You may have wondered...

... where I have been these past two weeks. It is a thrilling tale and I wish to do it justice, so this may turn out to be only a very brief summary. Time is short.

I've been back to Taiwan due to a family crisis. We got a call to say that the Dragon's Grndmother was gravely ill and was not likely to live more than a few days. This was very sad of course, more so because the Dragon was brought up by her Grandmother and was of course very close to her.

The Dragon really wanted to make it back to Taipei to see her Grandmother one last time before she died, and so I booked us on the first flight I could find. Incidentally, the fact that I agreed to fly Eva Air is a measure of how seriously I was taking the situation. I vowed never to use them again after the last terrifying flight to Indonesia, but that really is another story.

Sadly Grandmother passed away 24 hours before we could fly, but the Dragon still wanted to attend the funeral, so we flew as planned. The little guy had no passport and had not been properly immunised for a Taiwan flight, so we dropped him off with his British Grandparents the day before leaving. You have no idea how difficult it is to leave your 3 month old baby, even with people you trust with your life.

I won't bore you with details of the flight and I will save a description of the funeral for another entry. Suffice to say, we made it there safe and sound and gave the old lady a good send off. She was 91 and had a good life. People from all over the world travelled to her funreal, which I suppose shows how well liked she was.

I got a message on my cell phone this week from someone expressing their dismay at my lack of attention to this page. I confess that I don't know who the messager was, though I suspect if could be Dickie. I perhaps should have made an effort to write a couple of lines of explanation, things have been fairly frantic however.

We got back to London on Sunday and went straight down to Devon the next day to pick up the baby. His Grandparents appear to have had a whale of a time looking after him. In just two weeks he had changed, which made me feel guilty. We are now back home, complete with baby and over the jet lag.

One good thing about this trip was the fact that I was able to extend my resident visa for Taiwan which would have expired this month had I not been able to visit the visa office in Taipei in person. I got a three year extensiont his time which surprised me. Last time I was allowed only one year. The process was much simpler this year. I didn't have to provide a clear criminal record or medical certificate because I have alerady done so. In fact the young lady at the desk simply asked me if I was a good citizen, to which I replied, "yes". At which point she relieved me of NT$3000 and stamped the paperwork.

So, there you have it. I'm now back int he country, jobless and tired, but safe. Tomorrow, or as soon as I get around to it, I'll post details of the three day funeral which included me wearing black robes like Harry Potter, Bhuddist chants, and viewing the body, yeah really. I even had to pick a piece of bone from the cremated remains and put them in a pot. These guys really know how to stage a funeral.

Until the next time...