i didn't know where my roommate was but she was gone this morning by the time i woke up. after the unhindered use of the bathroom, i left around 10:30. i went supply shopping in everett/chelsea with my parents: target, bed bath & beyond, michael's, market basket, and finally the restaurant depot.

my mother once again enlisted our help in buying yarn, handing each person a $5 off coupon. the biggest score was finding some red heart boutique sashay yarn (similar to the elusive starbella; i could've sworn there were also some bernat twist & twirl). my father also got a crystal prism (as part of his prism craze).

this was my first visit to the chelsea market basket; it goes without saying that the place was crowded on the eve of the superbowl rematch between the patriots and the giants. the selection was amazing and my only regret is that it's not easier to get to. market basket is the cheapest supermarket in the area; my father was telling me a story of how a quincy restaurant owner would drive all the way north just to buy supplies from the somerville market basket. our final stop was the restaurant depot; this was my first time at their new (bigger) location.

back in belmont, i helped my father move 3 large travelling chests from the car into the basement. they belonged to my uncle pan and my father was holding onto to them for safe keeping. the 2 wooden boxes contain clothes while the metal one had books. they looked heavier than they actually were but we still used the hand truck to ferry the chests one by one to the basement.

dinner came in the form of buffalo wings, baked clams, and sauerkraut soup.

my roommate was still out when i returned home after dinner. she did come back when i was in the bathroom taking a shower. she told me she went with her chinese-canadian postgrad friend to the museum of fine arts then did some sightseeing around the faneuil hall/quincy market area. she even wandered to haymarket but didn't realize it at the time and didn't bother buying anything because she didn't want to carry it the rest of the way home. she told me tomorrow she's going to put down a deposit on the 3 bedroom apartment she saw yesterday. i told her maybe she should look some more since she still had the whole month, but she said the pickings were slim and she just wanted to secure a place and not have to bother thinking about it anymore.

in skyrim, i'm visiting the city of dawnstar. the townfolks have been plagued by nightmares so i helped erandur (a mara priest) in putting a stop to it at the nightcaller temple. next i visited the ice cave of yngvild and dispatched arondil the necromancer, who's been experimenting with the corpses of battlemaidens and milkmaids. my final quest brought me to mzinchaleft, another abandoned dwarven city, about to do some extensive exploring.

i can't believe they picked madonna for the superbowl halftime show. it makes sense though: they've pretty much already exhausted all other big ticket musicians - U2, michael jackson, rolling stones, paul mccartney, the who, bruce springsteen, prince, janet jackson & justin timberlake (infamously), no doubt, sting, even the black eyed peas. all that was left was madonna. the fact that the organizers waited this long probably meant she wasn't high on their most-wanted list as well. i have to ask though: was taylor swift busy? (although to be honest, i don't know a single one of her songs, i just know she's pretty popular musically).

don't get me wrong: i like madonna's music, especially all the ones she did in the 80's (did i say like? i meant love). i just don't like her as a person. from her faux english accent, to her desperate attempts at staying relevant in her twilight years as an aging rockstar, to her pretentious and egotistical personality. i've already seen her set list for the show: "vogue," "music", "give me all your luvin'", and "like a prayer." a song from each of the decades (80's, 90's, 00's) and a new song that nobody wants to hear. unfortunately i don't those are any of her best songs. for an artist with such an extensive discography, i really can't believe they picked "those" songs. what about "burning up"? "holiday"? "lucky star"? "material girl"? "into the groove"? "open your heart"? "express yourself"? i could go on and on.

i also had the misfortune to see some of madonna's media day interview. sitting on what appeared to be a throne, she rambled on about how this was a dream come true for a simple girl from the midwest. and what's madonna without opinions? as she rooted for eli manning, thereby automatically earning the scorn of new england fans. she also tried to give injured patriots' player rob gronkowski some medical advice. does she even know who he is?

one good thing that could come out of all this should the patriots lose on sunday: new england native maria menounos has made a bet that should her team lose, she'd run out on the field wearing a new york giants bikini. i think she should do it anyway should the team win as well. the world needs more bikinied menounos!

