The Philippines/Taiwan Trip - September 2, 2011 - A Hotbed of Pagan Idolatry

The second day of our stay in Taipei was going to take us to the southwest section of the city.

Our first stop, the famous Longshan Temple.  Given how far it was from our hotel, I decided to play it conservative and take a taxi.

While the Longshan Temple is one of the more well known tourist destinations in Taipei, the first thing one must be mindful of is that it is an actual functioning temple where people go to pray. 

According to my Rough Guide to Taiwan, the Longshan Temple is "principally a Buddhist temple dedicated to the boddhisatva Guanyin, but there are more than a hundred deities worshipped here, mostly from the Taoist pantheon."

That probably explains why there were clusters of people praying in different sections of the temple.

I neglected to take a picture of the outside entrance of the temple. 

After you go through the front entrance, you find yourself in an outer courtyard that separates you from the main action (if you can call prayer action) inside the temple.

The outer courtyard was a pretty, peaceful place itself.  In one end of the courtyard there was this small waterfall.

At the opposite end, behind us, was a fish pond.

One thing that one cannot help but notice about the architecture of the temple was that it contained lots of dragon motifs.

The temple was also filled with lots of local heathens who are surely destined to burn in hell in the afterlife because they don't worship the Baby Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

Inhale that incense, lady!

This last photo above is interesting, because it appears to be a convenient way of economizing on the placing of the various deities.  There's the big one in the backgroumd, and the three smaller ones encased in glass in the foreground.

In all seriousness though, the Longshan Temple was a nice, tranquil place to visit where for a little while you can almost forget you are in the heart of a bustling city filled with millions of people.

The Transit of Venus

Well, not here on Long Island.  It's cloudy and periodically raining, so I wasn't able to observe it.  I guess I will have to try and live another 115 years to see the next one.

Alternatively, you can watch it live on NASA TV here.

The Philippines/Taiwan Trip - September 1, 2011 - The Lin Jiang Night Market

Yes, I'm still on our first day in Taipei!  I promise I'm almost finished!

Anyway, the last destination for the day was to hit the Lin Jiang Tourist Night Market on the walk back to our hotel.

For my fellow American readers, a night market in Taiwan is a lot like what we know here in the USA as an outdoor "flea market."  The Lin Jiang night market consists of a stretch of stalls and stands hawking mostly food and clothing items along about two side streets that are closed to vehicular traffic, with the apparent exception of scooters.

While the Lin Jiang night market is not as large or famous as some of Taipei's other night markets, such as the Shilin and Huaxi markets, I picked it because it was conveniently located on the way back to our hotel, and its rather small size made it easy to see it all in a short period of time.  Since it was a Thursday night and it had only stopped raining a short while earlier, the market wasn't crowded either.

My wife used the occasion to indulge her inner Imelda Marcos to visit the clothing and shoe booths.  I looked forward to trying some fried stinky tofu and bought some from the same vendor pictured in Nino's post on the Lin Jiang market.  It was a bit spicy, but I liked it well enough that I would try it again.

While the Lin Jiang market is billed as a tourist market, nearly everyone there appeared to be locals.  There were a few interesting characters, such as the man in the picture below who attracted some onlookers by walking around with his small dog on his shoulder.

We also found a noodle stand that we would visit again the next night.

In the background, you can see one of the scooter riders who frequently drove through the market.  I wasn't too happy about this, particularly since I had my two kids with me, as it seemed potentially dangerous to me.  I also can't tell if the man behind my wife is checking out her ass or if something else is drawing his gaze.

The photo above also gives you an idea of what a good stretch of the night market looks like.   All in all, a night market like this is good for killing a couple of hours.  You get to mix a bit with the locals, try some interesting snacks or "little eats" and maybe shop for a few bargains.

We would return to the night market the following evening as one of my son's sneakers conveniently started falling apart late in the day and we had remembered one of the booths that sold sneakers.

But It Was Just A Thought Experiment!

In my last post, I pondered the thought that the Religious Right's answer to the gay question was to make them so miserable that they would commit suicide.

But just a few days later, a Pastor Charles Worley of North Carolina offered his take on how to address the problem.

"I figured a way out — a way to get rid of all the lesbians and queers. But I couldn’t get it passed through Congress. Build a great big large fence, 150 or 100 miles long. Put all the lesbians in there. Fly over and drop some food. Do the same thing with the queers and the homosexuals. Have that fence electrified so they can’t get out. Feed ‘em, and– And you know what? In a few years they’ll die out. You know why? They can’t reproduce."

Worley's little brain fart conveniently omits a number of important things.

First, an 18 year old homosexual put in an internment camp isn't going to die "in a few years."   Some of the younger ones could live for a half century or more in Worley's prison for "lesbians and queers."

Second, how does Worley propose to handle family members of gays who love them and resist their imprisonment.  Does Worley intend to have SWAT teams raid their homes and forcibly remove gays from their families?

Lastly, why does Worley assume that no more gays will be born after the current crop is walled off from the rest of society?  Will there be tests to identify gay children at a young age so that they can be put into special schools where they will receive reparative therapy to cure them of homosexuality?

While Pastor Worley clearly is a despicable human being and should be roundly condemned for his remarks, he clearly is not in any position to put his ridiculous proposal into action.  I look at Worley in his proper context, as being at the extreme end of a movement in this country to deny gay Americans their humanity and their right to equality under the law by denying them the right to marry, adopt children, serve in the military, or to hold a job without fear of being fired simply because of their orientation.  Gays being rounded up into internment camps is simply a bigoted hayseed Christian's wet dream that will never come true.  A Romney presidency that would reinstate DADT is a potential reality.

Do Right Wing Republicans Expect Gays to Commit Mass Suicide?

On the most recent episode of Bill Maher's Real Time, Maher asked, rhetorically as it turned out, what do Republicans expect gays to do, because they apparently don't want gays to have jobs, serve in the military, get married, or adopt children.

For some reason, it didn't occur to Maher to ask two of the guests on his panel who were conservative activists, Margaret Hoover and Grover Norquist, to answer the question.  Maher mentioned the flap over the hiring and abrupt departure of Mitt Romney's foreign policy adviser and openly gay Richard Grennell after Bible Thumpers like Bryan Fischer made a public stink about it.

And then we have James Lankford, Republican (of course!) representative from Oklahoma, who told ThinkProgress recently that it should be legal for an employer to fire an employee who is gay.  The irony in this is that if you look at Lankford's picture in the linked article, it looks like what you would expect to see in a phrase book dictionary next to the phrase "Queer as a three dollar bill."

I have an idea what Right Wing Christians would say to all this.   In short, the same thing that Stan in South Park told his gay dog Sparky, "Don't be gay!"

The thing is though, if you believe that being gay is a choice rather than an orientation that you are born with, then by the same token it should be okay to fire people based on their religious or political beliefs.  After all, those are choices too.

If gays are going to continue to insist on being, well, gay, then I guess the Right Wing strategy for dealing with them is to try to make their lives so miserable that they will just commit suicide, or, to paraphrase a phrase from Mitt Romney, they'll self-abort.

That Other Christian America

Ed Brayton at Dispatches From The Culture Wars had a post the other day about a debate between Dinesh D'Souza (or as I like to call him, Dinesh D'Douchebag) and Susan Jacoby.  Brayton highlighted this excerpt from D'Souza's remarks:

If you look at the great social movements of American politics, not only the movement that led to the founding, which was driven in part by the First Great Awakening, but the movements that led to the temperance movement, the suffragette movement, the civil rights movement, the anti-slavery movement, there were not only waves of religious revival that often preceded and sometimes accompanied these movements, but the arguments in favor of these causes were made in explicitly religious terms.

But this cuts both ways, because the arguments for slavery were also made in explicitly religious terms.  

While figures on the Religious Right, like David Barton, like to claim that the United States was explicitly founded as a Christian nation, the Constitution of the United States is a secular document.  However, if the United States was this Christian nation that Barton and his ilk argue, then we have an example of what the Preamble to the Constitution would have looked like.  One need only look at the Preamble to the Constitution of the Confederate States of America:

We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity — invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God — do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.

Besides explicitly invoking God, what else did the Confederate Constitution contain that the original Constitution did not?

Well, there's Article 4, Section 2, Paragraph 1:

The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.

Then there's Article 4, Section 2, Paragraph 3:

No slave or other person held to service or labor in any State or Territory of the Confederate States, under the laws thereof, escaping or lawfully carried into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such slave belongs; or to whom such service or labor may be due.
We can also look at the concluding remarks of Confederate President Jefferson Davis's inaugural address:

...let me reverently invoke the God of our fathers to guide and protect us in our efforts to perpetuate the principles which by HIS blessing they were able to vindicate, establish and transmit to their posterity, and with the continuance of HIS favor, ever to be gratefully acknowledged, let us look hopefully forward to success, to peace, and to prosperity.

Well, we all know how that turned out.

