i have ants in the house again. i found out this morning when i grabbed a glass to clean from the living room and saw a few ants climbing around inside. i had some pink lemonade last night, so there must be some residual sugar left in the glass. sugar ants are easy to treat. i opened up a terro liquid ant bait and set it on the windowsill where the ants were coming in. i can expect to see a lot of ants feeding on the bait for a week, and then afterwards they'll be all gone. the thing i learned last summer when i had ants is they have a schedule. i thought they'd feed 24/7, but the ants i had only came out during the daytime and at night they all disappeared.

i went to the garden to water this morning. the butterfly pea flower bud i saw yesterday had bloomed this morning. there's competing theory on when's the best time to harvest: some say early morning, just as soon as the flowers open. others say after a day, after the flowers had time to close and shrivel up. i decided to take the fresh flower so i could show my parents. i noticed on the vine another emerging flower bud. that's my incentive to come back tomorrow morning to check for another flower. it takes 10-15 flowers to make just a single ounce tincture (using 40% alcohol).

we had 6 passion flowers today. originally i saw 3, but then i found another, and another, and another. despite their complicated structure, the flowers themselves are very easy to miss if you don't look carefully. based on remaining flower buds, i figured we have maybe 2 more weeks of flowers before they're all gone. once that happens, we're going to trim the vines. that will hopefully induce new vines to grow (flowers only show up on new vines). we will turn the old vines into cuttings, hopefully propagate some passion flower plants to give to others.

i realized today that i've become the curator of the beverage fridge. we got the common sodas like pepsi, coke, diet coke, and a ginger ale. i also added a pink ginger ale that have a few customers. then there are the various flavors of gatorade. followed by an assortment of sanpellegrino fruit sodas. since we're a taiwanese joint, you can't not have some apple sidra and heysong sarsaparilla. for purists, there's the always popular bottled water. we carry two different brands of sparkling water: pellegrino and perrier. pellegrino is one of the few drinks that comes in a glass bottle. a few years back i remember an old lady asking for something that was in a glass bottle and we didn't carry anything like that until now. we also carry ito en green tea, one of the few options that isn't sweetened. finally, diet stewart root beer, which we only have for our one daily customer allen, who has it with every meal. he used to drink IBC diet root beer until there was a supply shortage during the pandemic and we got diet stewart root beer instead, not realizing it was actually his favorite from childhood.

my 2nd aunt was coming back from flushing this morning, got the 10:30am bus. i tracked her progress as she returned to boston. she almost reached MA before her GPS stopped working. did she lose her phone? run out of battery? who knew. phone issues with her is so common we figured it was another glitch. later in the afternoon my mother called her. my 2nd aunt told her her phone ran out of storage midtrip and couldn't function anymore. she asked my 2nd uncle to meet her at south station, but he doesn't have a phone, so there was no way they could contact each other, so my 2nd aunt returned to cambridge by herself, not sure where my 2nd uncle went.

today didn't feel all that busy. yes, we had the typical lunch hour rush, but all other times seemed very low key. so i was surprised to learn by day's end that we made about as much as yesterday and tuesday, both pretty profitable days.

allen our daily regular was supposed to be gone to the cape for vacation. but his car was still in his driveway, even though we didn't see him tuesday or wednesday. today he showed up unexpectedly for lunch. afterward that he told us he was finally leaving for a few weeks.

in the afternoon during a lull i took a trip to the davis square h-mart. it's not too far, but there's no bike lanes for half the trip, as i need to share the narrow roads with car traffic. it's not a fun ride and definitely feels dangerous. i ended up riding on the sidewalk as much as possible. i went to h-mart in search of pad thai noodles - we were down to just 3 servings - and bean sprouts. they had pad thai noodles but they were $2.49 a package; baifu/foodpak sells them for $1.75. so i only bought a single package (3 servings). i looked for nori furikake but they were all sold out. at $3.99 a jar, it's actually the cheapest price in town. h-mart had a sale on laoganma spicy chili crisp for $6.99. same jar sells for $9.99 in chinatown. unfortunately they were all sold out as well, but i meandered to the hot sauce side aisle and saw they still had a few jars left. i also picked up a container of sweet and spicy fried tofu for $5.99.

i came back to the cafe after half an hour. i tried the fried tofu. very tough, very chewy, hard to eat if you have bad teeth. the sweet and spicy didn't taste very korean, not sure the ethnicity. it'd definitely taste better with some gochujang sauce. i still enjoyed it (my father liked it too, my mother barely touched it), would definitely buy again.

my parents made jiucaihezi with the garlic chives my mother harvested this morning from our little parking lot garden plot. they cooked it using their pan-fried cooker machine as well as on the stovetop. i ended up taking home 4 for dinner.

i came home, turned on the inverter AC, went to go take a shower, before eating two jiucaihezi for dinner. trump was making a primetime speech about 2020 election interference and election security. several major networks decided not to carry it live, or only have it available in their online livestream.

i took a trip to market basket before going to the cafe this morning. the sky was already hazy, so much so that the automatic parking lot lights were still on. i had a grocery list of 8 items that i quickly found. half the time i was there was spent in the checkout line as they only had a few lanes opened.

when i got to the cafe i set up my gopro camera outside, hoping to catch one of the passion flowers blooming. i kept readjusting the clamp, trying to find the best angle. gopros are not really designed for this kind of macro time lapse work. it took an hour before the bud finally bloomed, and i didn't have the best angle. i'll try again tomorrow. as for the flowers, there was a total of 9 passion flowers today.

i added 333g of warm water to the reducing lime peels i left in a jar yesterday before blending them in the vitamix. i ended up with 12 oz. of faux lime juice. not sure what i'll do with it, but so many cocktails make use of lime juice, i'm sure i'll find something.