---

last night i finally entered avanchnzel. the interior looks very steampunk, with all sorts of strange machinery and pipes. it also felt like being inside an immense alien spaceship. guarding the ruins were various robots. i fought them off with my shock battleaxe, even though they themselves perform shock attacks (so maybe they were immune to shocks). robots contain a lot of loot, especially gems (precious and souls). they also contain robot parts which i collected until i realized they were essentially junk so i tossed them all out (i kept a few gyros though, as souvenirs). i also like the way the quest is narrated by talking ghosts as i made my way further down the ruin.

after spending a long time exploring avanchnzel and completing the quest (returning the lexicon cube), i was attacked by a dragon as soon as i stepped outside. dragon attacks seem to be on a schedule, like every 5 days or so. this was an ice dragon that blasted me with frost which surprisingly did little damage (unlike fire, i hate fire). i tried to coax it down to the ground but it remained airborne. i then ran to a sloped clearing with some trees and that's when the dragon landed. using my fire battleaxe, i quickly slew the dragon.

---

i was going to take my roommate to haymarket in the afternoon after she got back from looking at another potential apartment, but she told me around noontime that she had a headache and wasn't in the mood to go out. i thought about not going as well since i really didn't need anything from haymarket, but ended up going anyway just because i told myself i would. besides, i needed the exercise, and even though it was a cold day (30's), it wasn't too bad for biking.

the last time i was at haymarket was at the end of december, so it's been more than a month. not sure if there was a reason, but some of the stalls were missing and a few stores were closed. despite not being at full capacity, i was surprised at the selection, given the fact that it's wintertime. i ended up getting: 3 lbs. of grapes ($3, including a strand of champagne grapes), 2 boxes of strawberries ($2), 2 lbs. of cherry ($4), 6 forelle pears ($1), and 2 boxes of clementines ($3.50 each). the guy selling me the clementines was a young syrian man who gave me the chinese hand gesture for 7 but i didn't understand. he was going take the oranges out of the wooden crate but i told him i wanted to keep the container. he noticed one of the clementines in the box was moldy and replaced it with a fresh one.

riding over the longfellow bridge, i noticed they finally finished repairs on the outbound side, freeing up 2 lanes of traffic plus a bike lane. if they can only repair the balconies facing the backbay side of the charles river!

i went to the cafe to drop off some loot. my 2nd aunt and uncle are going to new york city for the very first time on monday and my father was explaining to them how to get around. these were megabus tickets i got for free during black friday weekend that i originally gave to my parents but they ended up giving them to my aunt and uncle.

returning home, i saw people moving into julia's old place, a mother (katherine) and her little boy (nico). i introduced myself and welcomed them to the neighborhood.

on my doorstep was the much anticipated logitech M305 wireless mouse i ordered a while back. i've been using a wired microsoft intellimouse for gaming but it's just too unwieldy to carry around. at first i couldn't get it to work until i read the manual and realized it only takes alkaline batteries, not rechargeables. so i ended up going to the nearest rite aid and buying a pack of AA duracell for $5 (when i needed just one). once i put in the battery it worked effortlessly. then it took me a while to track down the OS X version of the driver software online; once i got that installed i could assign different functions to the various buttons. the M305 is small but it fits my hand pretty well.

i asked my roommate about this new apartment she still ended up checking out in the afternoon. it's a 3 bedroom place, and the current renter is trying to get rid of it by finding people to sublet it or possibly renegotiate a lease with the landlord, since the old lease ends in the end of august and my roommate needs to find a place for a whole year. while we were chatting she suggested i sign up as a contestant on this popular televised chinese dating show (非诚勿扰) where one bachelor is interviewed by 20+ eligible bachelorettes. she said i'd be perfect for the show, and she knows people who've been on it before.

my roommate made extra noodles for dinner and asked if wanted the leftover. i was already heating up a brick of lasagna in the toaster oven but i agreed to finish the noodles. i even brought out some of my homemade kimchee for her to try. sitting around the dining table, she suddenly didn't feel well and excused herself to lie down. i was left to finish eating the noodles i didn't want in the first place before moving on to the lasagna i didn't want to eat either.

i ate one of the forelle pears. i'd never seen them before that why i bought them. they're small - about the size of a large egg - green with red freckles. for some reason i thought it'd be crisp and juicy like a chinese pear, so when i bit into it and discovered it was soft and sweet like a regular pear, i was sort of disappointed. but the taste! kind of has this perfumey flavor.

