12/27/2025 Saturday
A popular fail for Frank Turek as his famous cheesy lines were "If I give you a book would you read it?" and "If Christianity were true, would you believe it." The first isn't that great, as if giving free books is the same as giving money. The latter is worse, and this is where presuppositional apologetics wins. And this is my comment: Unfortunately, this is a fail for Turek: Christianity is for sinners, not for judges. Great evangelist, bad apologetics. Later I saw David Tong's post on his Facebook:
Consistent Reformed Apologetics:
apologetics ≠ pre-evangelization
apologetics = evangelization
Not sure if his posting was pertaining to my post/comment, in concurrence. If so, my first impression was positive, but he could very well disagree with my statement, such that calling Frank Turek a "great" evangelist and with "bad" apologetics is oxymoronic, then it is non-sequitur and I can ignore it, because an evangelist's greatness begins in his love to reach young minds with the Gospel, not how his apologetics is in the beginning which can grow better over time with the love he has for God. Frank Turek has that, and he has stolen quite a few reformed doctrine to make his case against non-believers, he just can't be consistent against Reformed believers.
12/26/2025 Friday
Early morning after Christmas, around 8am, Nadia and I drove to Flushing for brake (not break pads) pads and rotors replacement at her favorite mechanics: Y & C Auto Repair. The price has always been a drastic difference with what we find in NJ. Imagine this: Topline Autocare (5 mins drive from our house) charges $1178 front and brake pads and rotors (including servicing the rotor); While Y & C charges $800 for the same (a 32% discount). Mileage of our 2012 Honda CRV at the time was around 136,770 miles. Google AI: For a 2012 Honda CR-V, brake pads typically last 30,000-70,000 miles, while rotors usually need replacement every 50,000-80,000 miles. That means the next pads & rotors replacement due date is around 180k miles.
We then ate at our old time favorite Ah Hong. I had curry mee, Nadia had Pho. Then we take out another old time favorite, New World Mall (underground food court under JMart grocery). She ordered pork intestine noodle soup while I got 蜆肉麻辣燙.
My dad sent me this fun science experiments video, looks legit, I should try:
12/25/2025 Thursday
Nadia and I hosted Christmas party (hotpot for lunch) for our new church (Crossroads) family: The Indo 5: A family of 4 and a graduate student. I tried my best (though not to my satisfaction) to keep it a group conversation, that means involving the kids (13 & 16) as much as possible. I just don't feel comfortable anymore when the discussion veered away from the interest of any single individual of the discussion table. All three guys played our piano: The father played Yiruma's Kiss the rain, the son played Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag, Piano Sonata No. 11 in A Major, (K. 331: III. Alla turca) by Mozart, and Nick played Right Here Waiting by Richard Marx. A group of musical talents.
An example of Baptists not understanding Covenant theology: Pastor Dave's "the old covenant should have come with a sticker that says battery is not included", failed to understand the distinction and purpose of covenant and the law, which is to point out our sins, not so that we will obey to righteousness.
12/22/2025 Monday
Ancient Chinese Writing script: 西夏文 （Tangut script），女書