my original plan was to visit chinatown and haymarket this morning before going to the cafe and helping out for a few hours around busy lunchtime. but it was too cold this morning (38°F) so i figured i'd go to boston in the afternoon instead, when it'd be warmer.

i got to the cafe around 11:30am. for some reason it wasn't busy, just a few bento orders. a lot of phone orders and walk-ins. i told my father about ordering the ruyage UV58PLUS radio. my 2nd aunt showed up in the early afternoon bringing with her some burger king sandwiches. unfortunately my mother already made me a rice dish with leftover pork soup, but i kept the burger king chicken sandwich for dinner. my parents said i could leave by 1pm, but i stuck around until almost 2pm.

i stopped at the house briefly to adjust the gearing on my bicycle. i've been riding in the front middle cog (32T) and the rear cassette in 5th gear (18T). that's a great combination, with a gear ratio of 1.8:1. unfortunately that used to be my default combination and i've riden on that gear so much that the 5th gear is basically all worn out which causes chain skip any time i bear down on the pedals and definitely whenever i'm riding uphill. so i shifted the chain so it was riding the front outer ring (42T) with the rear 6th gear (16T) which still had all its teeth. that gave me a gear ratio of 2.6:1. every turn of the pedals meant i was turning the back wheel 2.6 times. it took a bit of adjusting, because my front derailleur was rusted shut. i blasted it with lubricating oil and whacked it with a hammer a few times before it got lose. then i reconnected the shifting cable - what was left of it, rusted and frayed.

i didn't leave for boston until almost 3pm. the ride was a bit stiff, like pedaling in sand, and it took some effort to get started, but once i was going, it felt pretty fast, like i was making a lot of distance with each pedal stroke. best thing was the chain no longer skipped.

i made it to chinatown by 3:30pm. first stop was c-mart, where i got some huy fong brand garlic chili sauce. seems to be a supply chain issue, because they didn't carry any large bottles of the sauce, just the small bottles. i bought a bottle, figuring i'd check out ming's market to see if they carried any in stock. i also got some orri oranges, now on sale for $1.99/lbs.

after that i went to ming's market. i'm worried about ming's market, worried they might close, leaving me with just c-mart as my only chinatown supermarket option. some of the shelves are bare, and some of the workers there seemed to have given up, hanging out and chatting instead of working. plus it's obvious they've been secretly smoking in the basement because the back half of the store reeks of cigarette smoke for many weeks now. they didn't have any huy fong hot sauces (other than sriracha). i did get some asian seeds: goat horn hot peppers and chinese long eggplants. they didn't have water spinach, i'll need to order that online (my father wants to grow some hydroponically).

i didn't leave chinatown until 4pm. i went to haymarket, which closes at 5pm. i saw some long horn hot peppers for $1.50/lbs. so i bought $2 worth. it was from that one vendor who's on my black list because he wouldn't weigh some vegetables for me a few years back. i still carry a grudge about that and i haven't bought anything from him since. he has a twin brother who also works there, so i'm not sure which brother was the asshole. anyway, instead of $2 worth, i said 2 lbs and realized my mistake when he i saw him weighing the peppers. so i paid $3, still a bargain. i also bought a bunch of tangerines, the ones my mother likes (not exactly gold nuggets, but still very good). they were $2/7 so i ended up getting 14. i gave the $10 and he gave me back $8 in change. i think he was on drugs because he couldn't count at all, and i ended up giving him back $2. after i picked out 14 oranges, i decided to buy 7 more. once again the guy couldn't figure out how much change to give me, so i talked him through it.

i left boston by 4:25pm, got back home 20 minutes later. it was sunny this morning but my late afternoon the sky turned overcast, with rain expected to fall soon, lasting through all of saturday. as much as i appreciate the chain not skipping, i didn't like my new gear setup. it felt way too stiff, so i wanted to step it back on gear.

so that was the first thing i did when i got home, readjust the bike chain. the front gear would still be the outer ring (42T), but the rear cassette would now be on the 7th gear (14T). i did all of this before i figured out how the gear ratio works, so i ended up going in the wrong direction. with a 42/14T combination, that actually made it even stiffer to ride, with a gear ratio of 3:1. what i need to do is put the rear gear on 3rd (22T), which would give me a gear ratio of 1.9:1. what that combination i can ride the bike a bit longer before i do a massive parts overhaul and replace everything on the bike: the rear freewheel (including the cassette), the front crankset, all the cabling (currently frayed and rusted), the handlebar grips (the foam have already fallen off, kept in place by rubberbands), the gear shifters (purchased a few years ago, never installed), possibly the front derailleur (if i can't get it to unstick), and maybe the back derailleur too.

while i was back inside the house, i kept smelling chain lubricant. turns out when i was greasing some of the parts, the oil managed to drip on the bike seat, and i got some on my new jeans. jeans i can wash to get rid of the smell, but if the bike seat is soaked in triflow oil, that's something harder to get off. i suppose i can ride in the meantime with a plastic bag over the seat.

when evening came, i reheated the burger king chicken sandwich for dinner and watched the jazz-celtics game. celtics played the jazz a few weeks ago back in utah, lost that game by 1-point (a travesty, considering the jazz aren't even a playoff-bound team). boston managed to even the score by beating them tonight, 122-114. celtics were pretty dominant, but the jazz wouldn't go away, kept the game within striking distance, though they never had the lead.

i briefly worked on my bike this morning. i wanted to put it into 5th gear (from 4th gear) but i didn't have time so i just oiled the chain instead.

i went to market basket. it was actually kind of cold today, temperature in the upper 30's lower 40's with a bit of wind. originally i was going to get my 16oz clear cups from target, but realized market basket would also carry them. they sold 50-packs at $3.99, i ended up buying 2 packs. i also got some spicy california roll for lunch. i really should learn how to make sushi, then i can eat all the sushi i want.

while preparing to eat my sushi, i turned on the tv and all the channels had breaking news about the new york grand jury indictment of trump over his hush money case. the stormy daniels case is the least serious of all the pending criminal probes involving trump. i wouldn't expect trump to go to jail because he paid an adult film actress some hush money. but it's just an appetizer of things to come. the georgia election tampering investigation is way more serious. that's more like, "going to jail" kind of crime.