i made another batch of pickled red onion slices. i stuffed a 16 oz. jar with as much thin-sliced red onions i could manage, before pouring in the pickling solution: 1/2 cup of white vinegar, 1/2 cup of warm water, 1 tbsp of sugar, and 1 tsp of salt. i ended up with some solution left over.

by late morning the sky turned orange again. my father kept saying he'd never seen anything like it, like the end of the world. the sun was a red ball in the sky. on top of that, there was a faint smell of wood smoke, something we didn't notice yesterday.

afraid it might rain, my father and i used a folding trolley to move the 3 ikea shelving unit we picked up yesterday. we moved them to the cafe basement. working on such a humid day, i came back inside soaked in sweat.

we were busy from 11-1pm, then another spike in the evening. noodle sales outpaced bento sales, with 4 pad thai. i kept making batches of black soy noodles. i've got it down to science at this point, the hardest part is just the 10 minutes to boil a package of linguine noodles. despite the heat, people continue to buy the beef noodle soup. a biracial couple came in with 3 young and noisy children close to closing time and ordered. one of the kids spilled a smoothie all over the table and floor. the father did his best to clean it up, but after they left we had to mop the floor.

i reconstituted a jar of frozen mojito with italian sparkling water before the start of the world cup match. it was an earlier batch that wasn't blended very well so the ice was more crystal shards than slush. it was also very bitter from the rum. i was already drunk by that point, and thought to myself, "where else can i drink on the job and not get fired?"

my sister brought esmei into the cafe. a normal dog would bark if it wanted something, but esmei is more of a whimpering crying dog. she associates the cafe with hard-boiled eggs and look forward to visiting just so she can get a protein treat. afterwards i went to go see her while she waited in the car. she completely ignored me, waiting for my sister to show up and take her out.

the game was between england and argentina. the first half was boring, no score. in the second half england scored a goal at 55 minutes. it seemed they were on their way to the finals if they can just hang on to the lead. instead of trying to score more goals, they just played defense, allowing argentina to go on offense. it was a valiant effort by england, but when you offer argentina multiple scoring opportunities, eventually they're going to score. with just minutes left in regulation, argentina scored at 85 minutes. england was too late to adjust - still in defensive mode - and allowed another goal in extra time. by that point it was too little too late. desperation mounted for england until the referee finally called the game. argentina wins 2-1. england - who had argentina on the ropes - will play for 3rd place against france. to be honest, that may actually be a good game, two former empires once again vying for a prize (third place but still a prize).

there was a faint beeping in the back kitchen. i searched everywhere - downstairs, outside - until i realized it was the upstairs upright freezer. the beeping was a high temperature warning. i grabbed the infrared thermometer and scanned the inside: 7 degrees on the top, 18 degrees at the bottom. we normally have the freezer set to 6 degrees. was the freezer dying? we had a GE upright freezer die on us a few years ago. the fix was just to replace the evaporator fan which cost an obscene $200 for a simple part (GE sold it for $300+ so that was actually a bargain). but first we decluttered the inside a bit, realized the two vents were blocked. we cleared away the area next to the freezer to allow more circulation. one of the side was warm to the touch so my father also removed a bunch of items attached with fridge magnets before blowing a fan to cool the outside. about an hour later i took another temperature reading: up and down were both 7 degrees now. so whatever we did worked and the freezer isn't broken.

i had some trader joe's frozen food to eat so i didn't take anything home for dinner. i bumped into my moroccan mailman, back from vacation. he actually didn't go back to morocco this year but opted to stay home instead. i asked him who he thinks will win the world cup, he said spain.

i watered my back and front yard, before walking down to the community garden to water my plot. there was actually a lot of people - most of them i didn't recognize (a new generation of gardeners). david was there however, so i chatted with him most of the time. he didn't like the hazy weather, said it was bad for the plants. he told me about a new bento restaurant that opened up on mass ave, they charge $18 for their bentos. i'd like to try one out of professional curiosity. in my garden, i noticed a butterfly pea flower bud. i thought they'd be blue but the flower bud was actually purple. i'll come back tomorrow to harvest it.

after i came home, i went to star market to stock up on some polar 1L drinks on sale. i was walking behind a pair of latinas wearing argentina football jerseys: one had the classic pale blue and white stripes, while the other had the dark blue jersey. star market had a collection of cocktail mixers, sweetened lime juice was $3.99 while simple syrup was also $3.99. when i left it was just about sunset. i heard it was going to be beautiful. there were some colors, but nothing truly vibrant. later from the slits in my venetian blinds i could see bands of magenta in sky. by that point i was too lazy to go back outside.

i found a 1/2L clamp-top glass jar when i came home from my parents' monday evening. it still worked but the rubber gasket wasn't the right size. after washing the jar, i replaced the gasket with a spare fido-jar gasket. it was the perfect size and now the jar is as good as new. clamp-top glass jars is one of those things if i see lying out on the curb i have to take it.

for dinner i tried trader joe's spicy alfredo fusilloni pasta with gochujang sauce. i didn't understand the instructions as there was no mention of warming up any sauce packets. when i opened up the package i realized why: the sauce portion were frozen and cut into squares (like butter) that would melt when you heated the pasta. the pasta itself was okay - i wouldn't know it was korean flavored unless you told me but it was spicy - but the portions seemed small for such a large package. i undercooked the pasta so they were a little chewy, if i were to have this again i'd cook the noodles an extra few minutes.

there were actually people in the garden this morning when i went to go water: gene, the gardener growing a bunch of dahlias, and my neighbor jen. both were leaving by the time i showed up.