---

i played a bit more skyrim, venturing all the way to northeastern edge of the map to the serpent stone to kill an ice wraith. there was no element of surprise because i'd already fought several ice wraiths while climbing the throat of the world to high hrothgar. this was all an elaborate initiation rite in joining the stormcloaks. i've yet to decide if i want to join, trying to stay out of the impending civil war between nords and imperials. one interesting note: while crossing the ice northern wasteland, i fought a couple of bears and ended up contracting bone break fever! i didn't even know i had it but people i met back in town kept on telling me i didn't look very well. checking the list of active powers revealed that i'd contracted the disease. it was simple enough to cure with a potion though. i heard you can also get it by fighting with rats.

now all my quests are forcing me to explore northern and western cities. i'm trying to stick to just whiterun, riften, and windhelm because it's hard enough keeping just 3 cities straight! i'm also trying to collect enough gold to buy a 2nd house in riften, and thereby becoming the local thane. i still need 1000 gold pieces (already have around 7000).

my roommate was gone this morning by the time i woke up, off to her MIT orientation meeting. i got my bike from the basement and went to the supermarket to get some milk. when i got back i strapped the latest norwegian shipment to my bike - the biggest box yet but not very heavy since it was just 2 child booster seats and a watch. i was actually a little worried that the post office might not ship it because it was too big but i didn't have any problems.

i then stopped by the cafe. my parents had been in flushing helping my uncle pan clean out his father's condo so he could sell it. they brought back a case of heirloom old chinese calligraphy rubbing books at least a hundred years old (to be kept at their place for safe keeping).

i left with some ximilu (taro coconut milk with tapioca balls) jack had dropped off yesterday and had some after i ate a bowl of cereal for lunch.

my neighbor julia was back in town, perhaps moving out her things for the last time. an older woman was helping her - her mother? - and after they loaded up an SUV they were gone.

my roommate didn't come back home until 6:00. she told me she actually went to go look at a house today, on webster avenue in somerville, close to union square. she found it through a local chinese community website (i didn't realize one existed). it was a chinese post-graduate couple with a kid and they were looking for someone else to share an apartment. the family seemed nice, but my roommate didn't like the neighborhood ("too dirty, too noisy") and wanted to keep looking. later she found another house to see for tomorrow, actually very close to where i am.

my roommate actually texted me in the afternoon, but i couldn't read it because it was all in chinese so i just saw empty squares. she wanted to let me know she forgot to close her window. later she asked if it was okay to just leave it open, because apparently that's what she does at home to air out the room. "yeah, when you're home," i said, even though it pained me to think she was letting out precious heat. i told her she had to close the window when she leaves the house though because we live on the first floor and it makes it too easy for thieves to get inside. but if she thinks it's actually so hot that she needs to open the window, maybe i shouldn't bother turning up the heat anymore when she's home.

lasagna eating continues: i find it tastes much better slathered with a lot of hot sauce.

in skyrim, i'm still making my way to avanchnzel. it took me forever to clear treva's watch. those bandits would gang up on me and no matter what combination of weapons/potions/spells/scrolls/shouts i couldn't fight them all before dying. finally i developed the strategy of killing one bandit, running away, save the game, then wait for the bandits to find me and give me time to naturally restore my health and stamina. i was worried that my follower had already been killed (since she jumped into the thick of the bandit onslaught) but when i finally managed to kill all the bandits, suddenly my follower showed up. thanks for helping! when i finally found avanchnzel i realized why it had such a strange name (stranger than normal): it's a dwarven city. i've yet to explore it.

on the first day of february the weather hit 60°F. unfortunately i didn't take advantage of it and stayed indoors all day. unusually warm days have become commonplace this winter. so what if i miss one? wait a week, there'll be another. could this be the season where we don't get a single snowstorm?

for lunch i had half a lasagna slice, spiced up with several dash of hot sauce. in the early afternoon my roommate left for MIT for a few hours. my parents finally came back from flushing after going there monday morning and i briefly thought about visiting them to see what they brought back (i ended up not going).

my roommate made too much instant noodle for dinner and asked if i wanted some, sparing me from having to eat another lasagna slice.

in skyrim, i've been offered membership into the dark brotherhood of assassins after going to sleep for the very first time in the ragged flagon cistern, headquarter of the thieves guild. abducted by one of its members, i was asked to kill one of three people in an abandoned shack. after collecting some deathbells (they seem to be quite common here, where ever the heck i was), i wandered to high gate ruins, where i'm currently stuck trying to kill off vokun, a dragon priest.

---

after some after hour gaming, i finally managed to kill the dragon priest. coolest part? i get to wear his mask, which is primarily designed for magic users but has a pretty high armor rating as well. not sure if it'll clash with my all steel plated ensemble though. not cool? my dungeon guide anska getting stuck as soon as i killed vokun. she'd just stand there frozen, unable to talk, thereby unable for me to complete this particular quest. i tried everything: giving her a gentle nudge would kill her (i'm too strong for my own good); asking my follower (uthgerd the unbroken) to attack her would get her to snap out of the trance but then my follower wouldn't obey my command to stop until she was dead; i even fought vokun again from a previously saved game and the same thing happened. i finally fixed the problem by using my imperial race's voice of the emperor power, which finally broke the spell.

when i finally came out of high gate ruins, i was immediately followed then attacked by a dragon. although i didn't see the dragon directly, i knew something was amiss because the music changed and then i saw the swooping shadow. this particular dragon was easy to kill because it made the fatal mistake of landing on the ground. after that it was basically game over for the dragon once i whacked it a few times with my battleaxe.

after fast traveling to whiterun (stash loot), i fast traveled to fort amol to get to lost knife hideout where i engaged a cave of bandits. this was actually a bit more challenging than i thought and i actually died a few times. i think the higher level i reach, the more skilled my opponents are.

during my time in lost knife hideout i did managed to behead a few bandits with my newly acquired two-handed "devastating blow" skill. unfortunately heads can't be collected as trophies (it's grisly even to think about it).

after fast traveling to riften (to close a few quests), i went out again (fast travel), this time to darkwater pass. for some reason i thought it'd be easier to walk from here to avanchnzel (for a quest involving returning a hellraiser like puzzle box) but turns out i was way wrong. along the way i passed by a group of friendly NPC's gathering at nilheim. turns out they were bandits and it was just a clever trap. after getting killed the first time, i immediately killed the ringleader the next time.

i'm still figuring out my roommate, this being only her 3rd day here (not counting the saturday night when she first arrived). i like roommates who have a fixed schedule, that leave in the morning and come back in the evening. this roommate is not one of those roommates.¹

she wasn't home when i woke up this morning but i knew she could come back anytime, and sure enough, she returned home around 1:00. turns out when she was registering at MIT yesterday, she met a post-doc chinese woman² from canada who took her to chinatown so she could open up a bank account from an agent who spoke chinese. she ended up going with bank of america because they seemed the most convenient with their numerous branches and ATM's. she said it seemed very complicated, with all the different choices, but i think they sold her on one of those premium accounts because she needs to a $2000 minimum in the bank other she'll have to pay fees.

she cooks a lot; yesterday and this morning i could hear her sizzling something over the stove. she does a lot of classic chinese stir-fry cooking; light stir-fry, but stir-fry nonetheless. it doesn't stink up the house but does leave a somewhat oily mess around the stovetop area. she was jokingly complaining about how it's hard to cook stir-fry with my flat-bottom western pots (back home they use woks); all i could think about was, well, maybe you shouldn't stir-fry then.

when she came back home today she cooked some more. she asked if i ate and whether or not i wanted to try some of her cooking (a plate of mushroom and eggs). i already had some oatmeal but ate a little bit just so i could chat with her.

i noticed yesterday she had an iphone, which probably meant she's pretty well off back at home if she can afford something like that. i also learned they have a maid who works at their house a few hours a day doing household cleaning. she told me very matter-of-factly that her 9-year-old daughter would be visiting her during the summer, and since her daughter couldn't bear to live without her mother, my roommate was thinking about keeping her here so she could go to an american school for half a year and learn english. i didn't tell her this was a logistical impossibility.

i did get a kick when i pointed to a squirrel in the backyard and my roommate got all excited and snapped a few photos with her iphone. it never seems to amaze me how exhilarated foreign roommates get when they first see squirrels. chinese, spanish, italian - when it comes to our common squirrel, it's anything but common to them. by the time they leave though, they'll have seen enough squirrels to be jaded.

then for the rest of the day we lived separate lives, not seeing each other again, she in her room, me in the living room. her door was open so i saw she was working on her computer, with a bunch of paperwork laid out on the floor and on her bed. one of the first things she did when she arrived was to put the tv on the floor so she could have more desk space (very few roommates watch tv nowadays, i wonder if i should just retire that thing).

i left the house in the afternoon for the supermarket to stock up on some superbowl snacks for sunday. the usual: chips, salsa, buffalo wings, blue cheese dipping sauce. i never noticed it before but in the cemetery next to market basket is a large full-sized elm tree. even though it didn't have any leaves, i could tell what it was from that classic vase-like elm tree shape.