My Proposed Blasphemy Law

In the mid-13th century, the future Byzantine emperor Michael Paleologos was charged with a crime.  The archbishop declared that if Michael were able to carry a red hot iron ball in his hands without burning them, it would prove his innocence.  Burned hands would be a sign of his guilt.  The astute Michael told the archbishop that he would gladly do so if only the archbishop personally handed him the hot iron ball.  After all, being a holy man of God, the archbishop obviously need not worry about his own hands being burned.  Needless to say, the archbishop declared that the charges were dropped.

Now on to the present.

The Kuwaiti parliament recently voted on a proposed law that would apply the death penalty to those found guilty of blasphemy against the Islamic faith.  However, perhaps in response to international pressure, it was softened a bit.

"The draft now includes a new clause which will mean the death penalty will only be applied if the person stands by their actions when questioned by a judge.

This would give defendants the opportunity to repent and face a prison term or a fine instead."

As an atheist, I object to blasphemy laws on two grounds.  The first and obvious reason is that I do not believe in the existence of a deity that can be insulted by humans.  What is going on with laws like these is that certain religious believers want to immunize their religion to public criticism or ridicule.  The second reason is that if such a deity exists that is offended by the mockery and insults of a mere human being, said deity can easily dispatch that person by sending down a fireball from the heavens to consume that person and thereby send a clear message to all other would be blasphemers.

That being said, I am a practical man.  If these primitive people want to have a blasphemy law, let them have one, on one condition.  Any person charged with blasphemy should have the right to request that God be the one to carry out the death sentence by lightning bolt within one hour of the imposition of the sentence.  If the time passes without the alleged blasphemer being struck dead, then all charges are dropped and the person walks free.  Or do these religious believers lack enough faith in their god to do the deed?

Oh Lordy Lord! Think of the Children!

I got really riled the other day when I read this article about a woman named Cathy Samford who was fired from her job as a volleyball coach and science teacher at the Heritage Christian Academy in Texas because she was - gasp! - pregnant out of wedlock.

In defense of the school's decision, the article quoted the academy's headmaster Dr. Ron Taylor, who said, "How's it going to look to a little fourth-grade girl that sees she's pregnant and she's not married?"  

That's the same bullshit line I heard from some politicians who opposed legalizing marijuana for medical purposes.

"What kind of message are we sending to our children?"

You know what?  A lot of kids aren't as ignorant or dumb as the people who purport to shield them from the harsh realities of life must think they are.

Hey Dr. Taylor!  Ask your fourth grade girls this question:

"Girls, do you think a woman who is pregnant without being married should be fired from her job just weeks before she is going to have her baby and lose her health insurance which would cover a lot of her medical bills?"

I bet you the majority of those girls, if asked, would say that Ms. Samford should not be fired.

It just so happens that I conducted a very unscientific poll of a lone third grade girl, my daughter.  I just gave her a quick summary of the situation and asked her if the school was right or wrong to fire her.

Her answer was "It's wrong."

I asked her why it was wrong.  After pausing a few seconds, she said, "Because now she has no money."  There you go Dr. Taylor.  Out of the mouths of babes.

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Dr. Taylor was one of those self-styled "pro-life" types who opposes abortion even in cases of rape, incest, or medical reasons.  Funny thing is, if Ms. Samford had gotten an abortion in the early stages of her pregnancy, her school would have been none the wiser and she would have still had her job today.

Then again, "pro-life" just means forced birth.  What happens after the birth is not Dr. Taylor's concern.  Too bad Cathy Samford.  You made your choice and now you have to suffer the consequences, along with that out-of-wedlock child you're going to have.  Take that you slut!

And here's where the misogyny really kicks in.  If Cathy Samford had been Carl Samford and had impregnated a woman to whom he was not married but they were co-habiting, he could have easily kept it hidden from the school and need not have feared losing his job.  It's only the pregnant unmarried women who ever seem to have to worry about getting shafted by these kinds of rules.  And just remember folks, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint is on record as saying that he wants it to be illegal for unmarried pregnant women to be teachers.  That's the American Taliban for you.

I don't know if Cathy Samford has delivered her baby yet, but I hope she has a healthy child.

No True Buddhist

When I read about a group of Buddhists protesting a Muslim mosque on alleged Buddhist holy ground, I couldn't help but wonder how that jibed with one of the central teachings of Buddhism, namely, that one must not be attached to the material things of this world.  I guess they're not True Buddhists!

The Philippines/Taiwan Trip - September 1, 2011 - I'm On Top of the World!

After the SYS Memorial, our next stop was Taipei's most famous landmark, Taipei 101.  For a brief time, it was the tallest building in the world, until it was supplanted by that tower in Dubai.  Now it's #2, unless someone else has built a bigger tower recently that I'm not aware of.