after lunch i went outside to work on the bike again. i put the chain into what i thought was 5th gear and took it for a test ride. red sox opening day was today, and there was supposed to be a flyover of a quartet of F-15C and F-35A jets over boston. i decided the best place to watch would be from prospect hill tower. once i was on the bike, immediately i realized i set the gear wrong. instead of 5th gear, i went the other direction (larger gear), and was now riding in 6th gear, which felt even more like i treading underwater.

there was already a crowd of 2 dozen people on top of prospect hill tower: some construction guys, a few guys in suits, some neighbors, and some people who looked like they were on their lunch break. nobody really knew where the jet planes were going to come from, but i was looking towards boston. around 2pm someone shouted "here they come!" and we all looked north as 4 jet fighters flew across the sky. i was expecting them to be louder for some reason (like a sonic boom!), but they as much noise as a typical commercial plane flying across the sky. the jets flew above us for just a few seconds, then disappeared behind the new union square towers, with nothing more to see after that.

i went back home to continue working on my bike. i moved the chain into the proper gear this time - 5th gear. i also cleaned up some caked-on grease in the freewheel sprockets and derailleurs with simple green foam cleanser and a special sprocket cleaning brush. i then readjusted the front and rear brakes (they felt a little loose). the way my rear brakes work, one brake arm presses against the rim before the other brake arm engages. because of that, the brake pad that engages first has more wear, so it had to be replaced.

i was done by 3:30pm, and decided to take the bike out for another test ride. i rode to the cafe to drop off some more reuben sandwich ingredients. i was also there to deliver my mother's used samsung galaxy S9+ - the phone i'd been using with my DJI drone - because my father said his moto G7 wouldn't turn on anymore nor the battery charged up. in the meantime he could use the samsung galaxy to take and receive calls, until the moto replacement battery arrives tomorrow. i returned home with some more scallion bread and a package of seaweed snacks.

when evening came, i ordered chinese takeout from chow joy on somerville avenue. there were multiple ways to order online. i noticed their preferred method was through their website, and that they charged a convenience fee. when it finally came time to order, i used door dash via a google portal, and that for some reason had zero fees. it was so simple, i ordered in a matter of seconds, faster than buying something off of amazon. i received a text saying they got my order. the original wait time was something like 25 minutes, but after about 7-8 minutes, i got a text saying my order was ready. so fast! so i walked down to pick up my order.

i ended up getting some beef pan-fried noodles for $14.93 after taxes. pan-fried noodles was one of my favorite chinese food dishes as a child, and i haven't had it a long time, i want to say decades, so this was nostalgia food. i thought the portion was a little small though, it came in a 28oz plastic container. as for the food itself, it was okay, your typical american chinese food. they also have a bunch of spicy salt & pepper dishes that look pretty good and that i'll try one of these days.

i ate while watching the celtics-bucks game. this was supposed to be an important game that would decide who got the number one seed and home court advantage throughout the playoffs, before boston went on a losing streak against teams they were supposed to beat, so now the chances of getting the one seed are slim. nevertheless, a celtics victory would send a message. boston ended up destroying milwaukee. the final score was 140-99. celtics were making all their shots, and the bucks were missing all of theirs. so now boston is 2 games behind the bucks with just 5 games left in the regular season. to get the number one seed, boston has to win all of their games, and the bucks have to lose 2 of theirs. and that's only because boston has the tie break, so even that scenario the celtics and bucks would have the same record, but boston would get the number one seed because the celtics have a 2-1 record against the bucks this season.

i bought those two quansheng UV-K5 radios yesterday. in my research i found out you can't assign names to the memory channels. that sucks a little bit because who can remember all 100 memory settings just from frequency alone? so i went searching, and found a small transceiver radio that can not only receive airbands, and clone frequencies, but can also assign names to channels. this radio was the radtel RT-890. i must've seen this radio when i was researching the JJCC radio my father bought off of temu and then later returned. there's even less information about the radtel RT-890 compared to the quansheng UV-K5. but from what little i saw, i actually like the radtel better than the quansheng. the cheapest price i could find for the RT-890 was $36, and that was the ruyage UV58+, a rebranded model of the RT-890. but finally sold me on the radio was discovering it was recently made compatible with CHIRP, which means we can program it easily with the computer. so i ended up buying yet another radio, the ruyage UV58+. i think this is the radio my father will end up liking better. i almost regret getting the quansheng now, but they're so cheap ($25), it's nice to have them as a backup radio, or just something else to play with besides those discarded cobra-brand GMRS radios my father's been investigating for ages now.

when i woke up this morning, the time machine backup wasn't finished yet. at least it was backing up now, but just with an estimated finish time of 11 more hours. luckily i wasn't going to be home, so it wasn't a problem letting my mac run while i was gone.

so we had that big grubhub order today, set for pickup around noontime. 17 bento boxes, half a dozen buns, a noodle, a curry. my father had already prepared all the boxes and containers, and filled them with cold side dishes that didn't need to be warm. once delivery time got close, we'd finally assembled. however we ran into a snag, when we suddenly started getting orders in on top of the large takeout order we needed to fulfill. we ran two rice cookers just so we'd have enough rice. i emptied one cooker that had 16 cups of cooked rice. honestly, it wasn't too crazy, and i actually prefer these big orders instead of many small orders, as long as we get advanced warning. once 12pm arrived and we had all the orders out, we could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

after that it wasn't too busy today. we left my sister making her catered meals in the kitchen, even though once again she was running late, despite pushing the pickup time back an hour. regardless of time, she will always procrastinate until the last possible moment.

in the early afternoon during a lull, i was tasked with a supply run to trader joe's to get some persian cucumbers, spinach, edamame beans, and noodles. i noticed they also sold potted gardenias. if only people knew how difficult it was to keep them alive and flowering!

i told my father about the quansheng UV-K5, a handheld radio i discovered last night, that someone online said was a baofeng killer. about the size and price of a baofeng, it not only can send/receive on UHF/VHF frequencies, but it can also receive 50MHz to 600MHz, including airbands. it can also copy frequencies, and copy programming from one radio to another. plus it uses usb type-c charging. price? $20-30. the radio just got its FCC license a few weeks ago and only recently been on the market. after looking over the specs, my father said he wanted to get one. because it was so inexpensive, he suggested we get two. i told him i'd go onto aliexpress later today and order them.

