farewell party

I had my farewell party yesterday, in the place where I cooked up the lounge bar in Germany thing a couple of weeks ago. 21 friends turned up. There was Tarra (USA) who talked to me in a park when I was very sick during one of my initial trips here and who PMed me months later on Forumosa asking if I happened to be the same girl she talked to (thanks for the bottle of Gin and that beautiful picture of the two of us). There was Brian (NZ) who has been at the Game Club and most other Forumosa dos ever since we started organizing something. There was, of course, my "second husband" Reiner (German). Tarra, Bri, Reiner and I made up the legendary Game Club team that won the first pub quiz in the Shannon light years ago. There was my neighbour Hans (German as well) who has helped me with so many things in the past few years including finding my place, feeding Tuesday when I'm on vacation and doing the DTP work for STAR Taiwan. There was Margaret (AUS) who knows almost everything and is leaving for Singapore with her husband and two kids at the end of the month. There was Frank (German), ex-colleague of Reiner on a business trip, who I'd met during his previous trips here and who is a very atypical German engineer ;-), and his colleague Zeynel (Turkey) who happened to recognize another friend of mine, Ilse who is about to move to Singapore as well and very happy with that. Ilse (ZA) came with Roelof, my Southafrican friend I literally picked up on the street 2.5 years ago and have since spent countless days with going out for food or watching movies. There was, of course, my friend and successor Michele (Swiss) with her boyfriend Johnny (Taiwan) who brought me two DVDs with old Taiwanese movies :-). And Michele's long-time friend Richard (Northern-Ireland) with his fiance Tanya (Taiwan). Our assistant Regina (Taiwan) could make it with her boyfriend Trevor (AUS). There was Jonathan (Scottish) who is sooo great and easy to talk to that he became a close friend very quickly after we met at the Forumosa November HH. And another Scotsman, Sandy with his wife Jojo (Taiwan) both of whom have repeatedly promised to come and visit us in Germany. Ting (Taiwan) who I met through Monika and who works for the GIO managed to pop in briefly and say Hi. Elliot (USA) was there, one of the funniest guys I ever met through Forumosa. Debra (USA) made it after being held up during dinner. And Mary (USA) who has just arrived in Taipei and who I met when she wanted to buy some of my stuff last week turned up for one of her first opportunities to meet some foreigners here. Thank you all so much for coming (and sorry for the not very skilled service)! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did and had some fun talking to new people, playing with the bar kittens and watching Reiner do his magic tricks.

A few friends who couldn't make it were dearly missed :-( Alan and Jenny were too tired after moving house all day. Chris is terribly busy right now. Matthew said he'd make it but obviously didn't. Eric got sick with a cold and didn't want to pass it on to the others.

We stayed till they threw us out at 3.30am and then moved on to Eden, a lounge bar with tiny dance floor on the 11th floor of Bistro 98 on Chunghsiao Road where I used to have lunch with Reiner. The music was some horrible Techno stuff. I thought it might be loud and booming enough to drown out all the thoughts racing in my brain, but it didn't work out too well. Anyway, my Love-Parade participating 7-years younger brother Jonas would probably have had a heart attack seeing his old and sensible sister dancing to techno music.

We took a break on their balcony watching the sky get light over Taipei (quote Iris (after 6 GTs):"how can anyone not like Taipei???"), left when they threw us out again at 5.30am and decided to have breakfast at Carnegie's. Carnegie's was closed, so we walked over to the 24-hour restaurants on Fuhsing, with a short break when we passed a dog barking in an unlocked car and Debra had the urge to provide the poor thing with some water. I had my favorite Asian breakfast, porridge with tiny dried fish and some peanuts, followed by some pidan doufu, thousand-year egg with soft white Tofu. And then, all of us got very tired. I was home by 6.45am and immediately fell asleep.

Woke up at 9.45 because we have a super typhoon coming up, and the wind is really picking up. But I guess that's going to be its own story.