Not only is Taipei 101 the tallest building in Taiwan, it is way taller than any building in Taipei, which thankfully made it very easy for us to find our way there on foot.  While the four of us trudged towards the tower, it rained off and on, but fortunately it was a light rain.  The downside was that the rain and cloudy skies weren't good for taking photographs, like this picture below that I took of my wife and kids with Taipei 101 looming up behind them.  To get this shot, I got down on the pavement so that I could get my family and the tower in the same frame.

Before making our way up to the the observation level, we decided to take a load off our feet and get a bite to eat in Taipei 101's luxurious shopping mall.  I didn't take any pictures of it, but Nino has plenty of pictures here to give you an idea of the scale of it (it has multiple levels).

After that, we bought our tickets and went up the incredibly fast elevators (among the world's fastest) to the Indoor Observation Deck on the 89th Floor.  There is also an Outdoor Observatory on the 91st Floor, but due to the inclement weather, access to it was closed for the day when we got there.

The observatory offers commanding views of the city in all four directions.  On each side, to help you figure out what you are looking at, there are large interactive screens where you can touch the buildings or other sites displayed and it will tell you what it is.

I was able to easily spot our hotel and take a photo of it as seen from Taipei 101.

After taking in the impressive vistas, diminished as they were by the clouds and rain, the object of our attention turned to the ubiqituous Damper Babies.  The Damper Babies are basically these cute animated characters, sort of like Teletubbies, who explain in the short video below Taipei 101's damper, which is a structure that serves to stabilize the building during strong winds. 

I didn't take any pictures of the damper, but below is one from the Wikipedia page for Taipei 101.  For some reason, it makes me think of the derelict ship in the movie Event Horizon.

There were also plenty of Damper Baby statues for posing with in pictures, of which my wife and kids availed themselves.

Other photo opportunities involved posing in front of pictures of Taipei 101, one of which my son used to good effect.

After we had our fill of the Observatory, we walked down a flight of stairs and encountered a shop displaying rather ornate and extremely expensive jade figurines.  I didn't take pictures, but if you want to check some of it out, this blog post at Oz Soap Box has several photos.  Just scroll down to the bottom.

We lingered awhile in the jade shop mainly because my wife wanted to look at and possibly buy something, but fortunately her good sense prevailed!  With that, we took the elevator back down and prepared for the trudge back to our hotel, though I managed to get one more shot of Taipei 101.

While I complained about how the cloudy skies made for crappy photos during the day, I have to say I like how this night shot turned out.  The clouds in this photo serve to create a smoky effect.

Our first day in Taipei was not finished yet, as we still had a night market to find on our way back to the hotel, but that can wait for another post.

The Philippines Trip - September 1, 2011 - On to Taipei

After recuperating at the Shangri-la in Mactan on August 30th, the next day we flew back to Hong Kong for a one night stay before heading on to the next leg of our trip, Taipei in Taiwan.  We arrived in Hong Kong around 3 P.M. local time, and after getting settled into our room at the Regal Airport Hotel, which is just a short walk from the airport itself, we took the Airport Express train into Central to meet a professional acquaintaince of mine at a noodle restaurant at the IFC Mall.

The next day we returned to the airport and caught our flight on EVA Air to Taipei.  If memory serves, our flight departed around 10:30 A.M. and the flight was about an hour and a half at most.

So, why were we going to Taipei, you might ask.  After our first visit to the Philippines in 2004, I thought that on each future trip we could take the opportunity to visit a different city in Asia for a few days after leaving the Philippines.  In 2007, Hong Kong was the obvious choice, because it was a stop over during the flights between the Philippines and New York. 

For the 2011 trip, I considered several different possibilities.  One was to stay in Hong Kong again, but to use it as a launch pad for ferry trips to Macau and Guangzhou (Canton).  Another was to spend several days in Shanghai.  The other option was Taipei.  Part of the appeal for me to visit Taipei was the chance to support with my tourist dollars a democratic Chinese state rather than the authoritarian Peoples Republic of China.  I also felt it would be a friendlier place for Americans to visit than the mainland.  While I doubt that American tourists face overt hostility when visiting the PRC, I do know that whenever the occasional international dispute between the United States and the PRC occurs, outbursts of anti-American behavior does happen.  Taipei was also closer to Hong Kong than Shanghai, and I didn't think my 8 and 10 year old kids would enjoy day trips to Guangzhou and Macau, so Taipei it was.

