it was an exciting day, because for the first time i'd get to use my new camera and new lens for one of the reasons why i originally got it for, and that is to take parade/event photos. the annual boston santa speedo run was upon us, the last spectacle of the year. the sky was grey which is great for leveling out overblown highlights, but it was also foggy and misty, so water kept getting on the lens. i left the house around 12:15 and arrived in copley square around 12:45, standing on my favorite street corner.

even year there seems to be more and more people participating in the santa speedo run. this year the profane teddy bear movie ted seemed to have hijacked the run in some sort of promotional campaign, with numerous folks decked out in ted paraphernalia. because there was so many people, it became this mob of runners which made it hard to see the individual creativity participants put into their speedo santa outfits.

worse yet, i had my camera on the wrong setting, and nearly every one of my photos came out blurry. how did this happen? wasn't this supposed to be the camera and lens that would dazzle me with its brilliant snapshots? the problem was because i set the camera to auto ISO. under normal circumstances - i.e. stationary subjects - this would've been fine. but when the subjects are running, a higher shutter speed is more important than variable ISO. so what happened was the camera metered for brighter conditions and set ISO to 100 and the shutter speed to 1/30 second. just to compare, last year i shot everything with ISO 400 and an automatic shutter speed that varied between 1/500 and 1/1000 seconds (at f4.0). this is just one of those tough photography life lessons and hopefully i won't make the same mistake twice.

i was also disappointed with the total number of photos i took, which was a bit over 300 images. at the rate i was snapping away, i swore i had 1000! i was shooting so fast the buffer filled up and i could only grab a photo a second during the height of the run.

afterwards i made my way to haymarket, cutting through downtown crossing. i ended up getting: 5 bundles of scallions ($1), 2 bundles of cilantro ($1), 6 persimmons ($2), bag of red seedless grapes ($4.50), box of clementine oranges ($2), 1lb. of korean long green hot peppers ($1), and string of garlic ($1). one of the asian vendors saw me taking photos and asked if i was japanese. i made an attempt at guessing his ethnicity and actually got it right: cambodian. i asked if he was from phnom penh and he said yes, and when he learned i'd been to cambodia before, we came instant friends. he told me the capital city has changed a lot since i'd been there.

i returned home via the longfellow bridge (the shortest route back to my house). soaked in sweat (surprising, even though i tried to ride slow), i took a shower and before making my way to belmont. in honor of my father's friend's visit, my parents hosted dinner and invited my aunt and uncle as well as my godmother. originally we were supposed to eat some homemade shanghai meat buns, but the owner of the restaurant next to my parents' cafe heard that my father's friend was visiting, she fired up a handful of dishes, so we had those instead (shanghai meat buns will be postponed until tomorrow).

i must've built up a big appetite biking into boston and back, because i had 3 bowls of rice (i only had some yogurt and granola for breakfast). unfortunately where i was sitting - at the far end of the table - made it impossible for me to reach most of the dishes, so i ate standing up practically the whole night, walking down to the other side of the table to pick up some food.

the big topic of conversation after dinner was about cameras. my father's friend was showing my godmother how to properly use her sony and we were trying to convince my aunt to buy a digital SLR to replace her film camera which she wants me to sell online.

i left for cambridge a bit after 9:00. drew was watching television in the living room, wrapped up in his twin layer of blankets. later we watched memento (2000).