Merry Christmas and a room rocking boxing day

Christmas has been brief but nice and today i was shaken to my senses again by a 7.2 Richter earthquake.
After school on Friday i went from feeling queezy and wanting to go to bed, to maybe trying a noodle place, to just a quiet game of pool, to a couple of drinks in Changhua to a full on all-ya-can-drink bar in the big Taichung with Andy, Rob and our very own Nick. Andy introduced me to the Taiwanese girls he was talking to and Nick went to lose money to Rob at the table-football ... table. thing. I joined Andy for some drinking games and enjoyed the endless flow of beer to my cup. Before long, Rob wanted to go to a club... having paid 500 to get in i passed.
The very kind Taiwanese girls let me kip on their floor for the night.
The next day i trailed round Taichung, Changhua and Yuanlin in search of a secret santa present.. when i finally got back to the house, Pascal was ready to go to a KTV with his Chinese mates and invited me along. We were picked up by our landlords son Walter, in a mini cooper coupe. it was sweet: speedometer was 12" diameter!
Pascal's Chinese friends were mainly late twenties early thirties.
i learnt quickly that if you want to drink you have to first toast somebody else in the room and you drink together. As most Taiwanese are not the best of drinkers, they all ended up toasting me or Pascal; ... so before long the tracks were on and i was crooning away with Walter harmonising in the background: 'he's quite a good singer' i kept telling everyone.
While we'd been inside we'd learnt it was Gareth's bday the same day and they were having a party somewhere;
sadly by the time we left we weren't in much shape to go anywhere else. So you can imagine our surprise when we stumbled into Jena, Andy and Ray coming out of a neighbouring KTV booth. We had all been in the same place for the last 4 hours. ah well. what can you do!?
Christmas Eve came; didn't wake til 2or3. Sharne came round for lunch which was nice.. and after she left i decided to write all the Chinese New Year cards that had been sat on my desk for a month. I was still doing it at 2 in the morning and on Christmas morning. By noon I had 16 done... cycled to the postoffice to work-up an appetite for Christmas dinner. I was hoping for stickers; it was not to be. 16 licks of 16 stamps later, i noticed i hadn't put an airmail sticker on... the desk had a tube of PVA glue and a paintbrush... this was gonna be a mission! but by 2 i was ready to leave... right after id queued up again to ask which postbox to put them in.
Nick, Pascal, Sam and I all met at the station and took the train to Stu's in Changhua: between us, a spectrum of clothes from formal to scruffy.

On arrival everyone dumped their presents under the tree as discreetly as possible and made their ways to the kitchen. It was a really nice afternoon. Everyone looked quite worn from the heavy weekend... Jena had a fever, Nick a sore throat, Dave a sprained ankle, Gareth backache... worn but content. The food was fantastic: i've never seen so many meets together since ive been out here.
Unfortunately for whatever reason, the wine and the food didn't mix so well and after taking a walk to get some air and digest... i found myself throwing up... which was odd. The feeling didn't go away so i collected my things and headed home, doing my best to control my stomach on the train and then on my scooter. i spent the rest of xmas night watching Batman Begins... until it was late enough to ring home and have a natter.
Today - Boxing Day - I was back at school; still feeling rough with an oral exam for 20 kids, a presentation and a cover lesson to look forward to. The cycle in didn't help things... almost hit a Volvo coming down the hill: even if i had something loud enough for him to hear, he wouldn't have stopped in time... i slammed the breaks and waited planning the best place to land... to my astonishment the bike stopped inches from his bonnet: still far too much adrenaline for this time of day.
I started the exam extra early to insure i wouldnt be late for the presentation class. Extra early, but i still finished a minute over. The presentation was with my Kindergarten class KC. most classes are 1:30: that's 30 min practice.30 mins correction or modify plan and then 30 mins presentation to parents. KC classes are only an hour long; that's practice 30mins and then do! whether it needs modifying or not. Luckily they were on the ball today. They were a bit shy in front of the parents but we got through everything... including 'We wish you a merry Christmas' as a cheezy touch to finish. By the end my head was somewhere else... i could hear my voice, but had no idea what i was saying.
So in the next lesson when the earthquake struck, it took the kids to point it out to me. I thought they were trying to correct me on the answer i'd just given 'no i'm sure that's right' i was saying, when boom, everything shook and then started swaying... and for a long time. It's only the second movement i've felt in Taiwan.
Now people say we fear what we don't know... but in this case; the kids looked all the more scared for knowing what could happen than i did in my blissfull ignorance. We are conditioned to respond. It's only now as I look at the BBC web report that I realise how bad things could have been: and on the 2nd anniversary of the Asian Tsunami. As Nick pointed out later, there are no national policies or safety measures that cover earthquakes as they have in Japan. Let's hope we'll never be in a position in which we need to use them.