#i could talk for a billion years about the SYMBOLISM in the 1st one too it is just sooooo soo so much i care abt liar sm

[9w1ft]

☔️

it’s been about a month now since TSL shut down. i’ve been thinking of how best to summarize my thoughts on the odd things that happened to me there and i’ve decided it’s best to split my thoughts up into a few posts. this is my first!

so, for starters! drumroll pleaaaaaase 🥁 i would like to clear the air.. i am very excited to say that i have properly identified and spoken to the real KalindaKing!

you may or may have noticed before the app shut down, but KalindaKing actually @‘d me in one of her final posts on the app, saying she had seen my theory but that sadly she is an only child.

unfortunately, yes, KalindaKing was not Kimby Kloss. i uhh, take it she herself confirmed it for me recently!

actually, about a month after posting my theory, a mutual of mine tipped me off to a social media post that seemed to be from someone who might be KalindaKing (the gist of the post was, to paraphrase, i saw a theory that i’m karlie’s sister. i wish!), and i had been keeping tabs on it for some time. the post did not get any traction (no likes, no shares) so there was no way to verify if it was related, but doing some digging and cross-referencing photos and whatnot i was left plenty suspicious.

So about 3 months went by after i had my lede on who it could be, and then 48 hours away from app shutdown KalindaKing @‘d me on TSL... so i decided to take the jump and direct message the suspicious person on social media. and, we had a match! it was her!

Can i just say she is just as delightful as she was on TSL? it was an honor to chat with her. turns out she is an active moderator under the same username on another app by the same company.

actually, 😂 the KK part is really a funny coincidence.. see, the moderator who went by the username KalindaKing on TSL originally created that username for herself because she is a moderator on the Kim Kardashian Hollywood app under the same username (she gave me permission to say that), and, alliteration, so go figure! it would appear i exquisitely took my conjectures a twist too far.

this moderator is a professional, so she did not disclose that much to me, but I was able to learn that the ‘TheSwiftLife’ account was the responsibility of her and someone else. She mentioned that Social (ie twitter/fb) was run by her. Someone else was helping out on the TSL app, ie, that account that gave out those persnickety taymoji gifts on the app. 🤨

for those of you who followed my theory closely, this newly confirmed information has likely allowed you to come to the same heartening conclusion that i did: this means that the “message to taylor” function on the app is in all likelihood indeed something that only taylor can see, or, isn’t accessible to just any glu employee. yes, those personal private messages to her were in fact kept private 🥰. that is to say, leading up to my big guess post, i had disclosed the content of my guess (that kimby was KalindaKing) using this function, asking for the go ahead here on tumblr. my theory is whoever the someone is that was helping out with the TheSwiftLife account did not have access to my secret messages, and that’s where the miscommunication between me and them occurred. oops...

if you are new here, you are probably wondering how sound this logic could be. it would also seem to be completely possible that the TheSwiftLife account simply didn't know i existed / had never read anything from me / had never interacted with me through the app.

to that i say:

i now have proof that at least one moderator from the app read my theory back in October 2018

i now have proof that the same moderator @‘d me in response to the theory 48 hours before the app closed on February 1st, despite having know about it for three months.. so i take it that it merited addressing

let me walk you through a sampler of five ‘interactions’ that occurred with me and TheSwiftLife between August and October of last year:

interaction one: 8/1 Puzzle Heart..

after showcasing some interest in the taymoji gifts and crafting my theory of what they meant, i had seen a through line in terms of the overall message being conveyed but was unsure of any of this was real. i posted here on tumblr for the taymoji gods to send me sign, and the TheSwiftLife account gave out a puzzle heart with the flavor text “put the pieces together” the chances of that taymoji being picked to be given out are, i would say, 1/128 chances. the gift giving was mainly from within a pool of the 64 song-based taymoji packs and always of one of the two rare taymoji from either pack, so, 64x2=128

interaction two, 8/29 Rabbit...

following a week of ttb using the emoji rabbit to welcome some anons into the kaylor fandom, TheSwiftLife gave out a rabbit with the flavor text “Fell down the rabbit hole...”

interaction three: 9/12 Pixels..

things felt surreal following the rabbit... so i asked TSL here on tumblr to show me a sign that proved they knew me and saw me. i said there was one taymoji out of them all (of which there are 653) that represented me. i had hoped for the pixel art heart taymoji, as it says in my profile here that i am a pixel artist... i assumed if TSL wanted to respond to my request, they’d poke around my blog and make that connection. 13 days after i made the post, they gave out that exact one. in response, i mentioned what a lovely birthday present this was, as it was coming 13 days before my birthday (i’m born on 9/25)

interaction four: 9/21 Balloons...

between the pixel heart and this next gift, i came to the conclusion that kimby could be spearheading the TheSwiftLife account (given an interaction between this blog and kimby’s instagram stories involving a yacht company), and, as i love cheesy things, i made the extra (flawed) assumption that, given KalindaKing appeared to be a pen name, it would be super duper ingenious if the KK stood for Kimby Kloss. i sent this prediction in the “secret message for taylor” function on TSL, assuming (incorrectly) whoever was on the other side could read it, and posted here on tumblr simply that “i know who you’ve been, and i take it you want me to share?” The next gift that TheSwiftLife gave out were a set of red balloons from the Mine pack, with the caption “Speak now if it’s your birthday this month”

interaction five: 10/1 Umbrella...

