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the bus taking me to harvard square this morning from belmont wouldn't stop beeping. it was quite annoying, and then somewhere on concord avenue 12 blocks away from harvard square, the bus driver pulled over and said the battery was dead and the bus couldn't go any farther. the few people that were on the bus let out a collective groan and everyone get off and started walking. we looked back and the bus driver, still on the bus, managed to get the bus started again, so everyone came back onboard and we made it to harvard square after all, the continuous beeping of the dead battery indicator wasn't such a big deal anymore if it meant we didn't have to walk a mile to our final destination.

i always get to harvard square early on sundays. not because i want to, but because the bus i catch leaves belmont at an awkward time. so usually i have 30 minutes to kill before laurie arrives. today a little bit less than that due to the situation on the bus. thinking about the new house, i bought an issue of metroplitan home from out of town news. my very first interior design magazine! i slipped it into my bag and proceeded to wait for my ride, sitting on the au bon pain wall, writing in my journal, watching the people walk by. i see other people waiting around, perhaps they too have brunch appointments to go to. i usually catch a group of smartly dressed asians waiting around as well, not meeting for food however, but rather for church. at 10am laurie pulled around in her car. this is probably my favorite part of the whole sunday dim sum encounter. not the food per se (that's okay too), but rather i look forward to that moment where our arrangement to meet goes according to plan, and i know everything after that moment will be fine. i get into the car and sometimes i see people watching, and i like that, they have no idea where we're going, what we're doing, let them imagine. for a brief moment i feel special, shrouded in my aura of mystery.

china pearl was intensely crowded, the kind of crowd that you'd only see at noontime (peak dim sum hour), not at 10am in the morning. but since today was mother's day, a lot of people figured it'd be a great idea to bring their mothers to dim sum, so they can wait 30 minutes before getting a table they'd have to share with other people. after receiving our number, we waited in line along the wall, slowly advancing upwards as the people who were ahead of us in line got seated.

laurie thinks one of the guy who works there looks like a chinese version of christopher walken. he's one of the workers who finds tables for people. he carries a walkie talkie, and i guess when there's an opening, someone from the waitstaff lets him know and he alerts the number caller. there's a whole system there, neither laurie nor i have completely figured it out yet. the thing that bothers her the most though is how the numbers get assigned and why they're called out of order. she thinks there might be a conspiracy. anyway, chinese christopher walken, you be the judge (i think there is some resemblance):


chinese
christopher
walken

christopher
walken

after dim sum i bought some japanese water pears for my mother. we drove back to central square where laurie ditched her car and we took the subway to harvard square, where laurie had to go to work on a sunday that was starting to get rainy. we saw a flock of pigeons all sitting in a row on a park bench, trying to stay dry.

i rushed home hoping to see the opening of my anenome flower, but as i had feared, without the sun, the flower kept closed. this weather's good for the plants though, a nice soaking like today, they'll come back stronger.

i made a quick trip driving to the office where i picked up my venus flytrap plant. it's starting to get sick in that upstairs office with no natural sun, i'm hoping some tender loving care at home will bring it back to health. i also stopped by microcenter, where i bought a copy of return to castle wolfenstein for the mac. ever since at the beginning of the year when i heard they were porting over rtcw to the mac i've been eagerly awaiting the arrival of this game. i did install a demo version on my pc at work to whet my appetite, but it's not the same as playing on a mac.

basketball talk: i got back home just in time to watch the celtics-pistons game. i hope none of the piston players dedicated this game to their mothers because the celtics ended up winning, now the series is at 3-1. the celtics need to win just one more game to advance to the eastern conference final. it looks like their opponents are going to be the new jersey nets. that's going to be a real battle. of course nothing's set in stone yet, celtics have to win one more game (out of three), so does the nets. but i think it's only fair that if the celtics are going go all the way to the finals, they should have to go through the number one seed in the east, which is the nets.

after dinner i played 2 hours worth of return to castle wolfenstein. the game has a creepy ambiance, and i'm just getting started. i made it to the second stage of the first mission before i was mauled down by machine gun firing nazis. a good game definitely helps to keep my mind off of work, which wasn't hard to begin with. now i'll be in that gaming mode for the next few weeks, yearning to get home quickly so i can log in a few more hours of rtcw.


evil nazi
scientist ducking

torture device

knifing a
nazi guard

my thoughts on tonight's season finale of alias: oh, i thought will was totally dead from last week's episode. didn't realize it was just a tranquilizer dart. jack, sydney's father, torturing that cia mole then killing him? i love jack bristow's character, i love it when he works, because he's totally brutal and efficient and doesn't moralize anything. that moment between vaughn and sydney at the train station when he tells her he'll help her? i almost cried. it's just too painful to watch. i was hoping this'd be the episode where they finally kiss. no such luck. and that scene near the end when it appears he's drowned in a room filled with water? that's just a cheap cliffhanger, there's no way in hell they'll kill off vaughn. will gets tortured by having his teeth drilled and then extracted? i thought he was sort of annoying throughout most of the season, but after that torture, he's definitely earned my respect. did sloane really end up killing his wife? looks like it! heartless. and dixon suspects sydney is a double agent? red herring, i wouldn't worry, they can explain that away in just a single scene next season. and sydney's outfit? not as slinky or revealing as some of her previous getups, but that whole body stocking see-through s&m look, it works. blue hair? you go girl.