my days have become a blur, i had a hard time remembering what day it was. it was hot and humid enough today that we didn't bother setting up the patio deck, figured no sane person would want to eat outside when there was cool free AC indoors. that gave the passion flowers plenty of sunshine, as 5 flowers opened today. or so i thought, because by late morning the sky turned a dusky orange. i've seen this before: wildfire smoke. sure enough, forest fire smoke from ontario was engulfing much of northeastern US. so much so that it actually lowered the temperature, as today was supposed to be a super hot day but only ended up just a normal hot day. the sun was a red ball in the sky through the haze.

i made batches of black soy noodles and tea eggs. my parents cut the salmon steaks into strips, marinated them, before roasting in the oven. my mother thought our regular customer allen was going to show up today even though my father said he was going to the cape. we had his foods ready but he never came even though his car was still in his driveway.

it didn't feel like it but we got busy today, give us a good start for the rest of the week. lunchtime was busy, midafternoon we had another spike, and finally one last spike in the evening. a customer came in and ordered 2 dozen tea eggs for thursday. looks like i'll need to make another batch tomorrow. who orders that many tea eggs? honestly, a lot cheaper and easier if they just made their own. the amount they're paying is enough to buy a month long supply of eggs.

my sister informed us a neighbor was tossing out some stuff. my father and i went out to rummage. we managed to pick up 3 ikea kallax shelving units (2x4 square storage cases) and a cordless waterpik.

close to 3pm i made a batch of mojito to coincide with the world cup match. during the initial blend - with simple syrup and rum and peeled lime and mint leaves - i added a cup of ice. in the secondary blend i added 3 more cups. that was enough to make 4 servings. however we didn't drink any since we still had to work, and i left the mojitos in the freezer. i did save the lime peels, 20g worth this time, will soaked them sugar-salt-acid then turn them into faux lime juice tomorrow.

the game was between france and spain. france had a 40%+ chance of winning the world cup this year. i think they bought into their own hype. especially since today was bastille day, the french figured they couldn't lose. i've watched a lot of sports and have seen many times the favored team not win. spain scored at the 22 minutes mark with a penalty kick. that as basically a freebie. but france simply could not score a goal with all the talent they had. when spain scored again at 58 minutes, it started to look bleak for france. when the game finally ended and spain won 2-0, it was shocking.

in honor of sam neill, once i got back home and took a shower, i sat down to dinner (a leftover bento my mother made me) and watched the hunt for red october (1990) via pluto.tv on demand. yes there were commercial breaks but just a few, not enough to get too annoying. i must've seen red october when i was a kid, rented it on VHS. i must not have liked it because i barely remember anything from the movie. it's kind of a cerebral espionage yarn, the sort of stuff i appreciate more as an adult. i spoiled it by reading the full synopsis during a lull but even knowing what was going to happen, i still really enjoyed the film. it's a real guy's movie, other than jack ryan's wife (played by gates mcfadden, star trek doctor beverly crusher) and the few mentions of the soviet submarine captain's wife, there are no other women characters in the film.

the first news i saw this morning was the death of sam neill, age 78. the very first film i remember seeing him in was the thriller dead calm (1989) which also starred a young nicole kidman and billy zane. however i completely forgot he played damien in omen III (1981) which i would've definitely have seen as well. there was of course all the jurassic parks movies, but the two movies of his i love the most were from the 1990's: in the mouth of madness (1994) - one of the most unsettling horror i've ever seen - and event horizon (1997) - gothic space terror. i wasn't aware of his new zealand roots, i always thought he was british from his accent.

i found turkey poop on the sidewalk. afraid that people would step on it and cause a mess, i brought out the hose and rinsed off the sidewalk. i then ebiked to the community garden to water my plants, before getting to the cafe around 10am to water the plants there. the passion flowers were just about to open, i counted 6 today.

my mother didn't expect me to show up so early, thought i wouldn't get there until noontime. so my parents quickly got ready so we could do a waltham-cambridge supply run. yes i know, because we did a saturday morning supply run i said we didn't need to make another. but there were still things we were missing, like eggs and salmon.

we went to the waltham costco. we parked in the rightmost parking area, underneath a row of trees to give the car some shade. it is however an inconvenient spot as we needed to wheel our shopping cart between the parked cars in order to get into the store. costco today wasn't too busy. we got our eggs here, 180 eggs. this will last us 2 weeks. they've already started putting out the halloween decorates - and it's not even mid-july yet. this store carried ITO EN green tea, which we sell at the cafe. unfortunately we already bought two cases on saturday (about the same price). it's one of the few popular drinks we carry that isn't sweet. while waiting to pay, i saw a 100 inches hisense U6 HDTV on a cart with a taped reserved note. how do you even bring that thing home? it wouldn't fit most cars. later i looked up the price: $1700.

typically we make a trip to nearby market basket, but today we skipped that, and headed directly back to cambridge via the highway. passing through fresh pond we stopped at the trader joe's to get a few things (scallions, cucumbers, milk, bananas, salmon). my father stayed in the car with the AC running so the few frozen things we bought wouldn't completely thaw out in a hot car.

we arrived at the cafe around 12:30pm. after unloading the supplies and thawing out this week's foods, we returned to belmont.

for lunch i had some leftover pizza from yesterday and a slice of costco peach cake.

i checked our basement temperature/humidity sensor. after i turned on our dehumidifier yesterday, the humidity in the basement dramatically dropped, from 66% down to about 50%. the basement also felt a lot cooler too. when we got our rheem hybrid heat pump hot water heater, one of the things we were hoping for was it'd cool the basement and keep it less humid. yes it does take in some of that moisture to heat the water, but just not enough to dehumidify the basement. a dedicated dehumidifier is a lot more efficient. the rheem still saves us a lot of money though (versus a traditional electric hot water tank), and the ability to set up schedules and change the way it heats water is handy.