coming back, i got a good look at the new latin fusion restaurant on the street corner, mixtura. i hope they do better than the at least 4 other restaurants that've been there since i moved into the neighborhood. originally it was a mexican place that had already closed shop when i moved in. then it was a pizza place, followed by danny's diner. when danny passed away unexpectedly, the place was opened for a while longer before new management took over. it was still a diner, but i never ate there after that, and i don't even remember the new name. now comes the latest iteration. they passed out flyers today, announcing their grand opening tomorrow. what is latin fusion anyway? quinoa omelets, mango french toast, and purple corn pancakes apparently. sounds expensive though. i'm still waiting for a wings place to be opened there, it'd be a dream come true.

i had a brick of lasagna for dinner. actually a brick and a half (because my roommate only had half a square yesterday) but i couldn't finish the half part. it's only tuesday and i've already hit the lasagna wall. i still have plenty of lasagna for the rest of the week. i might have to freeze them because i'm not sure if i can stomach anymore lasagna.

in skyrim: thank god for fast traveling, makes gameplay less tedious! i've been shuttling back and forth between whiterun and riften. whiterun is where i have my house, so i go back every once in a while to drop off my loot. i've now just expanded to windhelm. it's hard keeping the cities straight. leaving windhelm, i was ambushed by a fire dragon. took a few tries before i finally killed it. my follower was no help, yielding immediately at the first fiery blast. the more dragons i kill (this one was number 4) the less scary they become. being a warrior class character specializing in two-handed weapons (battleaxes and greatswords), it's impossible for me to fight the dragon when it's flying in the air. i shoot arrows at it but i don't think they do anything. the key is to get it down on the ground so i can rush in and strike it a few times with my weapon. grounded dragons are surprisingly fragile, but they can still fight - this particular flame dragon grabbed me with its jaws at one point and threw me to my death. it helps to be near other characters or creatures who can act as bait. the 3rd dragon i killed was like that, i ran to a herd of mammoths that distracted the dragon's attention while i ran behind it and attacked with my battleaxe.

i'm at level 19 now, clad in steel plated armor (heavier, but maximum protection), using a combination of battleaxes and greatswords made from either skyforged steel or elven/dwarven-crafted. i'm not skilled enough in smithing to be able to make my own elven/dwarven items yet, and i still need to collect 5 more fire salts to make skyforge steel (for the time being i can just buy them from the champions' smith worker). all my weapons are enchanted, either doing fire, shock, ice, or soul-stealing damage.

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¹ she even told me that since she's a visiting scholar, she doesn't really have to report to anyone and can make up her own schedule. apparently that means not having to go to MIT unless she has to.

² this canadian woman found a place to live in quincy, renting out a single room from a chinese family. it seems kind of far for somebody who's working at MIT though. was there no affordable housing options in the cambridge/somerville area?

being that today was monday, i figured my roommate would leave early morning and go to her first day of work. i even thought i heard the front door close. but when i woke up i realized she was still at home. she didn't leave until 2:00, and was surprised that i was still home, then remembered i told her i work from home. she went down to MIT for the very first time to file some paperwork. i left the house to deposit a check and get some groceries. my roommate came home around 5:00. we chatted until 6:00, then i made some shared lasagna for dinner. she made a plate of stir-fried asparagus. we ate at the dining table, which i haven't used for years.

my roommate was still at home when i woke up at 10:00. while i was in the living room, i heard her stirring, using the bathroom then making some instant noodles for breakfast. i told her where i was going then left the house. temperature was at 40°F, just cold enough to warm up on the bike. i wore gloves and a fleece-lined hat underneath my helmet. i had some rice and oatmeal for lunch when i arrived.

didn't have much else to do today other than skyrim. everyone was doing there own thing: my mother was knitting, my sister was looking at dog photos, and i was gaming.

my sister wanted to make fried chicken for dinner after watching a few cooking shows on the subject. now i love fried chicken, but it's not the easiest thing to make, and can leave a house smelling of oil for weeks to come. knowing how my sister cooks and how she never cleans up after her house, both my mother and i vetoed her fried chicken choice. instead, we had pasta for dinner with a bowl of chili. i think the chili was supposed to go with a football game but everyone in my family miscalculated and thought the superbowl was this sunday.

the house was dark when i got back, other than the light in the bathroom. the door was closed so i thought she was inside, but after 20 minutes i knocked and realized there was nobody in there. she came home an hour later, her former student took her to chinatown and they had dinner at a seafood restaurant.

i roused myself from bed this morning to do some more cleaning: dust the furniture, clear up some mess in the living room (mostly paperwork that i had lying around), rearrange items in the cupboard and refrigerator, wipe the kitchen countertop, mop the range, windex the coffee table, and one final vacuum of the guest bedroom.

i've had enough roommates already over the past few years that i'm not exactly nervous when they arrive; i know the routine, i've practiced it many times. they're the ones that're nervous because they don't know what they're getting into, and occasionally it's not only their first time in cambridge/boston, but their first time in the united states as well. i am however apprehensive because i don't know if they're going to be good or bad. usually they're good, but i've had a few rotten apples before.

i tried to savor the final hours of living alone before the roommate arrives later tonight. after i shower i biked to belmont. along the way i stopped by a real estate office to grab a map of cambridge/somerville, part of my "care package" for the new arrival.

this isn't superbowl weekend so nothing exciting was happening television-wise. my father bought another weather station (now he has 3), this one with a jumbo display that also has wireless indoor/outdoor humidity. my mother fixed me some clear korean noodles for lunch and then i played a bit of skyrim, clearing out some of the small side missions. the thing i learned today was being a member of the thieves guild allows me to bribe guards to release me from my bounty (for those times when i'm wanted for some crime). so far it's worked in riften, no sure if it works in other keeps.

when my sister came back after dark with the dog, she said she saw a coyote at beaver brook. it's unusual because there was a lot of people at the reservation.

i kept looking at the clock, counting down the number of hours before my roommate's arrival. after dinner i biked back to cambridge. unlike earlier, i wasn't the least bit sweaty when i got back. i spent the next hour waiting. ETA was 9:00, and at 9:30 i could hear somebody ringing my doorbell.

miss wang, my new roommate, was older than i expected, probably in her 30's. a young man drove her to my house from the airport, whom she identified as her student. when i asked if he went to MIT, i didn't quite understand his answer and didn't pursue it further. how she found my place was through a friend of a friend. miss wang is actually a visiting scholar at MIT in the field of urban planning. not only is this her visit time in cambridge/boston, but it's her first time in the US. she's been to europe a few times and spend a month in sweden working on her research.

she gave me a chinese tea cake as a gift (manufactured in menghai, i've been there!) and paid a month's worth of rent even though she might be moving out sooner than that (i told her i'd reimburse if she leaves early but she felt she'd end up staying at my place for the whole month). MIT doesn't provide housing for visiting scholars so they basically have to fend for themselves. it's one thing if you're american and speak the lingo and know how to look for an apartment, but it's quite another when you're from a foreign country. since she's going to be here for a year, she'll want a place closer to MIT (my place is 2.6 miles away driving/riding distance, not exactly walking distance). when i asked what kind of apartment (single or shared), she hinted at some place with options, since her child (!) and husband (!) might be visiting during the summer, and her parents (!) have also expressed some interests in seeing america. i don't know how much she's willing to spend, but a visiting scholar surely must get some kind of workable stipend (either from MIT or through her own institution back in china).

i gave her the tour of my place. she noticed right away in the kitchen that i don't have a hood over my range. i took her that's an optional feature in most american homes; she got the message and said she'd refrain from oily cooking. she kept remarking how different my house was from the ones she's used to back home in nanjing, where everyone lives in condo complexes. she was also very keen on visiting a supermarket as soon as possible to get some food supplies.

anyway, she seems to be a private person, and after we chatted, she made herself some tea and retreated to her room, where she was either video conferencing with somebody or watching a streaming chinese show.

---

some more things i learned from my new roommate:

miss wang thinks that rampant urban development in china will only continue for the next 5-10 years before it slows down. when i told her how old my house was (100+ years), she lamented that there are plenty of old homes in china as well, but they're quickly disappearing to make room for more modern dwellings. "you turn around and they're gone," she said.

one of the first things she asked before even settling down is whether or not i have wifi. she basically came here sight unseen. had she contacted me directly, i could've at the very least sent her some photos. but i guess she didn't have much options and based on the recommendation of her friend of a friend (who has seen my place before), she took it (it's only for a month anyway).