i brought the 7" knipex pliers wrench so i could try removing the faucet stem from the kitchen sink because the faucet will leak if the handles aren't closed tightly enough. this was one of the main reasons why i paid nearly $100 for the pliers wrenches, just to remove the faucet stem. the stem unscrewed without resistance. i tried unscrewing it by hand but i couldn't budge it, but with the wrench it was effortless. the cartridge came off but it didn't look anything like the pictures i saw. there was a washer on a stem with a spring on the inside. i took some photos and reassembled the stem cartridge. much later i realized the actual stem cartridge itself was still embedded inside the faucet assembly, and what i removed was just the threaded stem. in any case, using the pliers wrench the cartridges can be removed with ease.

regarding the second rice cooker we used today, it's a tayama-brand we bought last year during tax free weekend for just $30. it sounded like a japanese company, i think that was one reason why i got it, but it's an entirely chinese company, and search online reveals almost nothing about the company, other than it has a US headquarter in california. the cooker itself isn't very good, something we found out the first time we used it. the measurement markings in the cooking pot aren't accurate and the rice scorched at the bottom. we would've returned it except my parents already threw out the box. the rice cooker we currently use is an old 10-cups zojirushi model that's long been discontinued. despite it's age, it's still reliable, though the stem valve has a tendency to fall out every once in a while. we'll get another rice cooker at some point (maybe a backup, maybe a replacement), and we already know the make and model, the latest zojirushi 10-cup cooker that sells for $140. zojirushi also made a bunch of smart cookers, but those cook rice too slowly; the simple cook/warm models cook much faster and the rice still come out pretty good compared to most other cookers.

feifei gave us a digital caliper they'd bought, after seeing that i put a digital caliper in my temu shopping cart. they'd actually bought two for some reason, so they had an unwanted extra. while it's true i need a digital caliper, i don't need one *that large*. when i first saw it i thought it was a joke. digital calipers normally are like 6-8" long, but this one was 12" long. when would i ever need to accurately measure something that big? i looked up the price too, wasn't cheap at $55.

my sister has a terrible system of keeping track of her orders, using color-coded markers and some weird code, which is prone to errors, and seems like every week we get one of the orders wrong. today it was the scallion bread my mother made, we found out we didn't make enough. actually we did, but we ate what we thought were leftovers, and ended up not having enough. so my mother quickly had to make some dough and let it rise before baking. my father had put the bowl over a pot of boiling soup, but i told them they can use the proofing function on the breville oven. the default setting is 85°F for an hour, but my father set the timer to just 30 minutes. it actually did a really good job, the fermented dough came out very puffy and made for very good scallion bread.

before i left, i helped my sister bring up the bed mattress she ordered online, for the new upstairs tenant arriving on friday night. i don't know how good a mattress can be if i can roll it up and fit it inside of a box, and be light enough that one person can easily lift it. i didn't leave the cafe until after 6pm.

it was still light out when i got home. my upstairs neighbors finally tossed out their christmas tree now that it's officially spring. of course it's too late for cambridge to pick it up, so i wasn't surprised it still outside on the curb. fortunately i think garden refuse pickup will begin next month, so they'll probably get it then.

i came home with three pieces of scallion bread which became my dinner. and yes, time machine finally managed to back up. it said it finished around 12:45pm. basically, time machine took an entire 24 hours to back up my mac. i'm glad it's finally over, but sort of annoyed it took this long. yes it's true i haven't backed up since last october, but still, it's unrealistic to think someone would just leave their machine open for so long, waiting for time machine to finish.

i ordered a pair of quansheng UV-K5 radios off of aliexpress. i found a seller selling for $25/each with free shipping. the radios are due to arrive in about 2 weeks. i did some more research on the radios. i found out you can't name the channels like you can with the baofeng, so they're just frequencies, which isn't ideal. maybe that feature can be added in a future firmware update (just wishful thinking). the UV-K5 is so new, there's hardly any info about the it other than from a few youtubers who got their hands on the radio a month or so ago.

a fire truck was outside the house later in the evening. not sure the reason, i should've turned on my baofeng and tried to listen in on the fire department radio. maybe it was a welfare check. i actually hope something did happen to those neighbors, ever since they turned what used to be free common parking into private parking.

the last thing i did tonight was make a quick ordering page using google sheets, so i can show my sister how to organize her weekly meals so everyone can understand. it's super simple with a spreadsheet.

i was relieved when it was raining this morning. it meant i had an excuse not to go running, and could sleep late. i didn't get out of bed until after 10:30am.

i installed macOS catalina onto a USB thumb drive today. unlike big sur, it successfully installed, even though i was worried from my many failed attempts at installing big sur. still not satisfied with this option, i tried booting up with the big sur installed thumb drive again. like before, it started up fine, but once it reached the midway point, it wouldn't progress any further. i did some more research, i haven't found any info of users successfully installing a working bootable version of big sur onto a thumb drive (other than a boot installer version, which isn't the same as a working OS). there's a possibility that big sur just won't run from a thumb drive, and apple has no incentive to fix the issue on OS 11 (big sur) when they're already on OS 13 (ventura). but at the very least i had a working bootable copy of macos catalina on a thumb drive. later i went online and download the digital version of the 2022 H&R taxing software for the mac. it was only 35MB and costs $35 (not including taxes).

since i've been running my machine non-stop doing these long installs, i decided to do a time machine backup. i was surprised that the last time i backed up was in late october, 5 months ago, so i was overdue. backup files showed that i attempted to do a backup in late november but never completed it. i left the mac to run time machine while i did other things.

it was time to set up my grow closet. i had those heavy duty 3/4 size germination trays which fit perfectly on my adjustable shelves, 3 trays per shelf. i have 3 shelves, and each tray can hold a dozen 16oz clear cups, for a total of 108 plants. these are the larger plants; for smaller seedlings (like for flowers), i start them in 2x2" cell packs, which i have plenty of, and those i'll probably germinate outside on the deck since they have a clear cover. i casually sorted through my seed packets, combining what i had at home with what i brought back from belmont. for some reason my lupine seeds have gone missing again. i emptied all the containers from the closet shelves to make room for my eventual seedlings. i stacked the boxes behind my sofa.