my father and i spent the rest of the afternoon working in the backyard. he pruned back some overgrowth by the western bed, pulling up spent money plants and foxgloves, tying back the honeysuckles. hopefully these steps will give more sun access to our bitter melon plants. they're all still alive, but nowhere as robust at the few bitter melons we're growing in our grow bags. my father said next year he's going to grow all the bitter melons from bottomless grow bags. i mixed a large bucket of miracle-gro general fertilizer and doused the bitter melons. we collected some foxglove seeds from dried foxglove flowers. we also collected a bunch of money plant seeds which we'll sprinkle on our southern border by the new fence.

i also weeded the raised beds. in the past i've put down salt marsh hay to keep the weeds from sprouting, but i've found it just gives pests a place to hide, so i stopped mulching. a lot of purslanes, a lot of cypress vines (particularly RB4, it's essentially a weed at this point), and another weed i couldn't identify. i pruned the tomatoes a little bit, reroutes some branches. finally, we manually strung up some bean stalks to the trellis lines, those that were having a hard time finding them naturally.

i spotted a few more vine borer holes on our squash stems and injected them with BTk solution. that stuff has a strong stinky smell and the odor is impossible to wash off you hands once it dries. another strange thing i noticed is one of our swiss chards has bolted and producing seeds. i thought they were biennials, but apparently this sometimes happen when plants get so stressed they forgo a season of growth and start making seeds.

in the late afternoon we went back inside the house. my sister stopped by briefly, didn't even take esmei out of the car, just told us to come out if we wanted to see her. it's esmei's birthday today, she's 3 years old now. my sister was taking her to a dog birthday party at her friend's house.

for dinner my mother stewed a pot of chicken wings with tofu and mushrooms.

after i returned home, i spent a good amount of time watering the front and back yard. i wasn't planning on it, but once again i noticed turkey poop on the sidewalk. i saw a suspicious-looking guy walking down the street casually tossing out pieces of bread. i asked him what he was doing, he said he was feeding the turkeys. i told him to stop it - not because of the turkeys (which i hate) - but because we have a neighborhood rat problem.

nothing good on television tonight. i ended up watching a bunch of youtube videos, learning about how to turn a cheap PC into a linux server for streaming videos, music, and even a photo cloud server.

i woke up to the news that lindsey graham passed away last night, age 71. cause of death was unknown, something about a sudden illness, but later revealed maybe a heart attack. he'd been in politics a long time, it's strange that a washington staple is now just suddenly gone. i have many gripes with him, but the most glaring is when he went from rational conservative in the mold of mccain to becoming a trump sycophant. his legacy is his craven attachment to power.

i went to water my community garden plot this morning. the plants in my grow bags are all doing well: tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, butterfly peas, hyacinth beans, kabocha squash. before luffas, before bitter melons, before beans, our first foray into climbing vining plants were squashes. because of vine borers, because of squash bugs, they just take too much effort to keep alive. nevertheless, there's something very rewarding about growing a squash. thankfully they grow fast, hopefully i can get one or two to mature before the plant itself eventually succumbs to pests. a few weeks back i said i didn't have any normal tomato fruits but i misspoke: i do in fact that regular tomatoes, hopefully i can harvest them in 2 more weeks. the leaves of my eggplant are massive. i've been pruning them the same way i prune tomatoes, by removing suckers and keeping a central stem. david has similar eggplants that he bought as full-size seedlings, but his plants are nowhere as large as mine.

i came back home and watered my front and back yard. i replaced the cheap plastic dollar store sprayer in the backyard with a nicer rubberized chrome sprayer i bought off of amazon during prime days.

i didn't get to the cafe until noontime, traveling via ebike. after putting away the tea eggs and leftover rice, i went outside and watered the plants. today 5 passion flowers bloomed.

when i finally got to my parents' place, they made breakfast for lunch: kielbasa sausages, fried eggs, korean-style glutinous rice pancakes.

i went outside to fly the drone. i was hoping if i flew high enough (1200ft) i could see boston harbor and maybe some tall ships. i got high enough to make out the harbor islands, but i didn't have the resolution to spot any ships. another thing i did with the drone was to take some aerial photos of our backyard garden. we've expanded our gardening with our sawhorse tables + EMT conduit trellises.

a lot of our grow bags vines were wilting from the heat. it's nothing fatal, but since we were home, it wouldn't hurt to water them again. because i turned on the basement dehumidifier (humidity was 60-65%), the dead lead acid battery kept alive by a 120v car battery charger no longer had a plug. instead i asked my father to disassemble one of our DIY 100Ah LiFePO4 batteries from the living room and move it to his bedroom, where we could then hook up the rain barrel pump and a 100W solar panel. the solar panel was our old one with the busted junction box. actually the junction box was still usable, just the two wires coming off the panel were beginning to fray and detach. instead of going through the hassle of installing a new junction box, we taped down the cables and caulked the exposed wires with the hopes of making it usable for the time being. it managed to generate 25W which is more than enough to recharge the rain barrel pump battery. our next solar project is to move another DIY battery into the garage, attach a solar panel, and have it run an on-demand pump for the front of the house.

only then did we finally water our plants. while watering the squashes, i noticed a few vine borer entry holes. two solution: cut off the leaves, or inject BTk solution. i went with the injection solution. my BTk is from 2024 so i'm hoping it's still effective. i used to dilute the solution, but now i inject the concentrate since i have so much. it's hard to say if it works or not, but if the squash plants don't die, then that's a sign of success.

