My daughter has a very heavy load of classes this year, her junior year of high school. It’s only the second week of school and she’s stressing out – “I have SO MUCH homework!” She’s studying every single minute, and not having a balanced life. I gave her a lecture about why she should not […]
Fresh off the press, I borrowed AB’s copy of Francis Chan’s new book Erasing Hell. About a third of the book analyzes specific passages of the Bible to discover whether hell is retributive or corrective (a second chance to go to heaven), and whether it’s eternal or annihilation (completely destroy the soul). Since I don’t […]
Friday 7/8 The most exciting thing about landing in Taiwan is not Taiwan, but seeing E greeting us at the airport! He flew in from Saigon a few hours earlier, joining us for this vacation. Second on the list of exciting thing about Taiwan is meeting T’s friends. They have a nice big van that […]
Saturday, 7/9 This is our first full day in Taiwan. I slept maybe 5 hours with the jet lag, but felt rested. First thing we did was buy an MRT card loaded with enough credits for rides for our entire time in Taipei. I love the MRT, so efficient, so clean, so convenient, so easy […]
I’m still writing about my vacation. In my backwards recall of our days in Taiwan, I am now back at the first weekend when we arrived there. We arrived on Friday, 7/8, but I’ll start with Sunday, 7/10 and go back from there. Sunday, 7/10 We woke up early to make our way to worship […]
My friend LL showed me this book and asked if I’ve read it. I had not even heard of the author (later to find that Platt is a friend of a friend I just met), but I was curious and always up for a good book. The cover says it’s a New York Times Bestseller. […]
Continuing on with recollections of our trip to Taiwan – Monday 7/11 – Friday 5/15 Monday 7/11 – tour begins After researching various tour options, I settled on booking with Edison Travel Services, mainly based on comments on Tripadvisor. If you have a business with negative comments on the internet, you’re in trouble. The itinerary […]
I like mysteries and whodunnit types of books. Life Everlasting by Robert Whitlow held my interest combining murder, romance, and a bit of humor, all within the context of the Christian faith. Alexia Lindale is a successful attorney who takes on a case that turns out to be more than she can handle. She finds […]
Saturday, 7/16 Sent off a birthday wish to Au. I don’t remember when we haven’t been together to celebrate her birthday. She’s in Germany while we are in Taiwan, and that doesn’t happen very often…actually never, and will probably never happen again. We spent the day with T, first going to Danshui, known for shopping, […]
Rewinding backwards, I am now going to recall the fun we had in Taiwan, starting from the last day we were there. Monday, 7/18 On Sunday night we stayed at City Suites Gateway hotel near Taoyuan airport. Our flight was about 10am, so we woke early and took a taxi to the airport (100TWD). The […]
No vacation is complete without special regional foods. To be honest, I probably missed out some of the best stuff because I played it safe and didn’t eat street foods or uncooked vegetables. But still, there was plenty to enjoy. Best in Vietnam are the fruits and fruit smoothies. We even had a durian smoothie […]
8/18 Monday – 8/21 Thursday At the baggage claim area at the Saigon airport, I saw a worker very enthusiastically helping travelers with their luggage. He climbed onto the baggage carousel to take luggage off for people. What good service, I thought. Is the airport providing this service? Then I realized he’s an independent contractor […]
8/22 Friday Our friend T is arriving in Saigon today, so we thought we’d save one tourist sight to go with him. Unfortunately, it was the most disappointing place of our whole trip, and we didn’t even meet up with T. The Reunification Palace is NOT recommended. Now, I usually love museums and historical places, […]