in the afternoon, when the sky started to clear up and the sun started peeking out behind clouds, i walked down to the dollar tree to pick up some clear 16oz. cups i use for planting pots. i ended up buying some regular pots, some 9-cups food containers, plant dishes, and candy. as for the cups? they only had the solid variety, i don't think they sell the clear kind anymore. i use the clear because i can tell how much i've watered and check out the progress of the root growth. i'll look for cheap clear cups elsewhere, if all else fails, target carries them though slightly more expensive.

in the late afternoon i had som homemade tzatziki and pita as a snack. the tzatziki i made last week was still good. time machine was still running from since this morning, but i could still use the computer in the meantime.

my mother called me, said there was going to be a big grubhub delivery order tomorrow. there was actually one last wednesday, but the customer cancelled last minute for some reason. but he ordered again yesterday (for wednesday delivery) except we weren't opened so nobody saw the scheduled order. he called today just to confirm the order went through, that's how my parents knew about it. it's a big chunk of change, enough to be a single day's profit with just one online order.

for dinner i heated up a brick of lasagna while watching the celtics-wizards game. celtics fell behind in the first half and i had a bad feeling about it. wizards put the celtics in a 20 point hole beginning of the second half and boston had zero answer. at one point the celtics were down almost 30 points. that's when mazzulla swapped out all the starters for bench players. the bench guys actually went on a streak, and almost got the game to within single digits, before the wizards went back up to 20+ points. at this point i'm resigned to the fact that boston will advance no farther than the 2nd seed.

when it came time to throw out the trash, i finally cleaned my sichuan paocai jar. i started that batch back in early september; by late october the cabbage had already turned soft and wasn't that good anymore. yet i couldn't bear to throw it out, and kept it still. the final straw was when a layer of kahm yeast started forming on the surface of the paocai. if i ever make sichuan paocai again, i have to remember to eat it quick and not wait months.

by late evening the time machine backup was still in the "cleaning up old backups" stage, so nearly 10 hours. i ended up stopping it so i can get some work done. i'll probably run it overnight to see if i can get it to back up.

i couldn't stand it anymore: staingate was getting too much, i could barely see through my macbook pro screen. i'd read about a way to clean the fading laminate using toilet bowl cleaner, but i looked up methods online, and all it takes is just simple listerine and a microfiber cloth. so i tried it, figured i had nothing to lose. sure enough, with some elbow grease, slowly but surely the laminate all came off, revealing a clean screen once more. it's actually so easy, i'm surprised apple doesn't mention it as an official fix to staingate. but i guess that would mean admitting they made a design error, which they probably don't want to do.

i left the big sur installation run overnight. when i woke up this morning, it seemed to be stuck on the apple logo with the progress bar halfway. i restarted and booted from the thumb drive. good news is big sur seemed to have installed overnight. bad news is it can't seem to reach the desktop, stalling halfway during startup. so it looks like my only recourse now is install a copy of bootable catalina onto a thumb drive then install the H&R block tax software, which seems to be the only catalina compatible option. and then come next tax season, who knows. maybe upgrade to a recent enough mac that i can run a taxing software!

my parents came around 9:30am for a supply run. today it was the everett-chelsea-malden run. first stop was costco, where we arrived 15 minutes before opening. the parking lot was virtually empty, but by the time it got close to 10am, it tripled in the number of cars. another weird thing: seems like all the people coming to costco this early were all asians for some strange reason.

i got two bags of miracle-gro brand garden/raised bed soil for $7.50/bag (on sale). this soil will be for the long planter boxes, where we'll grow an assortment of baby bokchoi and chinese celery. we also got some clear storage boxes, also on sale. i admired some infinity brand bicycles, also on sale for $300. having seem how much new bikes can cost, $300 is a bargain. only 7-speeds, which is just enough gears, plus disc brakes.

next stop was restaurant depot. since we already bought eggs at costco, we didn't bother buying any here. instead we got some small 1 oz. sauce containers including lids. lines were long, but fortunately they opened a new checkout lane and we didn't have to wait too long.

from restaurant depot it was a short ride to the chelsea market basket. we got meats, diary, and produce here. we also got a long baguette to go with the wheel of brie cheese my mother picked up at costco. i saw they sold small potted gardenia in the floral section, with flower buds the size of olives.

returning from chelsea, our last stop was the asian supermarket malden 88. they don't give out free bags but they do offer free boxes, which was what we used to carry our purchases. i didn't get anything here but i did check out some asian seeds, none of which interested me enough to purchase, though i might still get some from chinatown if i see them.

we left malden by 12:30pm, taking route 16 along the mystic river back to cambridge, to the cafe to drop off the supplies. it took us nearly an hour before we were finally finished and back at my parents' place. we had some brie cheese on baguette, even tried it with a bit of prosciutto. feeling hungry still, i ate a leftover barbecued drumstick from yesterday, even though we had evening plans to have dinner at spring shabu shabu in allston.

we were to meet my sister there sometime after 4:30pm, who was giving my 2nd aunt and her godmother a ride. that gave me just enough time to go into the basement and water the plants. my father fertilized the jasmines and gardenia with an acid-loving fertilizer, so their soil was still moist, and i didn't bother watering them. i did however water the pileas, orchids, prayer plants, and christmas cactus. i even added a tiny amount of fertilizer, get them ready for their eventual move outside in another month or two.

i also raised the led grow lights on my aeroponic plants; they were growing big enough to practically touch the lights now, and raising the lights provided the whole plants with more light. my father was concerned there might not be enough nutrient solution, as the plants are growing much faster now, so they're feeding more. but the water level isn't at the halfway point yet, but definitely by next weekend i'll add a fresh bucket of nutrients.

turning on the television brought us breaking news about the nashville tennessee school shooting: 3 children dead, 3 adults dead, and the police killed the shooter. what was unusual about this mass shooting (as if mass shootings themselves aren't an anomaly) was the shooter was said to be a teenage girl. more info will develop later.

we left for allston around 4:25pm, getting to spring shabu shabu by 4:40pm. my sister and her guests arrived at about the same time. the restaurant didn't open until 5pm so we waited outside, first in line. my sister kept showing us a live feed of her house, where we can hear hailey barking non-stop. concerned, my sister ended up not eating with dinner but instead went home to look after her dog.