a lot of potential luffa fruits. of course we can't tell if they're going to mature until they grow bigger, or maybe they might abort. usually baby luffas abort because they were never fertilized, but sometimes they abort if two luffa gourds are growing too close to one another. my father thinks we maybe start harvesting luffas by next week, since they grow pretty fast once they get started.

my sister came in the late afternoon and guilted my mother into taking a walk by telling her it was esmei's birthday tomorrow. they came back after just one hour, my mother had nearly uncontrollable diarrhea and had to cut short their hike. my father and i went to go see esmei in the car.

my mother was in no mood to make dinner so we ordered out. we have our usual circle of places we order from. originally it was burger king before my mother decided on pizza. domino's was having a $9.99 any size pizza with 6-7 toppings sale. it's kind of a trick because a typical pizza doesn't have that many toppings. it's essentially their old large pizza with 3 toppings deal, but that was $6.99, a $3 increase. nevertheless, domino's is still the cheapest pizza in town. it might not be as good as pizza from a local pizza joint, but we've gotten used to their pizzas.

going home via ebike was effortless. sometimes i cheated by using the throttle, but for the most part i pedaled. longer summer hours means i don't even need lights but they're built-in if i do need them.

can you believe i still haven't transferred over to my new macbook pro yet? it's almost been a year since i bought it, i'm still using my old macbook pro - slow, wonky speakers, barely any storage space. but it works and i've grown used to it, warts and all. one big reason is i still haven't found a suitable replacement for media pro, the app i use to catalog my photos that's no longer compatible with newer macs. every few months i go online and search, "media pro alternative". seems like i'm not the only one, there's a glaring hole in the macos software community for a proper digital asset manager in the style of media pro. new candidates this time includes photo supreme, daminion (windows OS only), PIXLpath, capture one pro, and XnView. the day i can find a rightful successor is the day i will final move over to the new macbook pro. it will also allow me to finally start adding photos to my blog, which has been a missing component for almost 2 years now.

my parents came to pick me up at 8am for a baifu/chinatown supply run. we went early so we could get back to the cafe to open up by 11am. by doing this it meant we wouldn't have to do a supply run this weekend.

we went to baifu/foodpak first. the area was still under heavy police supervision, making sure it doesn't revert back to skidrow while so many summer tourists are in town (this weekend was the tall ship celebration). we never been here this early on a saturday, so we didn't realize that it's their busiest time, when many local chinese restaurants do their supply runs before they open. fortunately most of them were leaving by the time we arrived.

baifu's banks of new glass door freezers near the entrance were all offline. they seem to have a perpetual problem keeping their refrigeration working. water drips that freeze into ice blocks or freezers not cold enough are constant issues. later when my father spoke with one of the employees, he told him it was too much hassle keeping those freezers working, as those freezers offer primarily single serving foods. you can still get those items, but you just need to buy in bulk. that's what we ended up doing, we got a whole case of frozen fried tofu squares for our vegetarian bento. carlos was our cart loader today, flirting with the hispanic cashiers. he seemed to recognize us, but maybe he was so friendly because my father slipped him a $5 tip.

next stop was ming's market in chinatown's outskirts. judging by the parking lot, it wasn't as busy as past visits (maybe because it was still early). but "not busy" ming's market is still crazy busy by normal standards, especially the produce department, which is like a live mosh pit of cart congestion and chinese folks grappling for vegetables. they didn't have any yellow daikons - they had the cheapest prices. maybe they don't carry them anymore? their prices on pad thai noodles ($2.19) was more than baifu ($1.75).

we left ming's market by 9:50am, took us just 20 minutes via berkeley-storrow drive to get to the cafe. we might consider early saturday morning supply runs more often: less traffic, fewer people (unless you're going to baifu), and leave us the rest of the weekend free.

earlier this morning at the cafe my father dropped off the AC my aunt gave us a few months ago. he examined it outside, gave the interior a quick rinse. he ran it briefly using an extension cord, said it was very loud. we packaged it back up. i didn't realize how flimsy the box was and accidentally dropped it on a milk crate, bruising my arm and skinning my knuckle. we moved the AC into the basement. after using a near silent inverter air conditioner, it's hard going back to a noisy traditional AC.

we had 7 passion flowers today. i noticed something: if the flower doesn't get enough sun, the male anthers will not fully open to expose the pollen. they will also not point fully downwards. my parents were posing with the flowers when a mother pushing a baby cart came by. "look at the flowers!" my mother told her. the woman said she thought those were just clematis, didn't realize they were passion flowers. i think a lot of people make that mistake.

i made another drink using lime juice and mint syrup. ice with tonic water, a dash of lime juice for flavor, a dash of mint syrup for color. it wasn't bad, refreshing, though once again i couldn't really taste the mint, just the lime.

we were semi-busy today, nearly made our daily average, but still good enough to end the week on a high. july after all is one of our busiest months. little moustache came to eat with his girlfriend, he comes about once a month. as an added bonus, i gave him some pickled red onions. speaking of which, i added 1 cup of water to the white + cider vinegar pickled onions and transferred it to a larger jar. unfortunately it's still pretty sour, i think that batch is for personal usage only. the white vinegar + water batch tastes much better. later in our final hour, two guys came in and ordered the salmon bento. instead of sauteed tomatoes and onions (which is a pain to make), we're substituting that with the pickled onions. not sure how they liked it: one guy ate it, while the other guy didn't. it looks pretty though, the magenta color.

trying something new this weekend: normally i make a new batch of tea eggs for next week. but we've noticed the tea eggs sometimes develop a slimy outside. so instead of doing that, i'll make a new batch tuesday morning, to maintain freshness.