even so, i was very hesitant to go through with pushing my theory. it felt, again, unreal. so, i put up one more test... i asked here on tumblr something in the form of a riddle. I decided to phrase a request for them to give a taymoji in the form of a question. knowing the full range of taymoji possibilities, i picked the flavor text of a taymoji that had never been given out, and a double-rare one (which weren’t given out often) the umbrella, and put out my question: do you have my back even if it rains down on me? and the next gift given out was the very umbrella i expected, which has the flavor text “Don’t worry. I’ve got you covered!”

this span of time in particular (not limited to, but especially) is why i have a hard time not believing kaylor is real. why would taylor’s team let any of this fly, that is, why would they allow a bubbly and vocal kaylor experience this if kaylor wasn’t true?

i encourage everyone to look through my blog archive from August to October to see how it played out! it won’t take that long and i think it’s more interesting than just this post. it’s a sweet slice of time... happening before the political post, and then, the ‘wedding’ thing.

and: if you are to believe that this is all just coincidence, then you have to logically assume that every of the above interactions happened at random, with TheSwiftLife drawing from a catalog of over 100 possible choices each time, and accidentally giving something relevant each time. i am not even going to cover the many many other strange alignments between what i post on here and what kimby posts on instagram. the probability of these taymoji is enough.

even taking out of account the probability of the timing of each, and just looking at it like a kid’s math problem, it’s quite a rare outcome.

what is the probability of insinuating 5 specific symbols and drawing those 5 specific symbols out of 5 bags with 128 different symbols inside each, one after the other? 1/128 x 1/128 x 1/128 x 1/128 x 1/128 = 1/34,359,738,368

a one in 34 billion chance of it happening if it happened randomly.

you only think 3 out of the 5 coincidences above are legit? well that still an over one in two million chance. only believe in one of them? still just an 0.8% chance.

and i picked these five interactions because they hilight five times where there really couldn’t have been multiple “applicable” taymoji responses. i tried to cut out that grey zone for you, because there’s plenty of grey examples to pick from. i suppose with the balloons, they could have picked any birthday-looking taymoji and accompanied the gift with the same caption.. but in that case, it means you have to calculate the chances of them writing the birthday messaging after what happened with the pixel heart... and i don’t know how to calculate that...

i’m not even talking about how some of the taymoji given out twice coincided with celebrity appearances in the world of kaylor. i don’t know how to calculate the probability of karlie saying she’ll go to a taylor concert before a marching band hat is given out, and then her appearing at nashville the day after the marching band hat was given out again. or the paul mccartney coincidence, or the hayley kiyoko coincidence, just to name a few of the most straightforward. i’m not even gonna mention all that business about the app notifications freaking out on my phone (for which i have an excel spreadsheet up my sleeve for later should i decide to nerd out that much)

i don’t even need to touch that.

some epic sh*t was positively afoot, my darlings.

but i digress. pending, you know, ‘proof’, we have no surefire way to know about the who (or who all behind it) all of this is, but, i don’t think we need to be sure of that for the time being (uwu*). i just want to re establish that while KalindaKing was a glorious misfire, the mystery of the app still very much remains.

in my upcoming post (i need to buy myself some eyedrops or something because my eyes are redder than that st. louis park sculpture right now), i would like to rewind for a sec and set the question of who aside and refocus solely on what we learned from the gifts and what we can possibly take away from the experience as a whole.

for now, this is me saying, kimby, oops! sorry i thought you were KalindaKing and sorry for not triple checking with you. my double check was not enough. but i’m glad i took the plunge, because, better an oops than a what if, right? and i hope, at least you got a good laugh out of it! and also thank you lovely sisters ☺️ for you know, clearing the way for me to make this post. at least, that’s what it looked like to me. 📯🕊

[drtanstravels]

In my last post, all of our time in Israel was spent in Tel Aviv, looking around Jaffa, wandering around the Sarona shopping district and the beach, and trying to figure out what we could actually do on the Sabbath. Now it was time to do and see some of the things that anyone would want to experience while in Israel. Prepare yourself for a ton of information and a bunch of photos.

Sunday, November 3, 2019 Anna was back at the hospital for her International Retinal Panel course and I had to meet her there at around 11:00am. That wasn’t a problem, I was awake early and was incredibly hungry; on our first night in Tel Aviv I threw up everything I had eaten that day due to drinking far too much pomegranate juice. The following day was Shabbat so I was limited with what I could eat during the day and then when it came to dinner, the staff at the restaurant kept forgetting our food, ultimately serving us over-fried fish scraps that weren’t particularly appetising so that had all left me a little peckish. I gave myself plenty of time to meet up with Anna and I’m not a big fan of hospitals so I found a cafe for a real coffee, not the “very weak coffee” I had received the previous day, and I also grabbed a couple of buns and kicked back in the cafe until Anna and the rest of the Retinal Panel crew were ready. The next stop was the Ein Kerem campus hospital of the Hadassah Medical Center. The Retinal Panel would be taking a tour of the facilities while I just spent some time walking around the gardens that overlooked Jerusalem, just sitting back and admiring the city from a distance while anticipating our tour until everyone was ready to move on from being taken around the hospital. After a couple of hours it was about 3:30pm so we had less than 90 minutes of daylight remaining when we were back on the bus, headed for Jerusalem. One of the organisers of the training seminar, Tamir Weinberg, was a wealth of information on the subject of Judaism and the history of the area, providing more information than we were able to take in, a pattern that would repeat itself with all tour guides throughout this region, and answering any and all questions while we were making our extremely slow bus ride through the almost stationary afternoon traffic. Probably the best question came after he mentioned how the Mount of Olives is the most expensive place for Jews to be buried, due to the belief that it was where Christ ascended to heaven and the location where the ascension at end times will happen once again. Anna curiously asked, “How much are the grapes there?” Tamir was clearly confused, but Anna tried to clarify, pointing out that he said that it was home to the world’s most expensive grapes. Nope, he had been talking about graves, leaving Anna disappointed at not being able to purchase high-end grapes during our visit.