we went to spring shabu shabu a few times when it first opened. then the pandemic happened, and buffets became super unsafe. to be honest, i thought spring shabu shabu would go out of business. but they toughed it out with socially distant seating and instead of self-serve buffets, you tell the waitstaff what you want and they go gather your ingredients. now that the pandemic is pretty much over (for most people at least), the buffet business has bounced back. my aunt came here a few weeks again, and there was a long line outside. that's why we came early, afraid it'd get crowded and we wouldn't be able to get a table. in retrospect that was unnecessary, especially on a monday weekday. as long as you arrive soon after they open, you're sure to get a table (not sure how a wekend though).

the occasion for this spring shabu shabu visit was my mother wanted to treat the "employees" to dinner using the tip money saved up for this month. originally i didn't want to come, because i rather spend my time in belmont doing gardening stuff. but the food was good, just like it was before. the only thing they didn't have were those tiny korean dumplings, but i remember they stopped carrying those before the pandemic as well.

instead of actual menus, the waitress put a coaster on the table that had a QR code that took you to an online menu. my father and i got the mala spicy broth, while everyone else got the bone broth. we all got lamb while my 2nd aunt went with the seafood assortment. i found i really like the fried tofu and bamboo strips. i also like the tofu skin and the king crab balls. my 2nd aunt was able to eat despite missing her lower dentures (they're getting fitted with a new tooth at her dentist), but only softer foods, so i got some her clams.

my sister showed up around 6pm, decided to come anyway after calming hailey down. apparently her dog needed to use the bathroom and was barking in distress. we were all done with our first round of eating, and onto the second round.

for the second round i just focused on what i liked, but my eyes were bigger than my stomach, and once i started eating, i quickly realized i was already at full capacity. seeing my struggle, my mother said i could stop eating. i finished my lamb but buried the rest, hiding the evidence so it didn't look like i was wasting food. i went to get some soft-served ice cream afterwards, got the half vanilla half green tea swirl. i liked it so much i went back for a second serving.

we finally left by 6:50pm. there was a crowd of people waiting outside, most likely larger groups waiting for a big table, or members of their party haven't all arrived yet. my sister gave her godmother a ride, while my parents drove my 2nd aunt and me. cutting through harvard square, they dropped me off first before dropping off my aunt.

first thing i did when i got back was to use the bathroom before taking a shower. because i had so much tofu, i was gassy the rest of the evening. regarding the nashville school shooting, the shooter wasn't a teenage girl but instead a 28-year old woman who was a former student. on top of that she's also transsexual, which was something i thought about when i first heard the news, how rare it was for mass shooters to be female. what if it was a transsexual male?

i went to star market to pick up some drumsticks and cantaloupes on sale before biking to belmont. temperature was in the 50's but windy, and at times i was riding into a headwind, which nearly pushed me to a standstill.

the birds are really hitting the birdfeeders hard: i refilled the sunflower seeds last weekend, and birds emptied that after a few days. they're also visiting the suet feeder in greater frequency, hardly any visitors during the winter, but now i put in two new suet cakes. i saw chickadees and downy woodpeckers.

i brought my musubi to share with my parents. unfortunately my rice was too dry, and once refrigerated, the rice became hard as a rock. a minute in the microwave managed to soften things up, at the expense of the nori wrap, which became a little soggy but still edible.

around 12:45pm my mother and i went out for a walk. we visited mt.auburn street, where my mother wanted to get some produce at arax market. being one of the few middle eastern markets opened on sundays, business was brisk. my mother ended up only buying some long green hot peppers before we started to head back. we also ended up going to super vanak. we didn't see anything we wanted, but my mother didn't want to leave empty-handed so she picked out a $3 turkish fruit cake before we saw some senna tea ($4) which she also got. on our way back, a neighbor had a table on their front lawn filled with free bottles of hand sanitizers; my mother ended up taking one.

at 5pm we grilled the drumsticks which my mother had marinated in a cajun spice all afternoon. after having tried grilled wings, i prefer smaller wings over these larger drumsticks. but you can't deny the price on these drumsticks, which were just 87¢/lbs. we grilled them first on high heat to crispy them up, before cooking them to doneness with low-medium heat. before coming out of the barbecue, we also coated them in sweet thai chili sauce, which is our secret weapon for delicious drumsticks. the chili sauce basically covered up whatever cajun marinade my mother had used.

just the drumsticks were enough for dinner, but my mother also cooked up some cauliflower along with a stirfry of smoked ham with the long green peppers we bought earlier.

i left around 7pm. the sun had just set but it was still bright out, though i did put on my lights for safety.

i keep on trying to install big sur onto a thumb drive, but it always seem to get stuck with less than a minute remaining. when i got back home i tried installing on a different sandisk thumb drive that was slightly faster. just like before, everything seemed okay until it got to the end and go stuck. i waited for nearly an hour at the less than a minute remaining screen, then finally gave up. i'm going to try again tonight, leave my machine on overnight, to see if it'll finally install. i also zapped my NVRAM, which some of said fixed their installation issue. it's happened to enough people that it's a legit issue but apple doesn't seem to address it. makes me really leary of ever doing a system upgrade without first doing a complete backup.

i woke up this morning and watched a bit of local news to see what the weather was going to be like today. cloudy and cold until the afternoon, when some freezing rain will start that will last into the late night. i was using the new pair of non-progressive glasses michael made me, so i was able to watch tv from bed without any of that lower lense blurriness.

because of the rain later, i wasn't able to ride my bike, so instead i walked down to the cafe around 10am. i passed by exeter park, where according to the news earlier, was the scene of a motorcycle accident that happened last night at 1am. cambridge police listed as a serious crash involving a motorcyclist and a pedestrian. both went to the hospital, with the pedestrian suffering serious head injuries. i'm not even sure how that could've happened, since it's a low speed intersection, unless the pedestrian suddenly ran into the street during oncoming traffic. anyway, while waiting for the lights to change, i saw some vehicle debris on the side of the road, including a piece of a side view mirror. it didn't look like i came from a motorcycle, or maybe it was one of those hybrid motorcycle scooters with the big chassis.

