8/30/2025 Saturday Today at noon, I attended the Passport to Taiwan cultural festival in Bridgewater Commons. Parking lot 9 right outside Lord & Taylor (which is already shutdown). It's an extension of the NYC version which has been around since 1999. A first in New Jersey. The attraction was a success. Lots of Chinese, not sure if they were Taiwanese. Two rolls of food stalls surrounding the middle cultural stands from Buddhist (慈济) to Mandarin learning schools, for kids and adults (I've saved their brochures in my Photo drive as PDF, including a guide for touring Taiwan). I ordered 2 bubble tea and a pineapple drinks for C & U and myself, around $25. I also ordered miso ramen for $10. The food are really mediocre. There's BBQ squid for $25 which I did not get, line was too long anyway. However, I do hope they continue for a 2nd anniversary here next year. We then chatted in the mall's food court. I talked about our church, pastor, Phil, predestination (I used by Shakespeare-Romeo analogy in the Creator-Creation distinction), etc. Then I had to leave them around 4:35pm to pick up Nadia from our train station.
Supposed to be a 10 volume series: 認識台灣歷史. So they are missing volume 10 above. Good thing I didn't buy.
Dave (David) Smith roasting the hypocrisy of Right Wing for supporting the killing of babies in GAZA and yet being pro-life. An important point he brought up the problem that if HAMAS uses human shield, then it's okay to kill those "shields", something that the Ring Wing apparently justifies vehemently, along with Israel's ideology. So I am with Dave Smith on this, that you can't just kill everybody and call it collateral damage and his opponents cannot respond properly and went off topic.
8/27/2025 Wednesday Forvo.com: A language service to loop up pronunciations in various languages by native speakers.
8/25/2025 Monday Build a game using Go in 3 days using LLM vs without LLM in 3 months.
8/24/2025 Sunday Sometime this week, learned about Francisco Tarrega's (The Father of Modern Classical Guitar) guitar composition, particularly Recuerdos de la Alhambra, for guitar, Tárrega, Francisco. Wish I could learn this, a popular piece:
And my new found favorite: Sueño, mazurka for guitar:
Sermon at GCC was on Acts 11 "A Light on A Lampstand." I have issue with particularly one segment of the pastor's message with regards to being criticized in Acts 11:2: "...Peter could have used his apostolic authority. He could have said, "Of course, I went and ate with the Gentiles. Am I not an apostle?" And of course, they may have gotten angry..." So, when David Tong posted on Facebook debunking Peter being head of all bishops:
John Calvin (Institutes 4.6.7 "Acts. 11:3 When he is accused of having gone in to the Gentiles, though the accusation is unfounded, he replies to it, and clears himself") menggunakan fakta ini untuk membuktikan bahwa Rasul Paulus memiliki kehormatan, tapi tidak memiliki kuasa, atas Rasul lainnya. Konsep bahwa uskup Roma memiliki kuasa atas uskup lainnya tidak ada buktinya di dalam Alkitab dan hidup gereja awal.
Saya percaya bahwa banyak pendeta kini masih bingung mengenai perbedaan antara iman apostolik dan otoritas apostolik: