. So, they had a cold but dry ride home.