my original plan was to make a new batch of taiwanese paocai after work with the 6 taiwanese cabbage we bought this morning from ming's market. it takes 3 hours to make, so i'd be finished by 7pm. but my parents said i should start making it earlier - especially when we were very busy in the afternoon. so i did that, weighed everything, i had 18 lbs. of cabbage this time. my mother helped my shred the cabbage, which saved me a lot of time. by the time we closed and my parents went home, i was just about to mix in the sugar and vinegar and package everything into 32 oz. containers. i ended up with 10 containers this time, plus an 11th that was mostly liquid and a bit of cabbage.

i finished by 5pm. because i got a ride this morning, it meant i didn't have a ride and had to walk home. i didn't mind, it was such a nice summer day (80's and sunny). walking by the graham & parks school, i noticed an eastern hops hornbeam tree outside.

the england-norway game was underway (started at 5pm). i pulled up the game on youtube tv a few times on my phone but it was hard walking and watching at the same time. as soon as i got home england scored a goal. i took a quick shower and finished watching the game. i drank a can of henry hotspur's hard pressed cider which i got from trader joe's. it has just the right amount of sweetness, but with some hops to give it a beer taste. because i didn't eat anything all day, i was quickly drunk with the 5.5% alcohol. before the halftime break norway scored an equalizer.

my sister dropped by and gave me an iggy's BLT on focaccia bread. esmei was in the backseat, wet from taking a swim. i ate half the sandwich, saving the other half for later.

england won 2-1 in extra time. jude bellingham scored both goals for england. i wasn't aware of his game so i looked him up. didn't surprise me that he plays for real madrid. after the game i fell asleep on the couch. i woke up close to 9pm, before the start of the argentina-switzerland game. my body was all achy. i went to the kitchen to get the other half of the BLT.

the argentina-switzerland game was interesting. argentina scored early in the first 10 minutes. then they didn't score the rest of the match in regular time. switzerland scored an equalizer at the 67 minutes mark. unfortunately one of their players got a yellow card - his second - which became an automatic red (however unfair) - so switzerland was down to just 10 players the rest of the game. in extra time, argentina finally managed to score. not just once, but twice. where was this earlier? argentina won 3-1. they face england on wednesday, in a historical rematch of the 1986 world cup game where maradona won through "the hand of god".

i started reading caitlin starling's the luminous dead last night. i read the starving saints a while back and liked it, and went in search of some of her other works. the luminous dead was actually her first novel. previously i was reading the buffalo hunter hunter but after a few nights i got bored with it and simply read the wikipedia synopsis.

i went to the community garden to water before heading to market basket to get some supplies. it was around 9:30am by the time i made it to the cafe.

i made two versions of pickled onion slices:

in this version i split the portion of vinegars: white and apple cider. the apple cider vinegar gave the pickling a slight amber color.

in the mild version, i used half white vinegar and the other half warm water. this makes the pickled onions less sour. using just white vinegar also adds no additional colors, and the pickled red onions become a beautiful magenta color.

i left them to refrigerate all day. i wasn't sure when they'd be ready, i read as early as after half an hour of pickling. at the end of the day i tried the pickled onions. the double vinegar version had a deeper color, probably because it has twice the amount of vinegar. it tasted super sour however, couldn't taste any other flavors. the onion slices were crunchy though. the mild version was better. i wasn't sure about the water, but it actually dilutes the vinegar, allowing all the flavors to come through: sour, sweet, salty. i might try to save the double vinegar pickling by adding some water, or add more sugar, in which case it'll start becoming similar to my taiwanese paocai pickling which uses a 1:1 sugar:vinegar pickling ratio.

only two passion flowers bloomed today. my father thinks it needs a tray underneath the pot to capture the water, but my thinking is that would encourage root rot. because it doesn't have a tray anymore, the passion flower plant gets dry much faster. in that case we just need to water more. we also definitively discovered today that the vines do in fact drip water. it has to pump water through all parts of the vines; that level of water circulation creates a lot of pressure inside the vines, which results in the vines occasionally dripping water.

if i thought yesterday was busy, then it pales in comparison to how busy it got today. we got two spikes - noontime and 4pm. we sold about 2 dozen bentos of every denomination, and combined with the cash transactions, we nearly had 3x our daily average. it never got too crazy, but the customers were relentless, they kept coming. my aunt showed up around 12:30pm when there was a brief lull but left when we started getting busy again. we noticed several large groups of people (all driving) that we've never seen before. my personal theory is they're normally chinese restaurant patrons, but because the restaurant is closed for a month (for vacation), these orphaned customers have no choice but to come to our cafe. we're hoping it won't be as busy tomorrow. maybe a lot of people will go see the tall ships, and we'll only get a handful of customers, which is fine with us.

around 2pm i went to trader joe's to get some baby cucumbers and bananas. in the sky was a dramatic mix of different clouds. coming back, i came across a silk tree i never noticed before. this one most of its flowers have already bloomed.

today's world cup game was at 3pm between spain and belgium. i was rooting for spain only because i didn't want belgium to win after they defeated the US team. spain ended up winning 2-1. they'll face france tuesday 3pm (french bastille day no less, the symbolism).

i took another stab at making some non-alcoholic mojito. i started by creating ice slush. i filled the blender with ice cubes, added enough water to get the ice to float, then blended away. i poured out the ice water and what i have left is slush. i filled a tall glass 2/3 with slush, then added about 2 oz. of faux lime juice, 2 oz. of mint syrup, and filled the rest of the glass with italian sparkling mineral water. the drink looked pretty - with a gradient of green. the mint syrup turned the slush a pale green color, while adding sweetness. however, the overall taste was mostly of lime juice, 2 oz. is just too much. when i make my classic mojito (blend everything with rum), there's only about .75 oz. of lime juice, most likely less. lime juice can be too overpowering. next time, use less.