Now, I’ve mentioned several times in this blog that I’m not a religious or even spiritual person, however, I do believe that there was probably some guy called Jesus Christ walking around this part of the world and preaching to people that he was the son of God — You can walk through Central Park in Manhattan on any given day and encounter multiple people who will tell you that they are indeed a direct descendent of the Lord too. But I can’t buy the stories of the virgin birth, the performing of miracles, the resurrection, or even the existence of a God for that matter. On the other hand, I was extremely interested in exploring and seeing for myself this ancient city, the history of which shaping so much of humankind, causing both unity and conflict, as well as influencing so strongly the way billions of people think, speak, behave, and act toward others. The majority of people are probably aware of the basics of Jerusalem, but here is a crash course anyway:

Jerusalem is a city in the Middle East, located on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the oldest cities in the world, and is considered holy to the three major Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Both Israel and the Palestinian Authority claim Jerusalem as their capital, as Israel maintains its primary governmental institutions there and the State of Palestine ultimately foresees it as its seat of power; however, neither claim is widely recognized internationally.

During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, and attacked 52 times. The part of Jerusalem called the City of David shows first signs of settlement in the 4th millennium BCE, in the shape of encampments of nomadic shepherds.

According to the Bible, King David conquered the city from the Jebusites and established it as the capital of the united kingdom of Israel, and his son, King Solomon, commissioned the building of the First Temple. Modern scholars argue that Jews branched out of the Canaanite peoples and culture through the development of a distinct monolatrous — and later monotheistic — religion centered on El/Yahweh, one of the Ancient Canaanite deities. These foundational events, straddling the dawn of the 1st millennium BCE, assumed central symbolic importance for the Jewish people. The sobriquet of holy city was probably attached to Jerusalem in post-exilic times. The holiness of Jerusalem in Christianity, conserved in the Septuagint which Christians adopted as their own authority, was reinforced by the New Testament account of Jesus’s crucifixion there. In Sunni Islam, Jerusalem is the third-holiest city, after Mecca and Medina. In Islamic tradition, in 610 CE it became the first qibla, the focal point for Muslim prayer, and Muhammad made his Night Journey there ten years later, ascending to heaven where he speaks to God, according to the Quran. As a result, despite having an area of only 0.9 square kilometres (0.35 sq mi), the Old City is home to many sites of seminal religious importance, among them the Temple Mount with its Western Wall, Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Outside the Old City stands the Garden Tomb.

Our time was going to be spent within the walls of the Old City area (highlighted, above) so once inside we had a tour guide ready to show us around, spouting endless knowledge while using a green laser pointer to draw attention to important details, even from a distance. One of the first things I encountered that I simply wasn’t expecting was a man delivering a washing machine on a hand trolley. This town may be ancient, but it’s a little more high-tech than I had anticipated. It was now getting dark and one of the organisers asked the guide to stop talking so we could enter. To begin with we wound our way through buildings and markets stalls, most of which were selling awful tourist paraphernalia, particularly a wealth of terrible t-shirts. I even saw an overly loud American woman wearing a t-shirt which said ‘Jerusalem’, the ‘USA’ in the middle of the city’s name in the pattern of the American flag, although I still fail to see the connection. Whenever we visit foreign countries, for some reason I have a tendency to buy traditional headwear, some examples being that I have a hat that I bought at Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany, a traditional woollen face-mask from Colta, Ecuador, and a fez from Kuşadası, Turkey. Because of this it made perfect sense that I buy a yarmulke while we were in Israel and it turned out that it wouldn’t be a matter I’d have a whole lot of choice in. While walking through the market I saw a store with yarmulkes catering to tourists so I snapped a photo of them, instantly pissing off the store owner, who followed me for a bit and angrily insisted I buy one as sort of fee for the photo. I was planning on getting one at some stage anyway so I figured that this would be the best opportunity, he clearly needed the cash, so I randomly chose a hilariously bad Homer Simpson one and when I asked how much it was, the store owner told me 150 shekels. Somehow this made me a little confused; I had been doing fine at mentally converting in my mind Israeli shekels to Singapore dollars up until that point, but for some reason on this occasion I converted it in the way you would in many South-East Asian countries, multiplying the number by three or four and removing a zero or two. “About six bucks,” I thought to myself. “Thats Okay.” It turned out to be far from okay, because a Singaporean dollar currently equates to about 2.58 shekels so in reality my poor quality Homer Simpson yarmulke that you will see later in this post set me back S$58.00 (US$42.70)! Anyway, here are our first views of Jerusalem:

The Old City of Jerusalem from the carpark

Panoramic shot from outside

Upon entrance

I don’t remember seeing any appliance stores in there

Walking past a food street

I regret not buying that ‘Guns & Moses’ shirt

Walking around another area

Into the market now

Another part of the endless market

The rip-off yarmulke store. I should’ve got the Spongebob one in hindsight

After the market, our first real stop on the tour was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre:

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also called the Church of the Resurrection or Church of the Anastasis by Orthodox Christians, is a church in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. The church contains, according to traditions dating back to at least the fourth century, the two holiest sites in Christianity: the site where Jesus was crucified, at a place known as Calvary or Golgotha, and Jesus’s empty tomb, where he is said to have been buried and resurrected. The tomb is enclosed by a 19th-century shrine called the Aedicula. The Status Quo, an understanding between religious communities dating to 1757, applies to the site.