i didn't mind walking, gave me a chance to admire the emerging perennials. so far it's all been bulbs and their ilks: scillas, crocuses, irises, hellebores. saw some yellow flowers i'd never seen before.

i made it to the cafe by 10:30am. i started boiling water and cooked 4 cups of rice. when my sister finally showed up, i heated the tea eggs and made some black noodles and dumplings. i was running 3 induction cookers while at the same time washing some dishes in the sink, felt a lot like plate spinning. later my 2nd aunt showed up as well.

i transferred the new tea eggs from yesterday into the slow cooker, then added the older eggs (10); that 4.5qt crockpot can actually hold 40 tea eggs, not just 30. i ended up eating one of the tea eggs that had lost its shell during the heat process, too ugly to sell. something i've noticed with the recent eggs we've been using (regardless if they're from restaurant depot or costco) is very brittle shells prone to breaking.

there was a period around lunchtime when it got really busy. we nearly used up all the rice i'd cooked and had to microwave some leftover rice from yesterday. we also nearly ran out of the black noodles and i had to cook another batch, along with a pot of green tea. i was also grilling a dozen chinese sausage in the breville oven, and emptying the sichuan paocai fido jar from august 2022.

i basically worked non-stop from the moment i arrived until probably around 2pm, where i finally had a brief break. my 2nd aunt warmed up some korean-inspired egg pancakes she made. she ate them with my leftover homemade tzatziki, but i found some korean hot sauce in the fridge and ate some pancakes with that, which tasted much better.

in the late afternoon it started to rain as forecasted. it was the kind of miserable freezing rain, and i didn't feel like taking the bus to belmont, so i called my father for an extraction. he showed up around 4:10pm right after we closed, and gave my 2nd aunt a ride too.

even though i was pretty busy at the cafe, it wasn't a busy day overall. maybe the cold wet weather was a factor, but it was the weakest day of the week. we sold a lot of bento boxes, but didn't sell a single beef noodle soup, which seemed like the opposite of what happened a few saturdays ago, when it seemed like we sold nothing but noodles, and no bento.

the first thing i did when i arrived in belmont was to check out the knipex pliers wrenches. my father was astonished when i told him how much they cost ($90), for a pair of surprisingly small wrenches. there's no denying their innovative design, but are they really worth all that much? there's still a chance i might return them, but in the meantime, i was looking for things i use them on, but didn't find anything around the house. one thing i'm concerned about (other than the price) is whether the smaller size might make it difficult to get the proper turning leverage compared to a tool with a longer handle.

as always, i also checked out my aeroponic plants. every week they never cease to amaze me with their growth, which has now entered the exponential phase. i sort of regret making so many holes on the lid (a dozen), because the plants are growing too close together now. my father asked whether we should prune the lower leaves, but i said to let them grow naturally, see how big each mustard green can get. besides, it's not the leaves i want, but rather the stems, for pickling/fermentation/cooking purposes. even the formerly anemic chinese celeries are doing much better now, growing tall stalks that look like they might touch the led lights by next week. i also remembered to check the roots. amazing just how long they've gotten. makes me appreciate how compacted soil can affect plant growth, and just how far down i should aerate when i till the raised beds.

i'm wondering with the outdoor weather has gotten warmer, if i should move the aeroponic tub outside, so it can take advantage of the natural sunlight, which is far better than a pair of led lights. i'm also wondering if i should start a second aeroponic tub. all it'd cost me is a length of 1/2" PVC piping (10ft for $4.71), another pump ($17), and a plastic tote ($8). all other materials and tools i have. just something to think about.

i foraged for snacks (bourbon-flavored gummy, greek sultana raisins, pecan melts) while waiting for dinner, which came in the form of thin noodles in a smoked ham broth. i also checked out the yaesu FT-991A all-band portable ham radio (someone in malden is selling his for $875, normally they're $1360-1460), and researched some affordable electric car options. my father gave me a ride back to cambridge around 7:40pm.

my mother asked me to work at the cafe today. i found excuses but she had a counter for all of them. i wanted to go to chinatown, but my 2nd aunt already went yesterday. besides, we'd probably go to malden 88 this weekend anyway, so there was no need for a chinatown supply run. backed into a order, i had no choice but to work today. but when i checked the webcam, i saw my sister was at the cafe today, which theoretically meant i didn't have to go. the cafe also didn't seem to be busy, perhaps a repeat of yesterday, when there was hardly any customers for some reason.

i left around 11:15am, packed a box filled with some fermented vegetables and a package of corned beef. today was a bit chilly, temperature in the 40's, but with intermittent sun. my mother tried the green cabbage kimchi, said that was the kind of kimchi she liked, the kind that wasn't sour. she tried the daikon kimchi and said it was too salty. my sister was at the cafe preparing her new salmon bento, she convinced a few customers to give it a try.

i cooked a new batch of tea eggs. even after all this time, i still haven't mastered the art of boiling the perfect egg. there's a science to it, and every once in a while i'll read some article or watch some video explaining how to boil eggs, and every time i try, it's never the same way twice.

my aunt and 2nd aunt both showed up. my 2nd aunt said her phone wasn't working. i took a look: for some reason it was in safe mode, not even sure how she managed to turn it on. i restarted the phone and it worked fine after that.

things were slow until noontime, when suddenly there was a rush of customers. in the span of an hour, we got more than a dozen orders, which worked to an order every 5 minutes. after that i managed to stick around before finally leaving by 2:30pm.

i didn't have lunch yet and though about making some musubi. but i figured i'd leave that for dinner, so instead i had a korean cup of noodles, continuing my string of korean foods.

in the evening i made musubi after watching a few youtube videos. i had to piece together the portions from a few sources, the rest i figured out through trial and error. traditional musubi uses short-grain rice, which i happened to have. 2 cups uncooked yields 4 cups cooked, which is the perfect amount for one can of spam. can't remember the last time i opened up a can of spam, probably not since the 80's. a single can of spam can be sliced into 9-10 pieces, i went with 9. for the seaweed wrap i used three squares of nori, each one cut into 3 strips.