Me being the meticulous travel planner I am, I consulted my copy of The Rough Guide to Taiwan to see what places we might like to visit as well as where we should stay.  I also did some research on the Internet, where I eventually came across a blog called My Kafkaesque Life by a Slovenian expat named Nino who is currently living in Taipei.  Nino's writes about virtually any place in Taipei you could think of seeing, and being an avid photographer, his posts contain lots of photographs that really bring the sights to life in a way that tour guide books do not.  If you ever plan to visit Taipei, or Taiwan in general, as he has visited other parts of the island, then Nino's blog is immensely helpful in helping you figure out where you want to go and what you can expect.  Just don't ask him to make any reservations or purchase any tickets for you!  ;-)

So, before our flight even touched down in Taoyuan International Airport, I already had planned exactly what we were going to do on our first day in Taipei.  Step one, of course, was to hook up with our ride to our hotel, the Shangri-la Far Eastern Plaza in Taipei's Xinyi district.  If memory serves, it is the tallest hotel in Taipei, and I specifically booked us a room with a view of Taipei 101, the second tallest building in the world.  Below is a picture of Taipei 101 as seen from our room.  As you can see, the sky was rather overcast and it rained off and on throughout the day.

Once we were settled in our room, my daughter wasted no time in sprawling on the couch in one of the bath robes that were provided to us.

But there was little time to relax, as we had an ambitious itinerary planned for the day.  The first stop was the Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall, where I looked forward to seeing the changing of the guard, which is performed at the top of every hour.  I was hoping we could catch the 3:00 P.M. performance.  After consulting with the door men at our hotel, we were able to find a bus stop where we caught the bus that would drop us off near the Memorial Hall.

Unfortunately, the changing of the guard ceremony was already underway when we got there.  I tried taking some pictures of the ceremony, but the room was not very well lit and only one shot came out even halfway decent.

Silently overlooking the ceremony was a large statue of Sun Yat Sen himself seated in a chair, reminding me of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.  Again, due to the lack of light, the picture did not come out well, with the famous Chinese nationalist largely bathed in shadow.  I used to have a photo editing program that allowed me to brighten dark pictures like this in order to make it more visible, but it seems to have been lost when the computer guy updated my computer to Windows 7.

If you want to watch a video of the changing of the guard ceremony, I found the video below on Youtube:

Nino also has a post on his blog here about his visit to the SYS Memorial Center, and unlike me, he was fortunate to have lots of sunshine for his photos!

After the changing of the guard ceremony was over, we spent about an hour looking at some of the exhibits on display about the early 20th century history of China, including the war with Japan in the 1930's, as well as lots of photographs of Sun Yat Sen and his family.  Needless to say, my kids were bored and with that, it was time to move on to the next destination of the day, Taipei 101.

The Philippines Trip - August 29 - 30, 2011 - The Perfect Storm

WARNING: THIS POST IS NOT MEANT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART AND THOSE WHO ARE SQUEAMISH.  IF YOU CONTINUE TO READ THIS POST AND FEEL ILL, WELL YOU CAN'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU!


So, after our pleasant little diversion at the Loon Macaques Sanctuary, we headed back to Mia and Stuart's house.  As the miles passed by, I drank more and more of that bottle of chocolate milk I had purchased a couple of hours earlier.

It had been a long time since I had drank milk.  Because of my lactose intolerance problem, I normally drink soy milk.   However, my body is not consistent when it comes to dairy products.  For instance, I generally have no problem eating yogurt.  I eagerly devour pizza covered with mozzarella cheese and suffer no ill effects.   Apart from milk, probably the only other dairy product that I can't handle is ricotta cheese.  Usually the worst I suffer is a bout of diarrhea and within an hour I am back to normal.  While I was drinking the chocolate milk, the possibility of developing that urgent need to suddenly evacuate my bowels was there in my mind, but I figured I knew the worst I could expect.

By the time we had gotten back to Mia and Stuart's house, I think I was already beginning to feel those first signs that trouble might be afoot.  But that was not the only problem.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, to get back and forth from Cebu to Bohol, we rode the fast ferry.  Me being the organized planner that I am (at least when it comes to planning vacations), I had ordered the tickets for the Supercat fast ferry before we had left the United States.  Our original departure date from Bohol back to Cebu was supposed to be Monday, August 29.  When Stuart had e-mailed me that they planned to take us to Danao Adventure Park on that day, I contacted Supercat and told them that instead of August 29, we needed to change our reservations for the trip back to Cebu to August 30.  They answered me acknowledging the change in the itinerary.

