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oh, the love is gone. my cat grass, when i came in this morning after a weekend left alone growing in the office, was this sparse, droopy mess, aesthetically unappealing, worthy of an unceremonious farewell voyage into the garbage can at the back of the office. there was even evidence of perhaps mouse damage. okay, those rodents had some fun at my expense, but enjoy it while they can, cause tomorrow the grass is going into the trash! now i'm looking for something new to grow. for christmas i got this salsa garden kit from manny, maybe i'll press that into active service. i just like the idea of a little piece of tabletop nature to gaze upon when i'm feeling bored or fatigued or stressed.

this morning i was in no mood for work. i woke up groaning, fighting the tinny sound of my two decade old clock radio (the music was disco, the specific song i don't quite recall), rocking my body violently off of the bed, hair in a mess, eyelids crusted together, whatever little sleep i had last night (6 hours) obviously wasn't enough because i still felt tired. nevertheless, i got dressed for work, and even managed to leave 10 minutes earlier than usual, despite the fact that our mandatory monday morning meeting was postponed until wednesday when the bosses come back from their florida research trip in disneyworld (friends, would i lie about something like that?). i still got to the office 5 minutes late though, because i stopped by the convenience store to buy a carton of juice and a packet of gum, and i went to the fleet atm machine to replenish my wallet of cash.

after a morning project meeting (my only real one-on-one human interaction of the day, sad but true, i'm starved for social communication), it was work work work. for music, i listened on itunes to an internet radio station broadcasted from what appears to be germany, radio gong 96.3. i found it in the 70's section but the music they played was all contemporary pop. what made it funny was the deejays all spoke german. i didn't understand a single word, but their germanic exuberance over our silly american music was infectious. despite the fact that it was pop, i listened anyway just for the variety, a far better option than the collection of mp3's i have stored on my machine, each song i must've listened to a hundred times already.

no office lunch for me thank you very much i prefer to seek the fortune of my midday meal elsewhere. i wrapped my scarf around my neck, threw on my coat in a twirl, and made a beeline to the door, receiving a horrible static electricity shock in the process. i was going out in no particular direction, to no particular place. after a bit of wandering in the sunny but cold weather, i came to the kendall square au bon pain where i ordered the arizona chicken sandwich. while my sandwich was warm in my hands when i first received it, by the time i walked back to the office, it was already cold. the wind whipped my hair into a wild gesticulating medusa coiffure, i could see it in the shadow casted on the pavement as i went back to work. how long am i going to continue growing my hair out? i'm already getting sick of my goatee/beard combo. any day now i might take an electric razor to it and make my face naked again. the fact that i'm growing a beard has nothing to do with the status of the project, as some have wrongly theorized. in the past it might've been, but i'm doing it more for aesthetics (though some might say there's no redeeming quality about a beard) and because it's a lot easier to just let it grow out than to shave it. the fact that i can grow something like this is a thing i'm rather proud of. a lot of asian men live a hairless existence. i am not one of those unfortunate souls. in my gene pool the genetic code for hairiness is quite prevalent and dominant. this gives me options. oh what a curse to live a mundane life where you can't even grow out a moustache, let alone a goatee or a beard! thankfully, i don't live such a life.

leaving the office, i took the longer route down by third street to kendall station. this used to be my favorite route when i first started working at srm, because it afforded me a distant glimpse of the boston skyline over the charles river and the longfellow bridge, my former place of occupation. sometimes i miss working in the city. there's a certain proliteriat prestige about making money in the heart of boston, amidst the columns of tall office buildings, in the shadow of real world commerce. one day i will be back there again. anyway, there's all sorts of construction work happening on third street. at nights, when the construction workers have all gone home, the still illuminated remains of their daily work adds a bit of flare to what would normally be a very boring kendall landscape. i couldn't resist, i just had to take some photos.


some thoughts on last night's episode of alias: sydney bristow is some sort of armageddon maiden as prophesized by some 500 year old fortune teller? secret agent, please! let me be the first to say that this storyline utterly sucks. no good can come of this. the thing i loved about alias was the realism. sure, spy versus spy stuff, how real is that, but at least there weren't aliens or vampires or genetically altered superhumans. but now with this rimbaldi manuscript business, it's starting to swerve into fantasy, which is more than they can chew. if the writers ruin alias for me, i don't know what i'll do. they better resolve this situation quickly, i don't know how much more i can take of sydney being this avenging messiah. go back to the spy stuff! go back to crazy outfits! go back to being good!