i started grilling the spam slices before the rice was finished cooking. no oil necessary, the spam itself has enough oil to grease the pan. i also made a glaze sauce to grill the spam once more for flavor, a combination of shoyu, mirin, and sugar. i didn't have enough, so i used up a leftover bottle of teriyaki sauce, which i was basically making anyway.

once the spam was properly regrilled, it was time to assemble. i bought a musubi press nearly half a year ago and now finally had a chance to use it. i put the press on a piece of nori, then scooped some rice into the mold before pressing it down into a block of rice. i wasn't sure how much rice to use at first, so the first few musubis didn't have enough rice. i then sprinkled some furikake before removing the mold and layering a piece of teriyaki-glazed spam slice. i then wrapped the whole thing up with the nori, using some more glaze as a glue to hold the nori together.

i made 9 musubis and ate 3 of them. grilling the spam in a teriyaki glaze transformed them into something that was more delicious, i couldn't even tell it was spam. my nori wasn't wide enough though, so the spam and rice would stick out at both ends. this presented a problem because the exposed rice would started to crumble at the ends. next time i'll wrap the whole musubi in nori. the furikake also really adds to the flavor.

it's tax season and turbotax is my poison. the past few years each new edition of turbotax has dropped support for older macos. last year i was only able to use turbotax because i installed macos catalina (10.15) onto a bootable thumb drive and ran the software off of the drive itself. this year turbotax will only work with big sur (11) or above, so i had to create a bootable thumb drive with big sur. when i ran the installer it wouldn't work because i'm still using macos mojave (10.14). so i copied the installer onto the bootable catalina thumb drive and tried upgrading that way. i ran into problems because the installer reboots a few times, and every time it puts me back to my macbook pro system. when i finally got the installer to install, it got stuck in the final minute and wouldn't go any farther. i tried it a few more times, each time no go. not only that, it basically made the bootable thumb drive unreadable, so nothing left to do but start over. i'm going to see if i can upgrade my mother's imac to big sure, and run turbotax that way. if not, i'll switch to H&R block, which still works with catalina.

i didn't go running this morning because i was scheduled to help michael with his computer. of course nothing said i couldn't simply run later, and the weather today was certainly runworthy, with temperature in the mid-50's and overcast. michael called me while i was in the shower. maybe it was tell me some good news, that he opened up the computer this morning and everything started working again. i called him back, he said he was at dunkin' donuts and asked if i drank coffee. i said no, but he offered to get me some tea, so i told him i take it black. i then went down to the store to meet up with him at 11am.

i spent the first 15 minutes looking over the issue. windows 7 seemed to have stalled inside of parallel. i tried to restart windows a few times but the command wouldn't work. i restarted parallel but i wasn't sure if it also restarted windows. something was broken, and no amount of setting adjusting could fix it. but michael told me some good news: after i left on tuesday, he backed up his macbook pro. that meant using time machine, i could restore the windows 7 virtual machine file from tuesday, when everthing was still working. it didn't work the first time i tried to restore - gave me an error - but i think it was because parallel was still running in the background. when i turned it off completely, that's when i managed to restore the virtual machine file. it took a while - 10+ minutes - because the file was 60GB large. before i restored i also manually backed up his outlook files, which were thankfully stores external to the virtual machine file.

all this copying was going on, i sipped my dunkin' tea. michael also got me a donut. plus he had time to make me a new pair of glasses, one with just far-seeing lenses, not progressives. i tried them on, they seemed work just like my progressives, they just didn't have an close-focus, and for some reason parts of my distant-focus was also a little blurry. michael made these pairs as a test to see which ones i liked better; he thinks i'll prefer progressives once i've tried the only-distant-focus pairs.

we also chatted about xi jinping's visit to moscow to meet with putin. he told me his kids are still wearing masks in school, but they're definitely in a very small minority of people still masking. his daughter was actually getting her 3rd booster today, and his wife said they could stop masking in school after that. he told me one of the places he does still wear a mask is when he goes to market basket.

after the virtual machine file finished copying, with fingers crossed we restarted parallel. sure enough, outlook opened up like nothing had happened, everything back to normal. why parallel broke to begin with that's hard to say. did it have anything to do with his e-mail account getting hacked? i say no, but i can't be 100% sure. all i know is because michael backed up his files on tuesday, i was able to fix the issue.

i finally left, getting home at 12:30pm. i went out again a short time later, to walgreens to pick up my prescription. the guy ahead of me in line was having issues with his prescriptions. he kept saying they repeatedly get his orders wrong, and that he'll take his business elsewhere because they can't seem to fulfill his medications. he was kind of being an asshole about it, if he didn't like the service there, just go somewhere else, no need to make a big public scene. after i picked up my prescription, i told the pharmacists, "i come here all the time, and i've never had any problems," before giving them a thumbs up. hopefully i was able to counteract some of that negativity earlier.

when i got back home i finished the rest of my tea and ate the donut. at first i thought it was a simple glazed donut, but it looked like blueberries on the inside. it was actually pretty good, can't remember the last time i had a dunkin' donut, i remember they were always very dry, more like a dried crumbling cake than actually donut. i'll have to ask michael which one he ordered.

in the afternoon i started making my green cabbage kimchi - yangbaechu kimchi (양배추 김치). i made it twice back in 2021. my two heads of st.patrick's day sale cabbage had been in my fridge for almost 2 weeks, so i urgently had to use them up before they went bad. i also had way more daikon radish than i needed for the kimchi, so i decided to use up the rest and make a batch of daikon-only kimchi. although it wasn't difficult, it took more than half an hour to cut up all the vegetables (cabbage and daikon) and figure out what amount of salt to use to reduce them. i was finished by 3pm, left the cabbage and daikon to reduce for the next 2 hours.

as for the daikon kimchi - kkakdugi (깍두기) - i found a maangchi recipe, and i basically followed it verbatim, halving the portions since i was only using half (2lbs) the amount of daikon. one of things it did was to add an equal amount of sugar with reducing salt. it also used fish sauce, which normally i don't use but instead resorting to shrimp paste. her recipe said the daikon kimchi can be assembled in just 30 minutes, but i waited 2 hours along with the green cababge kimchi, coming into the kitchen every so often and tossing the vegetables to help with the reduction.