Within the church proper are the last four (or, by some definitions, five) stations of the Via Dolorosa, representing the final episodes of the Passion of Jesus. The church has been a major Christian pilgrimage destination since its creation in the fourth century, as the traditional site of the resurrection of Christ, thus its original Greek name, Church of the Anastasis (‘Resurrection’).

Upon entrance of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre you are forced to navigate your way through throngs of people up a stairwell, past some impressive mosaics, until you reach the Calvary, which has traditionally been regarded as the site of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, although this has long been debated, but therefore the home to the Altar of the Crucifixion. The Rock of the Calvary, believed by many to be the exact site of the crucifixion, is directly beneath the altar, but only visible on each side where it is housed in glass cases, and it is possible to touch it from beneath through a hole in the floor under the altar. After seeing the Calvary, we squeezed our way back down the stairs to see the Stone of Anointing (seen in the featured image for this post), allegedly where Christ’s body was prepared for burial. When we got to the stone, people were weeping and throwing themselves on it, others were pouring water over its surface, but the first thing that stood out to me was how small Jesus must’ve been. The stone wouldn’t even be 1.5 metres (5′) long so unless his head or a portion of his lower extremities were hanging over the ends while being embalmed, Jesus Christ couldn’t have been a whole lot taller than Danny DeVito! Our last major stop inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was inside the Rotunda that contains the Aedicule. I was taken to church and Sunday School as a child and taught that Jesus’ body was placed in a cave with a boulder rolled in front of it. I understand that some details can be lost over time and that mistranslations are inevitable, or maybe the priest wasn’t using reliable sources, but Aedicule was no cave. Rather it was an ornate two-room building, the first holding the Angel’s Stone, a fragment of the stone that sealed the tomb, the other containing Christ’s alleged resting place for a few days following his death. If the cave story is factually correct and the Aedicule was built over the site afterward, I figured this would be more common knowledge, or maybe it’s just a result of my own ignorance of the topic. Either way, It was all impressive to see:

Outside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Inside, looking toward the Stone of the Anointing

Upstairs in the Calvary

The ceiling is beautiful

Looking toward the Altar of the Crucifxion

A mosaic of Christ being crucified

The Altar of the Crucifixion from the side

Some priests doing their thing at the altar

The Rock of Calvary

Another mosaic, this time of Jesus’ body being taken down from the cross

A mosaic near the Stone of Anointing of Christ’s body being prepared for burial

The Stone of Anointing from a distance

People were just throwing themselves at it

Lighting candles

The Aedicule

The Dome of the Anastasis above the aedicule

The side of the Aedicule

After the Church of the Holy Sepulchre we walked to another market area that mainly sold food and spices to stop off for some traditional cheesy snacks. I have no idea what we ate, but it was damn tasty. Next we were taken through another indoor area with broken columns that was once a marketplace, now resplendent with a mural of how it used to look back in the day. Once we had exited, we walked past a synagogue that overlooked the Mount of Olives and were soon at the Western Wall, more commonly referred to as the Wailing Wall, although that is considered a derogatory term:

The Western Wall, Wailing Wall, or Kotel is an ancient limestone wall in the Old City of Jerusalem. It is a relatively small segment of a far longer ancient retaining wall, known also in its entirety as the “Western Wall”. The wall was originally erected as part of the expansion of the Second Jewish Temple begun by Herod the Great, which resulted in the encasement of the natural, steep hill known to Jews and Christians as the Temple Mount, in a large rectangular structure topped by a huge flat platform, thus creating more space for the Temple itself and its auxiliary buildings. For Muslims, it is traditionally the site where the Islamic Prophet Muhammad tied his winged steed, al-Buraq, on his Isra and Mi’raj to Jerusalem before ascending to paradise, and constitutes the Western border of al-Haram al-Sharif.

The term Western Wall and its variations are mostly used in a narrow sense for the section traditionally used by Jews for prayer; it has also been called the “Wailing Wall”, referring to the practice of Jews weeping at the site over the destruction of the Temples. The term “Wailing Wall” is not used by Jews, and increasingly not by many others who consider it derogatory.

There is a much publicised practice of placing slips of paper containing written prayers into the crevices of the Wall. The earliest account of this practice is attributed to Rabbi Chaim ibn Attar, (d. 1743). More than a million notes are placed each year and the opportunity to e-mail notes is offered by a number of organisations. It has become customary for visiting dignitaries to place notes too.

The wall has separate prayer areas for men and women, both of which have large bird’s nests jutting out, and I am unsure if this is common or not, but people praying on the men’s side were sparsely spaced out when compared to the women’s side, which would’ve been at least 20 metres (65′) deep with women waiting to pray. We’ve been attempting to sell our apartment in Singapore in order to buy a larger one with very little success so Anna wrote “Sell our house” on a piece of paper she tore off an old brochure and went down to the wall to place it in a crack while I stayed upstairs to take some photos and video. I’m unsure if it was intentional, but the layout of barriers and scaffolding makes it almost impossible to get decent access to take photos of the women’s portion of the wall.

Spices in the market

About to have a snack

Tasty!