i took home a leftover bento for dinner. i thought i might run into jeff from upstairs, but i checked my webcam and saw him leave with luggage this morning at 6:30am. there was nothing good on television, so i ended up watching true grit (2010) on pluto.tv while i ate.

i went to bed early - around 10am - after realizing i didn't have to go to bed after midnight. unfortunately i ended up waking early as well and didn't fall back to sleep afterwards. i was ready to leave by 8am, but that was too early. so i stuck around the house until 8:30am, making a trip to the community garden to water my plants first. my tomatoes are monsters now, you wouldn't even know i grew them from seeds. no fruits yet on my july 4th tomatoes, but there's a strand of cherry tomatoes. my kabocha are growing well too, already have a squash the size of a mandarin. i'm letting them fruit as soon as possible, since i never know when vine borers will eventually kill the plant. my peppers are doing okay, very leafy, not a lot of height. i wonder if i should've pruned them like i did with the tomatoes and eggplant.

no passion flowers yet when i got to the cafe, and all the ones that bloomed yesterday had already closed. around 10am i went out and had another look, when the sun was shining directly on the passion vines. i counted 4 new flowers, but my father found another one hidden behind the belle of india jasmine. later 2 more popped open, for a total of 6 flowers today. we removed the bottom dish from the passion vine yesterday, so the roots don't soak in water. i watered it with some miracle-gro bloom booster flower food. later before we left we watered it again, allowing the water to drain.

we had an insanely busy lunch time today, made as much in an hour as a typical day. a large group of astrophysicists from the neighboring observatory all showed up, all new customers except one, a young man who always gets the chicken curry. he told my father today was his last day, as he's getting transferred elsewhere.

afterwards my mother made some rice noodle soup with a bone broth my father had been simmering all day (for the ramen). rice noodle soup is one of my favorites and i used to make it all the time at home with leftover rotisserie chicken that i'd turn into a chicken stock.

i made a new batch of tea egg spices, 20 packets, 10g each. the last time i made a batch was 2 months ago.

the main event of the day was the france-morocco match at 4pm. it was happening in "boston" stadium, the last of the games we're hosting. it was a boring game in the first half, the score 0-0. in the second half france managed to score twice, including a goal from mbappe. france won 2-0.

we were about to close - less than half an hour left - before a group of elderly customers came in to eat. my father told them we were closing at 6:30pm but they didn't seem to care. they ate until 6:45pm, before another friend of theirs came in. they wanted to order more food but my father told them the kitchen was closed. they finally got the message and left soon afterwards.

i didn't get back home until 7pm. i watered the front and back yard before going inside. it was pleasantly cool inside the house, a farcry from the past week or two when it's been like a cauldron. i took a shower before having dinner - a can of sweet corn.

there was nothing good on television so i scoured pluto.tv for something to watch. i ended up watching shooter (2007) with mark wahlberg. i love a good revenge movie and it has kate mara at her peak.

the passion flowers that bloomed yesterday were still open by the time i got to the cafe this morning. something about the overcast rainy weather yesterday kept these flowers in bloom. however by the afternoon they finally closed up. in their place were 4 new flowers - actually 3 because my father accidentally pulled a new one off thinking it was an old flower.

i finished making my lime pseudo citrus. the lime peels had turned slimy overnight and became an olive color. i added 250g of water, blended it in the vitamix, then filtered the liquid through a strainer. the result juice very fragrant, very tart, hard to tell it wasn't freshly squeezed lime juice.

next i made a batch of mint syrup with all the spearmint leaves i harvested over the weekend. i first blended 250g of sugar with 250g of water. i blanched the mint - stems and all - in some boiling water for 10-15 seconds. i then dunked them in an ice bath before pulling off the leaves. i blended the mint leaves with the sugar syrup, filtering the slurry through a sieve. the result was 400g of deep green minty sweet syrup.

i decided to make a alcohol-free mojito with the ingredients i created. into the blender i added 2 oz. of mint syrup, 2 oz. of faux lime juice, 4 oz. of tonic water (instead of rum), and 3 cups of ice. because i didn't have enough liquid ingredients, the ice clogged the blender once it turned to slush. the resulting drink was tart and slightly sweet, tasted wholly of lime, none of the mintiness. the only thing the mint syrup contributed was the color. i poured a bit more mint syrup directly to make it sweeter. because the syrup is so heavy, it sank to the bottom, giving the drink a nice green gradient.

a bit of maintenance news, i updated my pixel 7 to android 17 (from android 16). i don't think it made much difference, but i like running the latest system.

it was a slow day. more customers in the first half of the day, barely any customers in th second half. that was surprising, because i figured with the nicer weather today we'd definitely be busy. a lot of our collegiate customers are gone during the summer, we then we get a new batch of summer school students. my godmother came around lunchtime, but left when we started to get a little busy.

my container of captain jack's deadbug brew arrived night monday. i taught my father how to use it - at what concentration (1 teaspoon per 300ml spray bottle) - so he could go home tonight and spray our vining plants: luffas, bitter melons, squashes. cucumber beetles have been eating the leaves. i'm hoping the spinosad in the deadbug brew can kill them.

my mother made vegetarian (with eggs) fried rice tonight because we had so much white rice left over. i took home a container for dinner.