i realized i didn't have any ginger. i had various options - getting some from market basket, getting some from the cafe - but i ended up just going to star market. i couldn't find the ginger at first, but i did i grabbed the smallest one they had, which only cost me 60¢. i'd also wanted to go to reliable market in union square to pick up some fresh shrimp paste, but decided i'd use the old jar that i had instead. the sky looked like it was about to rain anyway, saving me a trip.

at 5pm i started assembling my kimchi, starting with kkakdugi. i drained the radish, saving the liquid. i then chopped some scallions and minced the garlic and ginger, before mixing all the ingredients together with some fish sauce, leftover radish juice, and red pepper powder. i used the fresh red pepper powder this time, which had a brighter color. i then packed the daikon in a tall glass jar with the remainder going into a small pyrex dish with cover.

next i moved on to the yangbaechu kimchi. the green cabbage had reduced to a rubbery yet crunchy consistency. for some reason i started adding carrots to my green cabbage kimchi, and i continued with that tradition. in the past i just julienned the carrots manually, but this time i decided to use the benriner mandoline. it took me a few minutes to figure out how to attach the dicing blade. the whole time i was using the mandoline i was worried that i might accidentally slice my fingers. i also had a hard time figuring out how to hold the mandoline; i'd love to have a mandoline that had a stand, so i didn't have to hold it up by hand. i chopped the scallions, garlic chives, and thai chili peppers. i processed the ginger, garlic, and asian pear. i mixed the "sauce" ingredients first before adding the reduced cabbage and daikon. i mixed everything with one gloved hand so i could take photos with the free hand. instead of jars, i put the yangbaechu kimchi in a 16 cup tub, with the leftover filling a single quart jar. now i wait for everything to ferment (in about 2 days) before putting them into the fridge.

my upstairs neighbors finally came home today, i saw them coming up the steps from my living room window. as soon as they came back, all the noises came back as well, since they're incapable of doing anything quiet. thankfully they'll probably only be here for 2 more months before they leave for the cape for the summer.

my korean culinary adventure extended into dinner, when i had some luxury korean ramen for dinner. i was thinking next time i could add some bean sprouts for some even more deliciousness.

after dinner i had a craving for snacks so went across the street to star market to score some goodies before they closed at 10pm. they were actually kind of busy given how late it was, with most of the shoppers being young people. i was looking for chex mix which they didn't seem to have, so i stocked up on cheez-it crackers, 5 boxes. with the sale that'd be $2.50/box, but before i went to go pay, i looked at the ad again and discovered the sale price was only for the smallest 7 oz. box, and none of the items i picked up were discounted (therefore they'd be $5/box). i sheepishly put everything back, before getting some poppables. back at home, i ended up having some orange slices.

i finally went ahead and ordered a pair of knipex pliers wrenches, sizes 180mm and 125mm. i'd been tracking their prices for weeks now, and rewatched all related videos on youtube over and over again. the only thing preventing me from buying them was the price: around $90 for a pair. as far as hand tools are concerned, german-made knipex are one of the most expensive, though many have said they're worth the money. i finally went ahead and bought them after the price dropped down to $86.99. for some reason the price on these fluctuates like crazy. hours after the purchase, i saw the price change again, down to $86.80. it wasn't worth it at that point to cancel and reorder. the good thing is these have free returns. if i get any kind of buyer's remorse, i won't hesitate to return them, and buy the $40 harbor freight 10" icon knockoff pliers wrench instead (when they back in stock around mid-april).

i went to bed last night at 1:30am and woke up by 9:30am. i had a good 8 hours of sleep but i still felt tired. i wanted to get to the cafe earlier than usual because my father said he wasn't coming into work on wednesday (today) so i didn't want my mother manning the cafe by herself. however when i checked the webcam, i saw my father was at the cafe today, so there was no hurry to get there then.

i got to the cafe by 10:40am. weather today was sunny with temperature only the lower 50's. we had a steady stream of business. my sister was making her catered meal (grilled salmon, udon noodles, rice porridge), we tried to stay out of her way as much as possible to avoid conflicts. a lot of people ordered today, which is nice bounce back after several weeks of diminished clientele due to winter/spring vacations. one lesson my sister managed to learn from last week was to add more salt to her dishes. nevertheless, she ran late again, and my mother and i were helping her cook while customers started arriving to pick up their orders. i was also cleaning like crazy, seemed like there wasn't a time where i was busy cleaning up after my sister's mess.

i discovered my mother didn't add any salt to the new batch of tea eggs she made yesterday so they were basically just cooked in flavorless tea. we spent the day padding another temu order, until my mother discovered we weren't actually getting a 50% discount, but rather the discount saving amount shown at the checkout was how much we were "saving" from the retail value. it was basically a scam to make you think you were getting a discount when you weren't. i also spent some time in the basement bringing down the latest shipment of food containers, and figuring out where to put them. the basement needs to be organized, it's too cluttered, and finding the right containers is like a scavenger hunt. we also end up buying containers that we still have because we don't have an inventory list.

an irony of working at the cafe is even though i'm surrounded by food, i actually go most work days without ever eating anything. sometimes i don't even remember to drink, and i go home dehydrated and hungry. around 5:30pm my mother made some rice noodles. this would've been my lunch, but it was already dinnertime.

michael called me and left a message. i called him back, he was having computer issues still. too late to visit him tonight, but we made arrangements for me to stop by tomorrow late morning. i always get anxious when i get a call from michael, it's rarely a good thing, something is always broken. i've managed to fix everything so far, but i feel like one day my luck will run out.

i didn't get back home until 6:15pm. it's not so bad now, with daylight saving time, it's still light outside (sunset not until almost 7pm today). i've been waiting for my upstairs neighbors to come back, they told me they'd return in 2 weeks, it's already been 2 weeks, but they're still missing. would've been nice if they gave me an exact date, but to be honest, i don't really care. i only care in the fact that i'd like to know how my more days i can enjoy not having them as my neighbors.

i didn't think i'd be hungry, but by 8:30pm i went to the kitchen and got the last two remaining pieces of fried chicken (thigh and breast). afterwards i also had some orange slices. didn't do any grocery shopping this week, not sure i need to go. i've got enough food in the house to last me for the next 2 days.

i'm going to finish up early tonight and get to bed before midnight. feel like i need more sleep to get back my energy.