Walking through the food market

Now where the ancient market once stood

One of several mosaics that line the walls

A painting of how the market once looked. Apparently a common tourist thing to do is stand on that pillar for a photo so it looks as if you are in the market

The synagog

Overlooking the Mount of Olives

The men’s prayer section of the Western Wall

Those aren’t plants sticking out of the wall, they’re enormous bird’s nests

Getting a little closer

You can see all of the prayers in the cracks of the wall

Even women in Israel have to do compulsory national service

Anna and myself near the wall

The photos only give a rough idea of the Western Wall so I took a couple of short videos, the first from a distance to show the size and the second one closer to see the actions of those praying:

We left the Old city at around 8:30pm and went to a nearby restaurant where the organisers had made a reservation and some great food was passed around with free flow wine. I donned my $60 yarmulke, attached it to my head with Anna’s hair-clip, and this led to an interesting question — You see a lot of jews keep their yarmulkes in place with hairpins, but how do bald men do it? A suction cup? Glue, tape, or any other adhesive? Some sort of natural vacuum with the skull? I never got an exact answer, but one of the local doctors made the motion of just licking it and slapping it on his crown. We all had a great time at dinner and the next item on the agenda was to visit a decent drinking spot in a nearby market. As we entered we came to a place where some locals, as well as a couple of tourists, were just sitting around with beers, some smoking a shisha, just kicking back and listening to music. Someone thought it would be a brilliant idea just to stop off for some shots along the way, but we never ended up moving on. Initially, everyone was taking a while so I bought a beer, figuring I could just chug it when we had to leave, but then the music got cranked, everyone started dancing, and others began to get drinks as well. Next thing I knew, what was usually a small hangout in a market in Jerusalem had been turned into a party, Anna’s scarf being used for a limbo competition by some nearby Israeli guys that decided to join in. Two mind-blown Belgian tourists that were sitting nearby with a shisha asked at one point what had just happened. I had to explain to them that a bunch of eye surgeons from around the world that had barely known each other for a day or two had decided to hit the town and accidentally ended up taking over the place! I don’t dance so I at one stage got talking to the ambassador for Equatorial Guinea, his wife, and their older Israeli host who had only a few minutes prior been sitting around having a quiet drink. Anna was getting a bit thirsty so she kept coming over to have a sip out of my beer so I just eventually bought her one to make things easier, which she almost immediately spilt on me. This must’ve given the Israeli man, who had to be in his mid-60s, an idea. Anna soon came over and he introduced himself, leading to a conversation between the two of them that, although not verbatim, went very closely along the lines of this:

Older Israeli Man: “Is this your first time in Israel?” Anna: “Yes, and I love it here!” Older Israeli Man: “Where are you staying?” Anna: “In Tel Aviv.” Older Israeli Man: (Attempting to hand Anna his phone number) “Well, next time you’re in Israel I can be your private tour guide. Who are you here with?” Anna: (Putting an arm around me) “Oh, my husband.” Older Israeli Man: “Oh… Do you have a sister?” Anna: “No, just three brothers.” Older Israeli Man: “Oh, sorry…”

We both immediately cracked up laughing at how absurd it had been that a possible retiree had just assumed that Anna was some party girl who flirts with guys by randomly walking up and taking sips from their drinks and then resorted to asking if she had a sister when he found out she wasn’t available. It was a brilliant night and a sleepy bus ride back when we left at around midnight to make the one-hour trek back to our hotel.

Leaving the Old City

The view inside the restaurant from our upper-level tables

My terrible $60 Homer Simpson yarmulke on my greasy hair

Eating and drinking

Entering the market

We wouldn’t make it past there

Things getting loud

We needed to cover up to be in Jerusalem, but this was the only long skirt Anna had, making her look like a five-year-old who dressed herself for school and wanted to go as a ballerina

Monday, November 4, 2019 We were leaving for Singapore that day, but that’s not the reason we were up early. Instead, we were doing a tour of Masada and then going out to float around in the Dead Sea and we had to be in the hotel lobby at 7:20am for the bus. As usual we got stuck in traffic on the way, there were some really annoying people in our tour group, and the seats on the bus weren’t made for people my size so my back got quite painful over the course of the drive. One thing I wasn’t aware of was that we would be driving through Palestine on this particular day, however, we wouldn’t need passports, because nobody can really give a clear answer on what constitutes Palestine:

Boundaries of the Roman province Syria Palaestina, where dashed green line shows the boundary between Byzantine Palaestina Prima and Palaestina Secunda, as well as Palaestina Salutaris   Borders of Mandatory Palestine  Borders of the Palestinian territories (West Bank and Gaza Strip) which are claimed by the State of Palestine as its borders

Palestine is a geographic region in Western Asia usually considered to include Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and in some definitions, parts of western Jordan.

Situated at a strategic location between Egypt, Syria and Arabia, and the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity, the region has a long and tumultuous history as a crossroads for religion, culture, commerce, and politics. The region has been controlled by numerous peoples, including Ancient Egyptians, Canaanites, Israelites and Judeans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Achaemenids, ancient Greeks, the Jewish Hasmonean Kingdom, Romans, Parthians, Sasanians, Byzantines, the Arab Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid and Fatimid caliphates, Crusaders, Ayyubids, Mamluks, Mongols, Ottomans, the British, and modern Israelis, Jordanians, Egyptians and Palestinians.

The boundaries of the region have changed throughout history. Today, the region comprises the State of Israel and the Palestinian territories in which the State of Palestine was declared.

Yeah, I don’t really get it and this map (above), with the different borders colour-coded, doesn’t offer a whole lot of help, either. In fact, I didn’t even realise we had been in Palestine until I saw the location on some of the photos I had taken in the middle of nowhere while we were on the bus. Whenever you hear about Palestine on the news it’s never anything good, because all of that information generally revolves around the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, but apparently we were there and didn’t even know it! Our trip took quite a while, but our driver, who was also our tour guide, was funny as hell and we ultimately made it to Masada in the end. The only problem was that not only was this another situation where there was simply too much information to take in, but he also spoke in a very monotone voice so you just kind of tuned out after a while. Never fear, here are the basics about Masada:

Masada is an ancient fortification in the Southern District of Israel situated on top of an isolated rock plateau, akin to a mesa. It is located on the eastern edge of the Judaean Desert, overlooking the Dead Sea 20 km (12 mi) east of Arad.