she lives in nanjing but her flight was out of shanghai, so her husband drove her to the airport. the distance between these two cities is only 168 miles, but she was leaving on the tail end of chinese new year, so the traffic was insane. it took them 4 hours to get to shanghai, and then another hour to get to the airport. her poor husband then had to drive back to nanjing. she told me she could've scheduled her departure for a later date, but she figured since her tour of duty is for a year, when she returns to china in 2013, she'll get back just in time for chinese new year again (next year new year is in february, crazy lunar calendar).

i told her about new england weather and how cold and snowy it can get. she didn't seem concerned, and said it snows in nanjing as well, and can get pretty cold because of how damp it is. unfortunately i don't this winter will be particularly impressive so she's not going to get the full blizzardy experience.

despite being somewhat of a private roommate, i was glad to see that she made good use of the bathroom space, leaving a few toiletries on the counter.

so it might not be the chicken sausages either: i had some with my oatmeal for lunch and i didn't get sick. although i grilled them first this time, instead of just adding them "raw" to the oatmeal (supposedly they're already cooked, but i have my doubts).

so i washed some venetian blinds today. definitely the one in the guest bedroom, and while i was at it, the 4 blinds from the living room. i removed them and put the whole lot in the bathtub with a hot bubble bath of dishwashing detergent. right away i realized my mistake: mixed together, it was hard to tell where one set of blind began and another ended. something else: if i thought soaking the blinds alone would remove the decade worth of dust, i would be mistaken. there'd be no way around it, each slat would need to be scrubbed with a sponge.

each blind is composed of about 75 slats and it took at least 15 minutes to clean a single blind. that's 15 minutes bent over a bathtub, fingers turning to prunes from the water, wiping off the dirt accumulation one slat at a time. after i finished cleaning one, i'd stand it up vertically on its ends in the sink to let the water drain out. after a while i turn it over on its other end, just to be sure there's no more water.

soaking in detergent isn't necessary, and for me it was better to simply use water since i wouldn't need to rinse off the soap after i was done cleaning. the water was very dirty initially, so i drained it a few times. at some point one of the valance clips must've came off and probably went down the drain. fortunately that one remaining clip was enough.

the final drying was done with the blind re-installed back onto the windows. this allowed me to separate some of the wet slats that were stuck together and to more easily wipe dry any wet spots.

besides the guest bedroom blind and the ones from the living room, i also washed one of the blinds from my bedroom, one that was easily dirty (that one actually had mildew growing on some of the slats).

from a distance i can't tell that the blinds have been cleaned. but up close, they look as good as new. when i get the chance, i'll clean the 2 remaining blinds in my bedroom and the 2 from the kitchen. then i can wait another 10 years before cleaning them again!

it took me almost the whole day to wash 6 blinds, punctuated with a lunch break. i felt pressure to get them cleaned because it was getting dark and i needed to have the blinds up. i winded down with some more skyrim.

i noticed in whiterun that all the guards seem to know me. at first i thought maybe because they heard that i was the dragonborn, but when i specifically asked one of the guards about it, the real reason was because there was a bounty on my head for some unknown crime. i could either persuade the guard to let me go, pay the bounty, bribe the guard, resist arrest, or go to jail. paying the bounty meant i wouldn't be a wanted criminal anymore, but i'd also lose any stolen goods i happen to be carrying. so i decided to strip down in my own house and approach a guard to pay off the bounty. that seemed to work but took a long time to unload all the stuff i've accumulated.

from whiterun i went to riverwood, and from riverwood i cut through the mountains to reach ivarstead. there doesn't seem to be an easy way and i had to go by helgen. along the way i passed by fort neugrad and got a chance to practice my flaming arrows. nothing more satisfying than setting a bandit on fire! i then came across haemar's shame, a cave housing several vampires. nearing ivarstead i found a horse on the road. for some reason i couldn't ride it unless i stole it first, so that's what i did. i tried giving my housecarl a ride too but the horse was only for a single person, so the housecarl just ran behind as i galloped.

arriving in ivarstead, i realized there was a bounty on my head - most likely for stealing that horse. the first building i entered was a tavern, and i immediately started a drinking contest with one of the patrons. the result was i blacked out and found myself shanghaied to markarth, all the way on the western edge of skyrim. fortunately a carriage ride back to whiterun was only 20 gold. unfortunately there's no carriage to iverstead, so i have to walk around the mountain again if i want to go there.

for dinner i cooked half a cup of basmati in the rice cooker and finished the rest of my indian curry from last week.

i'll need to wipe down the kitchen and bathroom one last time and the house should be ready for my new roommate arriving tomorrow (saturday) night.