When we had arrived at the Supercat terminal the previous week to board the ferry for the trip to Bohol, we were also given our tickets for the return trip back to Cebu.  In retrospect, I should have looked at them when they were given to me, but I didn't.   So, back at the house in Loon, hoping against all hope that I would avert the impending shit storm that was waiting to unleash its fury on me, I pulled out our Supercat ferry tickets to give them a look over to make sure everything was in order and then my jaw hit the floor.  The date on the tickets for the return trip to Bohol was Monday, August 29, 2011.

"Oh, Mia!" I called out to my lovely sister-in-law, "I think we have a problem here."   I explained the situation to her and she said she would call the ferry company, but she cautioned me that there could be a problem because it was a holiday in the Philippines (National Heroes Day, I believe), which meant that the ferry office would have a skeleton crew and the ferry for the next day might be sold out.

My sister-in-law Mia at work in her garden.

The first thing you need to understand about Mia is that she is a lawyer who often argues cases in court before a judge.  Sure, she may look sweet and innocent enough in the picture above, but from the way she argued my case on the phone with whoever the hapless person was at the Supercat ferry who had the misfortune to answer her phone call, I could get a sense of what it must be like to be grilled by her on the witness stand in a court room.

Mia relentlessly hammered away at the Supercat representative, pointing out that they had acknowledged by e-mail the change of date of our departure before my family and I had even left the Philippines.  She refused to take no for an answer and kept insisting that the ferry company had to provide us with tickets for the 12:00 ferry ride to Bohol the next day.

I think it was around this time that I was enduring my first attacks of the brown tide.  To my dismay, it kept coming on wave after wave far beyond what I would have expected.  But that was not the worst of it.  At that cafeteria back at Danao Adventure Park hours earlier, I ate a plate full of thick noodles.  Now I was starting to feel this heavy sensation in my chest.   While I was sitting on the toilet unleashing a veritable waterfall of diarrhea, I felt the unmistakeable need to puke.  Thankfully, the bathroom sink was just a couple of feet in front of me, so as soon as I felt a lull in shitstorm, I leaned forward and heaved into the sink what looked like the equivalent of a bowl of noodle soup.  And then I heaved some more.

I couldn't help but ponder the terrible arc of my day.  That morning, I had zipped across a canyon on the Suislide and did The Plunge.  I had gone from feeling like hot shit to unleashing hot shit.  And from there, my stomach had become a Mount Vesuvius of vomit.

During a merciful lull in my excretory activities there was some news to cheer me up.  Mia informed me that her negotiations were successful and that tomorrow the Supercat would have tickets for us for the 12:00 fast ferry to Cebu.

Sadly though, the puking continued.  Even worse, the sink in our bathroom, filled to capacity with my vomit, was clogged and would not drain.  I was also becoming rather dehydrated, as I could not hold any fluids down.  At one point, my wife and her sisters Mia and Myla (who was staying with us that night) discussed the possibility of taking me to the hospital, but I wasn't enthusiastic about that idea.

Weakened though I was, I undertook the unpleasant task of emptying the bathroom sink of my afternoon lunch by dipping a small cup into it and then pouring it into the toilet.   It was a rather tedious affair that probably took the better part of an hour before the sink was largely empty.  After that, I collapsed onto the bed, while Mia was able to unclog the drain and my poor sister-in-law Myla mopped the floor.   An inglorious end to what had initially been a glorious day.  And all because of my stupidity in drinking a bottle of chocolate milk.

During the night, I was able at last to sip and hold down some Gatorade.  The next morning we gathered all our things and rode in Stuart's truck to my wife's parents house in Tagbilaran.  A little later we got our tickets and we drove to the pier, where we said goodbye to the family before entering the ferry terminal.  It had been four years since we had last visited them and hopefully it won't be that long before we see them again.

The ferry ride was uneventful, and a little over an hour and a half later we caught our taxi to take us to the beautiful Shangri-la resort in Mactan.   We ate dinner at one of the restaurants in the resort and then relaxed in one of the pools while my daughter made repeated runs down the water slide.  It was time for some rest and recovery before moving on to the next leg of our trip, the city of Taipei in Taiwan.







Happy Palm Sunday

Today, I am going to do something I haven't done in a long time, I am going to attend a Sunday Mass.  It couldn't be a better day actually, as today is Palm Sunday, the day when our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and the people laid down palm leaves in front of him.  And like Christ entering Jerusalem, I will reenter the church that I abandoned more than two decades ago, humble in heart and asking for acceptance and forgiveness.