Herod the Great built two palaces for himself on the mountain and fortified Masada between 37 and 31 BCE.

According to Josephus, the siege of Masada by Roman troops from 73 to 74 CE, at the end of the First Jewish–Roman War, ended in the mass suicide of the 960 Sicarii rebels who were hiding there.

There are two options for hiking to Masada, which is about 300m (980′) in elevation, but it is quite long and steep and it can get very hot there so we opted for the two-minute cable car ride to the top. Out one side of the car you could see the desert and the Dead Sea, out the other side, this:

Once at the summit we were taken on a rather lengthy tour beneath the desert sun and this is a sampling of what we saw of Masada, there are only descriptions for the parts I know or could find information about:

Waiting for the cable car

Looking over the Dead Sea into Jordan

Here comes our cable car

Some crazy people hike this!

Approaching the fort

A mosaic floor

A “caldarium” (hot room) in the Roman-style public bath

A better look at the caldarium

Looking into the Synagogue

Finally some shade!

Roman siege camp F and a section of the Roman circumvallation wall

Panoramic shot of the Dead Sea

Not a whole lot out there…

Token Selfie

Another mosaic floor

Part of the Dead Sea Scrolls

Anna and myself

Once we had finished looking around Masada we were back in the bus to go to the Ein Gedi region by the Dead Sea. By this time the pain in my back was unbearable so I was hoping that floating on water would be able to provide some relief, but before we could go in, we went to get lunch. The restaurant we were taken to was connected to a gift shop, a place I’d need later, but first we had to eat and despite having a sign saying something to the extent of “Best Food at 430m Below Sea Level,” it was shit! Perhaps it was because it was the only food option there and when there is no other, you become the best by default. It was like going into a school canteen; there was a bain marie section with pre-cooked food, you could choose one meat, two vegetables, and one carbohydrate, essentially just a choice of pasta or rice, and an all-you-can-eat salad bar. We had our crappy lunch and then it was to the gift shop. Anna wanted to buy some presents for people, things such as Dead Sea salt and body lotions, and I needed to buy some shorts, because I had forgotten to pack anything for swimming in Israel. The choices of patterns were horrendous and although I bought an XL, they were still quite small. Anyway, I donned my hideous, newly acquired swimming attire and it was time to float around in the Dead Sea:

The Dead Sea is a salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank to the west. It lies in the Jordan Rift Valley, and its main tributary is the Jordan River.

Its surface and shores are 430.5 metres (1,412 ft) below sea level, Earth’s lowest elevation on land. It is 304 m (997 ft) deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world. With a salinity of 342 g/kg, or 34.2% (in 2011), it is one of the world’s saltiest bodies of water – 9.6 times as salty as the ocean – and has a density of 1.24 kg/litre, which makes swimming similar to floating. This salinity makes for a harsh environment in which plants and animals cannot flourish, hence its name. The Dead Sea’s main, northern basin is 50 kilometres (31 mi) long and 15 kilometres (9 mi) wide at its widest point.

The Dead Sea has attracted visitors from around the Mediterranean Basin for thousands of years. It was one of the world’s first health resorts (for Herod the Great), and it has been the supplier of a wide variety of products, from asphalt for Egyptian mummification to potash for fertilisers.

We were given advice on what we should and shouldn’t do when in the body of water, the main points being not to roll onto your belly, because your feet will rise and increase the possibility of drowning, as well as avoiding getting the water into our nose, mouth, or ears. The smell of sulphur hung thick in the air as we waited for a tractor to take us to the shore and once there we saw people covered in mud, just laying in the sun, while others floated on their backs. Getting into the water was difficult, because the crystallised salt along the shore and on the seabed made it similar to walking across a field of Legos in order to enter, but once in it was the most peaceful I think I have ever felt, besides the fact that any cuts and scratches initially stung like you wouldn’t believe. We were with one of Anna’s Thai cohorts from the Retina Panel as well so they both also decided to get all muddy, but I was content just floating:

I said the shorts were ugly… and small!

We laughed when we first saw her

But then we realised everyone was doing it

I don’t mind the beach too much when it’s neither sandy nor crowded

Salt along the shoreline

Just floating around

Not a care in the world

Anna joining me

It gets very painful walking over this

It also gets a bit warm, too

Anna and her colleague, all muddy

She was kind of proud of being this dirty

I also got Anna to take a video of us so you can see how buoyant you become, but you’ll have to deal with random zooming, because she was still trying to figure out how to use the video function for the camera on my new phone:

When we were out of the sea I showered, but I bite my nails and it occured to me that it was going to take several more showers for my fingers to stop tasting so extremely salty. I also realised two other things:

I had completely forgotten to bring a change of underwear — I had prepared a pair and put them in a bag, I just didn’t bring said bag.

If I hadn’t got changed so quickly in the first place and had examined my new shorts a little closer upon purchase, this wouldn’t have even been an issue, as they had built-in underwear.