i received a call from an unidentified chinese man this morning. "hello, can i speak to tony wang?" it was too early to correct his mistake. he was letting me know that my new roommate would be arriving in boston on the 28th at 9:00PM. "what is that, a sunday?" i asked. there was a brief pause, then he replied, "no, saturday." "oh, okay," i said, realizing that the new roommate would be arriving a day ahead of schedule. that happens a lot with chinese astrophysicists. must have something to do with traveling halfway around the world.

i'd already been cleaning up the house this week, but now i had to work a little bit faster than anticipated. i vacuumed the guest bedroom,¹ made sure the television worked, tidied up the kitchen, and cleaned my room (washing my comforter cover). tomorrow i'll block out some storage space in the cupboard and refrigerator for the new roommate. since she's only here for less than a month, i don't know if she'll buy a lot of groceries and supplies. i'm kind of hoping she doesn't do any cooking. also tomorrow i'll need to scrub the bathtub and maybe wash the dusty blinds.²

yesterday i washed the bike; today i oiled the chains with triflow oil and wiped down the frame with WD40. after i finished i parked the bike in the basement (since it'd be raining later today). it absolutely amazes me how rusty by new chains and freewheel got after being left out in the elements for only 2 months. maybe it's the quality of the material that's at fault, but if i really love my bike, i should at the very least keep it out of the rain whenever possible.

i also oiled the inner mechanism of my bike lock. maybe the new lubrication will keep it from freezing so often. another contributing factor is the rust build-up inside. since i can only take apart the lock up to a certain point, i squirted WD40 inside the holes, hoping that will take care of the problem.

i've been trying to remove the handlebars from the used raleigh 3-speed bike elias gave me back during the summer and put it on my trek bike. i like the northroad handlebars style much better because you ride upright; i don't like forward leaning on the current mountain bike straight-style handlebars i'm using now. i've tried taking off the handlebars on several occasions but could never get the bend through the stem clamp. i brought it outside today so i could work on it some more. after a few attempts i gave up. at this point it just might make my life easier if i bought new northroad handlebars.

for lunch i made some home fries and bacon. perhaps not the healthiest of meals, but oh so delicious. it did stink up the house though, hopefully i can air out the place before the new roommate arrives. i made juice with the remaining oranges, the same oranges that might've caused my stomach upset earlier in the week. i did feel a little weird afterwards, but nothing like before. so maybe it wasn't the oranges. tomorrow, i'll try the chicken sausages, see if they'll make me sick. it's food poisoning russian roulette!

client N called me this afternoon, had some questions about possible interactives, filled me in on some potential projects in the pipeline (not until spring). it was a welcomed call because freelance business has been slow.

i hit the skyrim hard tonight, logging in 5 straight hours of gameplay. at this point i'm a level 12 warrior, but i feel like i've only maybe uncovered just 1% of the total skyrim world. even if i were to not do anything else but play skyrim day and night, it'd still take me months to finish. i can't comprehend how the designers managed to build this game.

following elias' advice, i went ahead and killed grelod the kind, headmistress of honorhall orphanage. i did it discreetly, closing the door so no one could see, but as soon as i hit her with my battle axe, i could hear the orphans cheering in the other room and constance michel freaking out.

at riften, i joined the thieves guild and practices some petty larceny. a guard caught me one time but i paid him off with some gold. i had some business in whiterun so i took a quick carriage ride. whiterun is also where i have my home and i was able to unload some loot (some of which were stolen). my favorite new past time is collecting ingredients and eating them to see what they do. afterwards i create potions and poisons with those same ingredients. i also learned how to use an arcane enchanter station to create a few enchanted weapons. i love how you can rename a newly created object; so far i've kept it conservative, like my "dwarven bow of fire." i killed another dragon on my way to redoran's retreat. i don't know how much of it was really me, because there were a lot of other soldiers shooting arrows, and they must've mortally wounded it before i cast the fatal blow. i've still yet to kill a giant though, they seem harder to dispatch since they can usually kill me with just a single blow of their club.

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¹ i discovered that i can actually fit a full-sized bed in the guest bedroom, since it isn't that much bigger than a twin-sized bed. i still think the only way to make the guest bedroom seem bigger is to go with a loft bed, but with my noisy upstairs neighbors, i don't know if i'd want to sleep so close to the ceiling.

² in the almost 10 years i've been living here, i've never once washed the blinds before. to say that they're dusty is too kind. i may end up washing all of them (a total of 7).