The Philippines Trip - August 29, 2011 - The Loon Macaques

After our bit of fun at the Danao Adventure Park, we headed back to Loon.  Along the way, Stuart wanted to stop at this dairy shop by the road to get some bottles of locally produced milk.  All of us bought a bottle, including, against my better judgment, myself, as I bought a bottle of chocolate milk.  The reason I say against my better judgment is because I do have a problem with lactose intolerance, though only certain dairy products have an adverse affect on me.  At worst, I figured I would have quick case of the shits later on in the day.  But that's a story for the next post.

Anyway, after the stop at the dairy, we continued on to the Loon Macaques Habitat.  The habitat is located in a mangrove swamp near the shore of the northwest corner of Bohol island.  If you click on the link I provided, you will see a picture of the entrance to the bamboo footbridge that brings you into the swamp.  Led by a guide, we walked about 100 yards or so to the end.  The guide had some food with her for the macaques, who in small groups or one-by-one, started to gather around us.

 

During our time there, about twenty minutes, I observed a variety of behaviors displayed by the macaques, including some episodes of fighting and bullying amongst some of them.  But then you see moments like this one.

 

 

The whole time we spent at the macaques habitat was about a half an hour at the most.  If you're in the northwestern part of Bohol, I would say it is worth a visit, though you would be advised to add it to either the beginning or end of your itinerary for the day. 

Quote of the Day

From Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince:

"To those seeing and hearing him, he should appear a man of compassion, a man of good faith, a man of integrity, a kind and religious man.  And there is nothing so important as to seem to have this last quality.  Men in general judge by their hands; because everyone is in a position to watch, few are in a position to come in close touch with you.  Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are."  Emphasis mine.

The Philippines Trip - August 29, 2011 - Danao Adventure Park

The highlight of our stay in Bohol was our last day, when Stuart and Mia took us to Danao Adventure Park, which is located near the center of the island.

During the course of our ride there, which was probably a couple of hours, the quality of the roads varied greatly.  There would be stretches of freshly paved road, followed by several miles of unpaved road, followed by more paved road, and so on.  I distinctly remember one odd moment where we were on a lengthy stretch of unpaved road, and then suddenly the road was newly paved for at most 50 feet, and then after that it was unpaved again for another few miles.  I was puzzled why they would pave just a small segment of road in the middle of a long stretch of unpaved road rather than starting from where the last paved section ended and then working their way onward to connect to the next paved section.

The first activity, which we all participated in, was a zipline called the Suislide.   It's actually a double zipline.  For the first part, you zip acoss the canyon to the other side.  Then after you get there, you walk over to the next line, which takes you back across to the side where you started from.  Stuart went first, because he wanted to film us all during our arrival at the end.

That's Stuart with the yellow helmet and Flip camera in hand, getting into position for his launch.  Below is a picture of the cable strung across to the other side of the canyon to give you an idea of what it looks like.  While it's not very long, it is rather high and you definitely would not want to fall.

And away goes Stuart!

Next up was my wife and my son.  They opted to go tandem, with my son riding alongside my wife.

My daughter and I woud follow them.  She rode on my back.  Unfortunately, I don't have any picture of us on my camera of the two of us.  For the return zipline, I was able to get photos of my wife's sister Myla and her sister Mia and Mia's daughter Zoe.

Next up was my turn to shine as I decided to take The Plunge.  The following set of pictures should tell you everything you need to know about it.

As you can see, I went head first instead of feet first.  After the drop I was supposed to pull out my feet and then lift myself up to an upright position, with my hands holding on to where my feet were.  I had trouble getting one of my feet out for a moment and briefly feared that my sneaker would come off and fall down into the river below.

For the next one, it might be a little hard to see me because I am so far down. 

And then for the return.

 

Yeah, I just did that!

After that, the whole gang road together on the Sky Ride, which is like the zipline except you ride in an open air cable car that goes much slower and the zipline.  It was more for the view than anything else, but it did allow me to take some photos that give a bird's eye perspective of the Suislide and the Plunge.

Now here's a birdseye view of the Plunge.

And here's the Suislide.

After the day's adventure activities, we stopped at the Adventure Park's cafeteria for some Filipino buffet.  Afterwards, I went roaming outside and came across this sign.

For someone who lives outside of the United States of America, this sign would be considered unremarkable.  But here in the good old USA, words like "socialized" and "socialism" are considered dirty words.  I can just imagine how your average Tea Party Republican would react if they saw a sign like this at some national park here in America.

"Whut?  My park fees are supporting socialism?  That's a goddamn disgrace!  I want my fucking country back!  Take this sign down or I'm never coming to this park again for the rest of my life, so help me god!"

