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I stumbled out the door and onto the 6 X 6 platform. Instead of an air-conditioned terminal gate being pressed up against the side of the airplane. Instead of the passengers stepping off the plane into a walkway into the terminal, I was standing on the top step of some very steep stairs to the pavement below.

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Disclosure: I only recommend products I would use myself and all opinions expressed here are my own. I hope you won’t mind that this post may contain affiliate links, so that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission.

So you are all packed and ready to go to the Philippines (imagining this is the future and anyone can travel freely in and out of the country). You’ve packed for every contingency, even a sweater if it gets chilly on the beach. …

MacKenzie Scott, billionaire philanthropist, and all-around good human being announced on Medium yesterday that she will be donating $2.7 billion to 286 more organizations. This brings her total donations, since signing The Giving Pledge, at $8 billion in three different rounds of funding.

Now, if you know me or my writing, you know I speak out against the worthless and evil billionaires like MacKenzie’s ex-husband Jeff Bezos all the time. I tend to leave alone the billionaires who seem to be trying to make a difference with their money, like Warren Buffett, and at one time I even gave Bill…

I’m almost 52 years old and I still can’t read people properly. I spent hours reading and rereading your “heartfelt” note on Medium. I looked up the articles that chronicled your vicious trolling. I wrongly thought even a person who would tell Courtney Stodden to go kill themselves could have just made a mistake and truly was sorry for their transgressions.

I thought about it even as I read the articles by writers I admire taking the opposite stance. …

A few days after arriving in the Philippines, I woke to get ready for church. I was feeling a bit uncomfortable in my stomach like I had to do a poop, but I thought I would be okay because I was still a bit constipated from the 22-hour flight a few days before.

I got dressed and we boarded the bus to our congregation some 30 Km away. Funny story: the bus drivers don’t wait for you to be seated before speeding off down the road. I was a 360-pound, off-balance hand grenade bouncing down the aisle and taking several…

I spent the last few hours getting up to speed on Chrissy Teigen’s fall from grace. As someone who has enjoyed her tweets and takes on life, I was shocked that she admits that she used to be a troll and acted hateful toward people on Twitter. I didn’t want to believe she did those things, not because she is famous and beautiful, but because she has been a small part of my life and I expect more out of people than that.

I felt the pain that Courtney Stodden must have felt when they read, in both tweets and…

In just a few months, I’ll travel from the Philippines to my old hometown in the States, Tucson. Because I live in the Philippines, and the vaccine hasn’t been widely distributed, I haven’t even had my first dose.

Do I need to be vaccinated to travel internationally? While there are no vaccine requirements to travel to the US, there are countries like Iceland and Italy that require you to be vaccinated. And, before you run out and pack your bag to the States, you must know that the CDC says you should NOT travel if you are not vaccinated:

“Do…

Ten years ago, when I started telling people I was moving to the Philippines, the person I most encountered was the eyebrow-archer.

“Going to the Philippines?” Arch. “Don’t you know that it’s a third-world country?”

Arch. “You can’t drink the water, you know?”

It got to the point where if I wasn’t being mansplained to, I was surprised. Everyone seemed to be an authority in the Philippines, even though their knowledge was no better than mine, and everything I knew came from old blogs on the internet and National Geographic.

Everyone had an opinion, and all those opinions added to…