i've had this itch on my feet ever since the winter, so well over half a year already. i thought it was athlete's foot, but i don't have any telltale signs, like redness or rashes. i'm wondering if it's a side effect of all the drugs i take for my various ailments. like random dry coughing was a side effect of a particular high blood pressure medication i used to take. but just to rule some things out, i applied some fungicide cream on my feet this morning before putting on my socks. i'm going to do this for a week, see if the itching will go away.

it was raining so hard this morning, i was hoping my father would call me asking if i needed a ride. but that call never happened, plus it was easier if i biked to the cafe, since i could then go home on my own and not need another ride. so i put on my rain gear and left. i managed to take a new video of the leaking gutter on renee's side of the house. the ride was uneventful, i stayed dry, but i had zero peripheral vision wearing the hood of my rain jacket. eventually i just whipped off the hood so i could see better.

because of the overcast conditions yesterday and the rainy weather today, the three passion flowers that bloomed yesterday hadn't fully closed yet. by 10am - when new flowers should be blooming - there was no activity today. maybe passion flowers need the sun to tell it to open. however when i went outside again around 11:30am, there was a bunch of new flowers. despite the rain, they still open regardless even though there are no pollinators. we had 7 flowers today, a surprise given how grey and wet it was. i did notice that some of the newer flower buds have started to abort. from all the literature i've read, it seems like a symptom of root rot, which happens when we soak the roots, which is what my father's been doing. later we finally removed the tray which will hopefully help with drainage and prevent root rot.

my father left before 11am to go pick up my taiwanese aunt and 2nd aunt and take them to south station. when i saw my taiwanese aunt last night i totally forgot that would be the last time i'd see her. my mother baked some scallion bread for them to eat on their trip. my taiwanese aunt is returning to flushing where she's visiting her granddaughter; my 2nd aunt is just tagging along. originally she wanted to stay there a few weeks (work be damned apparently), but my niece only has a small studio apartment so living conditions are cramped. my 2nd aunt will come back next thursday, which means i'll need to work two wednesdays.

my sister showed up with esmei around 11:30am. our routine is after esmei uses the bathroom, she can come back and my mother will give her a hard-boiled egg. i don't know how healthy it is for a dog to have an egg a day. a dog esmei's size should only be getting 1-2 eggs a week.

my father came back around noontime. he said it took such a long time because shortly after he picked them up, my 2nd aunt told him she forgot to bring her phone, so they had to turn back for her to get it. the bus didn't leave until 1:30pm; they could've picked an earlier time, but my taiwanese aunt said she wanted to sleep in so they picked a later time. it arrives in new york city right around rush hour, plus the all-day rainstorm today meant they didn't get there until 6:30pm. i could track my 2nd aunt's progress on google map. the driver for some reason decided to go through providence first.

despite the rain, it was business as usual in terms of customers. we had a lunchtime spike and another spike around evening time. we sold a little bit of everything today. that indian economics student who got into a california grad school came back today and stayed pretty much the whole day, working on his computer, ordering a bunch of foods. our regular crystal also came in the evening, order a few things, put us above our daily average.

there was a noontime match between argentina and egypt. i wonder if they scheduled it so early (instead of in primetime) just because the organizers figured it was all but certain argentina would win. except they forgot to tell egypt that. egypt managed to score 2 goals against argentina. with about 10 minutes left in regulation, argentina still had zero points. maybe born out of desperation, maybe argentina finally realized they're the defending world cup champions, but they managed to score 2 goals to tie the match going into stoppage time. during that 7 minutes, argentina managed to score again to finally win 3-2. it was pretty amazing. even messi - who's pretty much seen it all in terms of football - broke out into tears over what happened. what an amazing game that they just happened to schedule it so not many people could watch it.

i had more of my sister's leftover soup. i also had some leftover sausages and pineapples. those pineapples are really good. super sweet and juicy. but the best way to grill them is over a coal fire, where you can an additional smokey goodness. i'm tempted to bring my weber kettle grill to belmont so we can do some smoked grilled pineapples. we've experimented with grilling pineapples in the past, but they were never this sweet and juicy. maybe the secret is cutting them into cubes, putting them on skewers, and grilling on high heat (550 degrees).

close to closing time, i started preparing another batch of mojitos. i was going to save the peels this time and turn them into pseudo citrus. 3 limes should've given me 30g of peels, but i only got 15g, so i just halved the remaining ingredients: 15g sugar, 12g citric acid, 6g malic acid, 1/2g salt. i put everything into a small jar and will leave it rendering overnight. tomorrow i'm going to add 250g of water and blend everything before filtering out the liquid to get my faux lime juice.

i used a y-peeler to flay the limes. before i used them in the mojitos, i used a knife to remove the white pith other layer (which is bitter). i'm not sure where i got this frozen mojito recipe. most recipes just call for lime juice, but i blend the whole limes (without skin). i added the lime, mint leaves, simple syrup (1 cup), and white rum (1 cup) to the blender. my father helped me pulverize everything, before i added 4 cups of ice. in hindsight i should've added even more ice, because the mojito came out way too sweet, and i only managed to get 3-1/2 servings when i got 5 servings last time.

i stayed and watched the end of the colombia-switzerland match. the 0-0 game ended up penalty kicks, switzerland won.

good thing i waited, because previously we had a torrential downpour. it was still raining when i left, but a steady shower like this morning, nothing too terrible. my rain gear kept me dry. i took home a container of leftover pasta salad for dinner and a jar of mojito. it felt nice going home and not have to water my garden. i probably won't need to water for a few days given how much rain fell (and continued to fall).

jeff returned to the house today. i know this because he turned on the front porch light. i also heard him upstairs. how long he'll be in town i'm not sure. he's only here until the end of the month. i still don't know why he's leaving so suddenly, hoping to bump into him this week to get the details.