Yes, my #1 favorite Christmas present finally arrived today! Thank you to my in-laws for the funds, and Tina and Robert for getting it over the Atlantic for me. As an inveterate bookworm, I have been contemplating getting a Kindle for years. At first, I was one of those people who just couldn’t stomach the idea of replacing a real book with an electronic device. I loved the classic Star Trek episode where Captain Kirk visits the eccentric with the real, old-fashioned library. It makes me feel at home to have shelves and shelves full of books, preferably nice, heavy hard-bound ones.… Read more
Author: Sarah Bringhurst Familia
Why I Outsourced Your Job To India
Well, so maybe it wasn’t your job. But I don’t mind outsourcing overseas. And here’s why. When my husband and I started our first business, we were living in a one-bedroom cinderblock apartment on Brigham Young University campus while he finished up his degree. So our shoestring budget was always more than a little threadbare. When we had the idea about a year later to make a flash-animated online design tool to sell our basketball uniforms, we got a quote from a local company. The Utah company we consulted (which will remain unnamed) quoted us $150,000 to $250,000 to design our tool.… Read more
Philippines, Part 13: The Chocolate Hills (Bohol Again)
Last week we had our first monsoon and were almost marooned on a desert island. Check out that and other past adventures here:
Philippines, Part 1: Have Baby, Will Travel
Philippines, Part 2: Do You Know How to XOOM?
Philippines, Part 3: Confessions of a Carseatless Baby (Vigan)
Philippines, Part 4: Strawberries and Cotton Candy (Baguio)
Philippines, Part 5: Hanging Coffins! (Sagada)
Philippines, Part 6: Voyage of the Icebox (Banauae & Batad)
Philippines, Part 7: Revenge of the Cockroaches (Manila)
Philippines, Part 8: Please Don’t Feed the Sharks (Anilao)
Philippines, Part 9: “Sexy Chic” at the Playboy Fashion Show (Field Study Research)
Philippines, Part 10: Luxury Travel, Filipino Style (Cebu)
Philippines, Part 11: Nuts to the Huts (Bohol)
Philippines, Part 12: If You Were Stranded on a Desert Island .… Read more
To be curious is dangerous enough
Sometimes it’s really hard to be different. To never conform to people’s expectations. To be always causing a sensation when you just meant to live your life authentically. To find your logic somehow forever leading to unexpected conclusions. As a result, I sometimes take evasive action. When making a new acquaintance, I don’t always volunteer certain information such as that my children are home educated, I drink unpasteurized milk, I lived in three different countries last year, and I think Latin grammar is fun. It just makes things simpler. I really do try to avoid affecting other people too directly by the consequences of my eccentricity.… Read more
Love is How We’ll Ask For Peace
Last week my husband told me about his favorite co-worker, Mauro. For the first few months that he worked at this job, Tony didn’t really get to know Mauro, who is sincere and nice, but also very quiet. But last week in the course of a rare conversation, Tony found out something truly awesome about his taciturn office mate. He’s part of an Italian NGO called Emergency. He travels to countries like Sudan, Algeria, Cambodia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, providing desperately needed medical care. Emergency builds hospitals, trains local medical staff, and provides free medical and surgical care to victims of war, landmines, and poverty.… Read more
Philippines, Part 12: If You Were Stranded on a Desert Island . . . (Panglao)
Last time we destroyed Tony’s personal luggage and discovered a serious case of Travel Guide fraud in Philippines, Part 11: Nuts to the Huts (Bohol). If you’ve missed a previous episode, you can find them here:
Philippines, Part 1: Have Baby, Will Travel
Philippines, Part 2: Do You Know How to XOOM?
Philippines, Part 3: Confessions of a Carseatless Baby (Vigan)
Philippines, Part 4: Strawberries and Cotton Candy (Baguio)
Philippines, Part 5: Hanging Coffins! (Sagada)
Philippines, Part 6: Voyage of the Icebox (Banauae & Batad)
Philippines, Part 7: Revenge of the Cockroaches (Manila)
Philippines, Part 8: Please Don’t Feed the Sharks (Anilao)
Philippines, Part 9: “Sexy Chic” at the Playboy Fashion Show (Field Study Research)
Philippines, Part 10: Luxury Travel, Filipino Style (Cebu)
From Bohol’s capital of Tagbilaran, we took a long, hot, slow, noisy, bumpy ride on a motorcycle sidecar to little Panglao Island, which is connected to the main island of Bohol by a land bridge.… Read more
A Dream If Ever There Were One
I hope you all had a lovely Christmas break. Mine was a little complicated, for reasons which I will hopefully be able to elucidate during the next week or two. In the meantime, though, I’ll tell you about our magical Christmas Eve, which we spent in a quaint mountain village a century or two ago. We had been planning to attend this event for nearly three years, ever since we had to leave Italy just as the holidays were approaching. In the end, it was even more fascinating than we had imagined.
Although the snow had all but melted in the rain down in our own little valley town, as we wound up the mountain road, we began to see frosted trees and snowy slopes.… Read more
Pavane for a Dead Phone Charger
I once had a wonderful, simple, practical, brilliant device that made my life serene, beautiful, and carefree. I still remember the day that I opened the box to my new Blackberry 8830. I slowly extended my hand, touched it gently with my fingers, and then carefully lifted it out. No, not the phone, which was a phone like any other phone, without even the distinction of being an iPhone. The CORD. The incredible, fantastic, never-seen-before-or-since phone charger cord. It looked simple enough. On one end was a mini-USB to fit into the neat little matching slot on my phone. But the other end.… Read more
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
Last night was our church Christmas party. The whole thing was a little surreal. It was originally my idea, but it didn’t turn out quite as planned. Since I am the branch music chairperson, a few months ago I realized I should probably plan a few special musical numbers for the church service the week before Christmas. My husband is in the branch presidency, so I asked him what the President had in mind. He responded that the President didn’t have anything in mind yet, so I should put something together and present it for his approval. Because our branch is small, and we don’t have a choir or a lot of extra time and resources after we barely manage to accomplish the essentials, I went online and got the simplest Christmas Sacrament Meeting Program I could find.… Read more
Philippines, Part 11: Nuts to the Huts (Bohol)
Welcome back to Friday in the Philippines. Last week we had a long night with the karaoke in Suiteroom 1 of the Superferry. Check here for back posts:
Philippines, Part 1: Have Baby, Will Travel
Philippines, Part 2: Do You Know How to XOOM?
Philippines, Part 3: Confessions of a Carseatless Baby (Vigan)
Philippines, Part 4: Strawberries and Cotton Candy (Baguio)
Philippines, Part 5: Hanging Coffins! (Sagada)
Philippines, Part 6: Voyage of the Icebox (Banauae & Batad)
Philippines, Part 7: Revenge of the Cockroaches (Manila)
Philippines, Part 8: Please Don’t Feed the Sharks (Anilao)
Philippines, Part 9: “Sexy Chic” at the Playboy Fashion Show (Field Study Research)
Philippines, Part 10: Luxury Travel, Filipino Style (Cebu)
Before leaving Manila, we had finally traded in our overstuffed frame backpacks for a snazzy matching set of rolling (and nesting) suitcases.… Read more