Ivo Mid-Autumn Festival Taichung

These pics are from last night - a Moon-Fest bbq at Fubar on Soho Street. The cutie with Ivo is Trey - Dwayne's son. He's slightly taller than Ivo, heavier and 5 months YOUNGER!!! Keep this in mind, when I moan about Taiwanese telling me how HUGE Ivo is - simply because he's a foreigner... He's never been more than the 50th percentile of weight and 80th of height - and that's for Taiwanese kids... But still, there are people blinded by the glare of his shiney whiteness!!!

Ivo is in the midst of an unprecedented 5-day weekend in Taiwan. Friday, 10/6, was the lunar holiday, Mid-Autumn Festival, mooncake-city - Ivo likes them and everywhere he goes he has his pick. Tuesday, 10/10, is National Day, Independence Day, Founding Fathers' Day. So what of Monday, 10/9? It was a workday until 10/2 when the government declared it a holiday too.

The catch is that everyone has to work on a Saturday to make up for the Monday off. Which Saturday? It seems companies/schools can choose between 10/14 or 10/21. It seems most will do the make-up day on 10/14 which is only one of the best days to get married according to Chinese farmers' almanac/fortune tellers... So a lot of people are ANGRY because of the expense of throwing a wedding banquet ony to have many of yr guests unable to attend...

Why the Monday off so late in the game? Cynics say it's cuz the gov't wants to avoid the embarrassment of a rumored general strike possibly planned for Monday. In case yr out of the loop, Taiwan has been experiencing island-wide protests both pro- and anti- the president. Mostly anti-. It is strange, indeed. People wear the same t-shirts and caps and the leading anti-Chen organizer is a guy who'd spent years in prison under the KMT. So much for 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' theory of politics...