My boys need a home, but that wasn’t going to be the case on the bus ride back to the hotel. Add to this the increasingly worse lower-back pain from the indented curve in the small bus seats and it wasn’t a pleasant journey back, but at least my skin felt super soft. To further compel our problems, Anna had done some research before we came to Israel, reading that security out of the country can be tough, and had somehow come to the conclusion that we needed to be at the airport four hours before our 9:30pm flight back to Singapore. The problem with this approach was that we had left the Dead Sea at 4:30pm and, factoring in the distance we had to travel, as well as the traffic we had to make our way through, it was getting close to 7:00pm by the time we were back, Anna completely on edge. Once we arrived at the hotel I knew exactly where my spare underwear was so I had the intention of dashing into the bathroom to give myself a feeling of security again, but Anna deemed it simply not an option, due to the potential for the entire process to waste around 30 valuable seconds. Our taxi got us to the airport with about two hours to spare and there were a few extra questions asked, such as when the guy at immigration asked our connection. “Oh, we’re flying to Istanbul, have a 90-minute layover, and then we continue on to Singapore,” was our reply. “No, I mean between the two of you.” We told him we were married, then he still wanted me to confirm I was Anna’s husband, moving on to ask me the origins of my surname, but overall it wasn’t as difficult as we had expected. The true terror, however, struck when I reached the metal detector. I took my wallet, phone, and hat, put them and my bag in the tray and walked toward the metal detector. “Are you wearing a belt?” the operator asked, not a question I was hoping to hear. I took my belt off, put it in the container with my other items, held onto my shorts, and waddled over to the detector. Once through I still had to stand with my arms outstretched for the frisk and scan, but fortunately my shorts didn’t slip down to a level that could get me arrested. Security wasn’t the nightmare Anna had anticipated so we had plenty of time to go up to the lounge, put on some undies, and have a bite to eat before our flight.

Israel was definitely a surprise; we had heard great things about Tel Aviv and how it was a party city so seeing that for ourselves was fun. I already knew that there was nothing besides physically witnessing a 100 percent indisputable act of divine intervention that could make me a believer in any form of religion, but it was still incredible to visit those holy sites in Jerusalem, and as you can probably guess, floating in the Dead Sea is a really weird, but cool feeling.

Also, yet again something terrible happened in Israel as soon as we left, a trend that is really beginning to get a little disturbing, although not surprising in this part of the world.

Exploring Jerusalem and Masada, as well as floating in the Dead Sea In my last post, all of our time in Israel was spent in Tel Aviv, looking around Jaffa, wandering around the Sarona shopping district and the beach, and trying to figure out what we could actually do on the Sabbath.

[tuffacttofollow]

A boat ride with God.

Are my vices that important to me that they have to tag along with me everywhere I go? Because, you see, I can never face my imperfections if I just wish them away, or ignore them completely. Oh, they’re still there, sitting and waiting.. My only option is face them head on; to acknowledge those things as they are and get rid of it to save myself from ruin.

How could I possibly let something so negative tag along with me? Even on a boat ride with God... See we hang out all the time. Beside the still waters is our hangout spot .. a place of comfort and peace where I get a chance to thank him for his amazing grace and singing songs that he loves.

This time, He’s suggested we play a game of “catch and release” he says, to ward off boredom.. I’m the only one fishing of course because hey, He’s God and I’m just ... me. Let’s face it he doesn’t need the fish anyway, He’s the Great I Am LOL .. but this game is different from the normal C&R. God makes me a promise

“For every fish you catch, there’ll be double waiting for you back on land “

“WHAT? Aww this finna be a breeze “ I say as I kiss my teeth and fan him off in confidence.

“But there’s a twist you see. See these aren’t just any old fish , they’re the big fishes in your life. Every situation that’s left you teary eyed is embedded in each one and they’ll all be different in nature but still a fish nonetheles. Now I know this won’t be easy, but the good news is, I’ll be here when ya need me.”

He says with the cheesiest of grins as he leans back in his convenient jasper framed chair with THEE STRONGEST FIBERS of lambs wool for backing, which by the way looks way more comfortable than this cooler I’m sitting on but i digress. He reaches for a heavy book and places it in his lap and cracks its open as if to begin reading where He left off.

He sits back, and then abruptly leans forward as if he’s just had another genius idea. “You know what, After a few good catch and releases, To make the deal sweeter, if you can catch and release every fish you receive, you can have triple the amount back on land ..”

“Wheeeww !! This is NOT what I had in mind for today” I think to myself as annoyingly grab my bamboo fishing rod.

And outta nowhere he says aloud. “Girl! i can here you! Start fishing”

“OK!” I mockingly reply in my head.

Ok 1st fish wasn’t so tough ..

“ you should spend more time with your friends, “ the fish spoke as I reeled him into the boat. “ you’re so anti social. You dnt get out much and quite frankly .. “

Before I knew it I’d thrown him back as quick as he’d come up and glanced at God. He smiled.

“I wasn’t about to let him say my friends are more important than my time with you. I would never... “

He nods his head and continues on reading his gi-normous book

About 20 more fish come and go. And I let them all go with ease.

“I’ve got this” I say, dusting my hands off after tossing away yet another fish.

I continue on fishing and here comes another, after hours of waiting.

“Where’s your phone? You’ve been out here for hours. Your boyfriend must be trying to reach you... “

“You know what you might be right,” I say as I quickly place the fish in the cooler and begin to look around. As I search the boat for my phone, I find it laying right by God’s feet. I look up to him and we lock eyes. “Oh I know what this is” I say as I dump the fish back out into the water while keeping my eyes locked in His gaze. “Won’t. Get Me”

He smiles and nods. I continue to catch and release what had to have been hundreds of fish, or the same desperate talking fish a hundred times WHO KNOWS!

That is until a moment of stillness in the waters happens and for hours there’s not a fish to be caught.

“Well where are they ? I know you know!” I say to God..

“Oh they’re there, just wait” He replies without glancing up from his book.