Philippine Sunsets

After our Ngong Ping 360 Crystal Cabin excursion, we returned to the Hong Kong International Airport and caught our flight to Cebu.  We arrived at Mactan International Airport around 7 PM, and after clearing immigration and claiming our luggage, we found our ride to the Montebello Hotel in Cebu City.  The next morning, we went by taxi to the Super Cat ferry pier to catch the fast ferry to Tagbilaran City in Bohol, which takes about 90 minutes.

During our stay in Bohol for this trip we were guests of my wife's sister Mia and her husband Stuart at their new house in Loon, north of Tagbilaran City.  The house is perched on high ground overlooking the Cebu Strait to the west.  This afforded me the opportunity to take numerous photos of the sun setting behind Cebu.

The last one is my favorite, with the fast ferry in the Cebu Strait approaching Tagbilaran City on its last run of the day.

Darn! I'll Have to Bail on the Reason Rally

I was looking forward to going to the Reason Rally this coming Saturday and getting the chance to meet fellow nontheists, including some of my favorite bloggers.  But alas, I simply have too many errands and things to do around the house.  To all those who are going, I hope the weather cooperates and you have a great time.

Maybe Rick Santorum Was Right

I recently finished reading Jon Krakauer's Under The Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, which in part tells the story of the murder of a woman and her toddler child by two of the brothers of her husband because they believed it was a deed sanctioned by God.

I started reading Under The Banner of Heaven a few days after Republican presidential candidate and self-appointed busy body of all things sexual Rick Santorum called colleges "indoctrination mills" and claimed in an interview with Glenn Beck that “62 percent of kids who go into college with a faith commitment leave without it.”

Where Under The Banner of Heaven ties into this is near the end of the book.  One of the persons Krakauer introduces the reader to is an apostate from the Mormon Fundamentalist Church named DeLoy Bateman.

Bateman tells Krakauer what led him to eventually leave his church and abandon his faith.

"Even as a young boy," he says, "I remember wondering about contradictions between what the religion taught and scientific truth.   But Uncle Roy told us that the way to handle that was just to avoid asking certain kinds of questions.  So I trained myself to ignore the contradictions.  I got good at not letting myself think about them."

When he turned 18, Bateman attended Southern Utah State College, because his church wanted him to become a teacher.

Bateman says, "I loved college.  Looking back, I suppose it was the beginning of the end for me.  I stayed in the religion for another twenty years, but going to college in Cedar City was when I had my eyes opened.  That's where I took my first geology course.  Afterward I came home and told Uncle Roy, 'There's a professor over there trying to tell us the earth is four and a half billion years old, but the religion says its only six thousand years old.  How can that be?'  Which shows you why education is such a problem for the Work.  You take someone like me, who was always as stalwart as can be, and then you ship him off to get an education and the guy goes and apostasizes on you.  Happens over and over again.  And every time it does, it makes the leaders more inclined to keep people from learning."  (Bolding mine).

You see some of that with Rick Santorum, who constantly likes to point out that he homeschools his kids.  After all, he doesn't want his children to be exposed to somebody else's agenda, and Heavens forbid, be indoctrinated into becoming a liberal!

One of the things I have noticed about right wing conservatives is the way they frame their language.  They begin with the premise that their beliefs are normative and correct.  Therefore, anyone who advocates for positions that run contrary to their own have "an agenda."  Anything taught to their children that runs counter to their beliefs is an attempt to "indoctrinate" them.  These people are either being disingenuous or willfully obtuse when they refuse to recognize that they too have an agenda and trying to teach their children strictly in accordance with their own beliefs involves indoctrinating them.  After all, to believe in the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation ultimately involves telling a child, "This is what the Church teaches.  You just have to have faith and believe it."

I don't know if anyone has explicitly asked Santorum this, but I would like to see him be asked, "What is the difference between telling a child that a Communion wafer becomes the flesh of Jesus Christ when it enters one's mouth and telling a child that human activities are releasing large quantities of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, which traps heat and warms the planet?  After all, one cannot physically test the communion wafer to detect changes in its properties when it enters the mouth of a believing Catholic, but one can measure the increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the rise in temperature and the shrinking of glaciers and Arctic sea ice." 

Rick Santorum may consider it a terrible tragedy if an 18 year old Catholic enters college believing in the doctrine of transubstantiation and leaves college at 21 believing it to be nothing but medieval superstitious nonsense, but it shouldn't be a reason to oppose expanding opportunity for Americans to  attend college.

Mormonism in One Sentence

A religion founded by a guy so that he could have theological justification to bang as many women as he wanted.