And so I wait and I wait until I hear a faint humming sound approaching from the distance. It was a girl, riding in on a jet ski. I immediately notice that the waters her boat ripples through is the clearest of turquoise waters I’d ever seen in real life. And, funny, this girl looked oddly like me except .. she had this long silky-straight dark brown hair. And her body? UGH ! I mean did you have to where baby oil today? Somehow that darn baby oil just set me off because I just KNOW the sun was gonna help reflect her every single perfection, all the ones I didn’t have.

“Hey girl! What are you doing out here fishing? My friends rented a cabin not too far from here. You should join us.”

I glance at God and our eyes met. He didn’t say anything and I didn’t either. I turned to her and replied, “I’m good baby grl but thanks tho” I said, a bit grudgingly, as I felt God’s eyes burning through my SOUL.

“Well you won’t mind if I sit with y’all, huh?” She says, “My friends are all sleep back at the cabin. UGH they’re so lame! They just dont know how to have fun”

My ears perk up. Well what do ya know. I like to have my fair share of fun!

“That’s a tough crowd!” I replied. “Well you’d be in God, hmgh uh Good company tho”.. I look over to God who’s giving me the Nick-Young-Question-Mark face to, probably, the saddest pun he’s heard in a billion years .. I quickly turned my attention back to ole grl as I held back my laugh.

“Alright cool help me in” .. I grab her by the hand and carefully help her into the boat. As I’m doing so, I feel a sudden chill. Like the quick burst of cold you feel when someone shuts off a bright light. Almost like the warmth of God had left me. I looked and what do you know, God and his fancy jasper framed chair was gone..

But I don’t get it! He said He’d be here.. “Where’d you go God” I thought to myself.

In that moment, I started to panic. Almost like the time as a child when I’d go on a grocery run with my mom and I’d stop, for what seems like only seconds, to pick up a toy, only to look up find that my mom has disappeared. It’s probably one of the scariest few seconds you’ll endure as a child. The disappearance act that you weren’t ready for. The most panicked search you embark on, with the quickest of footsteps, as you call out her name, only to find her on the next aisle, waiting for you to catch up.

“I’m here.” I breathe a sigh of relief as I feel God’s sweet voice embrace my thoughts and calm my fears. “Remember what we talked about. Catch and release”

I thought “What? catch and release?” In utter confusion. “I haven’t seen a fish in over an hour now.. we are literally the only three living beings out here cuz there’s definitely no fish”

“Uh? Hello?” I hear two other voices say

“Jesus?! Help me Holy Ghost! You know what I meant. Charge it to my head and not my heart !” I say aloud, jokingly dragging each word like a Southern Baptist preacher.

“What was that?” Ol grl said

“Uhm,” I stall, “What’s your name again?“

And we talked and talked and she begins to feel like an old friend. Its like we’ve known each other all our lives. That is, until a question comes to me seemingly out of nowhere to ask her.

“So what have you got going for yourself? Since you’re out here just living your best life. I know you gotta be on to something? Tell me your secret“

And then something strange happens. I hear her utter something but it’s distorted like she trying talk to me under water. But she keeps talking normally as if what she’s saying is completely comprehensible.

“God, am i tripping or am i tripping tripping?” I think to myself. “Why can’t I hear her?“ I start to feel the world around me fade out as I wait for God’s answer.

And then I hear his soft, still voice say, “Some thing’s aren’t meant for you to hear, nor see.” His words fall on me like heavy bricks. I’m riddled with questions now. My emotions bubbled up so fast before I knew it I blurted out.

“So what IS meant for me to hear, huh? What’s meant for me to see? She’s a gorgeous young lady who happened to look exactly like me except for a few alterations, which I personally would’ve suggested for myself had I had the privilege of picking my own features but hey you’re the boss here.”

I’d become so lost in my emotion that I’d barely noticed that the girl suddenly was no longer there. Just gone.

“She looked so happy and carefree.”

“Ah see there’s the thing. Did you hear the word you used?” God said to me with a sense of “ah-ha” in his voice.

“And instantly I was in the Spirit, and I saw a throne in heaven and someone was sitting on it. The one sitting on the throne was as brilliant as gemstones—like jasper and carnelian. And the glow of an emerald circled his throne like a rainbow.

“Twenty-four thrones surrounded him, and twenty-four elders sat on them. They were all clothed in white and had gold crowns on their heads. From the throne came flashes of lightning and the rumble of thunder. And in front of the throne were seven torches with burning flames....

“In front of the throne was a shiny sea of glass, sparkling like crystal. In the center and around the throne were four living beings, each covered with eyes, front and back.

“The first of these living beings was like a lion; the second was like an ox; the third had a human face; and the fourth was like an eagle in flight. Each of these living beings had six wings, and their wings were covered all over with eyes, inside and out.

“Day after day and night after night they keep on saying, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty— the one who always was, who is, and who is still to come.”

“Whenever the living beings give glory and honor and thanks to the one sitting on the throne, The one who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down and worship the one sitting on the throne, the one who lives forever and ever.

“And they lay their crowns before the throne and say, “You are worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power. For you created all things, and they exist because you created what you pleased.”

Revelations 4:1-11

And then I came to him. And all i could see was his brilliance and light and his love began to radiate through me as those words echoed in my mind like the vibrant sound of a high symbol in a stairwell.

For you created all things, and they exist only because you created those things which pleases you. I wouldn’t be here, had you not found pleasure in my presence.

As much as I hate to admit it, I brought my vices along with me that day. But I didn’t leave the same way I came. I faced it head on; acknowledged those things as they were and got rid of it to save myself from ruin because despite what I feel, comparison kills.