the honkfest parade was today, the last parade of the season. haven't gone to many parades this year, just pride and puerto rican, didn't even go to any of the carnival parades. it was an opportunity to try out my everyday-carry topo mountain bag as well as my new 18-135mm lens.

i left the house around 11am. i packed my contigo tumbler with some hot cinnamon tea. i've found in years past it's easier just to walk down to davis square instead of biking. that way i can follow the procession on foot as they made their way to harvard square, picking up photo opps as i go. the topo bag was okay, i was only carrying one other lens (55-250mm) and my 3D camera, so it was pretty empty. the padding on the strap was in a weird place, i tried adjusting the straps but couldn't get it perfect.

i arrived in davis square way too early - 11:25am. car traffic through the square had already been stopped, but there was no spectators yet. here and there i saw parade participants heading to the staging area: they're the ones in costumes and/or carrying an instrument case.

i found a good spot near the start of the procession. i double checked i had the right settings on my camera. today was an overcast day, good for proper exposure, but a little dark. i shot on manual at f/8 and 1/1600 sec which i've found is the best setting for capturing action.

i started with the new 18-135mm lens first. it allows for a wider shot with a medium zoom. i liked the wide angle, but didn't like the zoom length, didn't think it was enough. the lens was fast though, thanks to the USM focus, which feels just as fast as my 55-250mm. i started shooting, but because too many people were crowding in front of me, i decided to walk a bit until a found another clearing.

once i saw most of the procession, i fast walked it towards harvard square, changing back to my more familiar 55-250mm lens. i stopped at the intersection of mass ave and waterhouse street, on the side heading towards harvard square. i parked myself behind an orange traffic barrel and continued shooting. i finished the day with about 1160 photos.

i bumped into renee who was marching with one of the groups, then bumped into anne who was speaking with someone on the sidewalk. since i was passing by the community garden, i decided to take a peek at my plants. there was half a dozen more red serrano peppers. there were also a few red tomatoes. i didn't bother watering since it's going to rain later today.

i didn't get back home until 1:30pm. i used the bathroom and packed up my things before leaving by 2pm. i decided to take my marin bike: it's small enough that i can throw it in the back of the honda element when my father drives me back home later tonight.

i stopped by the cafe to put away the rice and tea eggs, grabbing some sweet butter melon seeds for my mother, before continuing to belmont. i haven't ridden a regular bike to my parents' place all year long, normally taking the ebike because it's faster (much to the detriment of my normal exercise routine, i've actually gained weight this summer). i forgot about the hills! but there's something fulfilling about riding on your own steam, a good kind of exhaustion when you finally arrive at your destination.

i moved my bicycle and my new suitcases into the car, save us the trouble of having to do it later when it's raining and in the dark.

my mother heated up some chicken luffa soup for my for lunch. it smelled awfully fishy (i think there was fish balls in the soup) but tasted much better after i added some hot sauce. there was an early afternoon patriots game already in progress. when i saw the score earlier, it was something like 7-14 new england lead. patriots seemed very much in command of the game so i didn't pay close attention, just cheered whenever they scored. patriots won 17-45, drake maye threw 5 touchdowns and rushed for one more.

my father had cleaned up all the luffas from our sawhorse platform trellises. he said the vines had withered away already, the plants succumbing much easier to the cold weather when they're grown in the grow bags. the ground-grown luffas are still alive but now growing. i didn't go out into the backyard since by that point it'd already started to rain.

i helped my father fill in his mail-in ballot.

for dinner we ordered some thai chicken and rice from what da chick in watertown. we haven't eaten there in a while. the serving sizes seemed to have gotten bigger. the fried chicken bones also seemed to be from a fresh batch. my mother and i got both got the roasted chicken (mostly because of the sauce), and my father got the combo (poached and crispy). we went to go pick up our order around 6pm, the rain started to gain intensity.

my father gave me a ride back. after unloading the suitcases and bicycle, i gave him back their old suitcases along with a 13 gallon kitchen trash can filled with the the drip irrigation kit i decided not to use anymore along with a bag of red seedless grapes.

my own mail-in ballot arrived today. i filled it out after a shower. MA midterm election isn't as exciting as in some battleground states, but it's important to do your part to vote, even though the outcome here in this state seems already decided.

i managed to almost get 8 hours of sleep last night. the cooler temperature helps with sleeping as the body naturally wants to stay in the warm bed longer. i cleaned up my deck, moving my plant shelving and unused pots into the basement. i also took down the sunshade for the porch but left the one over the garden for now. i wanted more sunlight inside the house, particularly for the new double prism rainbow maker i got a few days ago. i went down to the basement to take some photos of how different bikes routed their cable housing. i might do the cable housing for the trek hybrid later this afternoon when i get back from work.

today was a busy day at the cafe, helped in part by the soft opening of the next door bakery, which fed us some new customers, many of which were spanish. my sister went to the store and bought a few items for us to try. there was a banana bread with bitter dark chocolate and cardamon, a large cream puff stuffed with pistachio cream, and a croissant with pistacho filling. they were all pretty good, but i kind of miss the asian-inspired pastries of the previous baker, i think her stuff more closely jive with our own menu.

fearing we'd run out of rice, we cooked 3 cups around 3pm. so of course the rice jinx continues, and we promptly stopped seeing customers. my mother had a brookline haircut appointment at 5pm. the hairdresser called her up around 3:30pm and asked if she could come at 4:30pm instead. so my parents had to leave at 4pm, which meant my 2nd aunt couldn't get a free ride home. right around closing time however a customer came walking in even though we already turned off the lights. he wanted a chicken bento, my 2nd aunt and i quickly made one for him while my parents left for brookline. my 2nd aunt left while i stayed behind to take care of the rice after it finished cooking (somebody forgot to press the cook button on the rice cooker and we only found out late; we couldn't just leave the soaked rice so we had no choice but to cook it). finally i went home.

i was in no mood to do any bike repairs. either i do it next wednesday or wait until i get back from vacation. there's no hurry, i'm not riding the trek hybrid anytime soon, i have plenty of other bikes. instead i went to star market to get some sale items: häagen-dazs ice cream, 1L polar seltzers, and red grapes. i actually should cut back on groceries, as anything i don't finish eating will sit in my fridge for a month.

i got hungry and ate the three leftover slices of frozen pizza around 6pm.

i downloaded the complete collection of epic illustrated, the marvel comics anthology for mature readers. it only ran between 1980-1986, but i remember i had half of all the issues if not more in my teenage comic book collection. rereading them was a trip down memory lane. the stories i've long forgotten, but seeing specific frames would trigger some long lost memory. i also downloaded the complete collection of marvel's savage tales (volume 2). i actually had a subscription, didn't realize it only ran for 8 issues (bimonthly, 1985-1986) before it was cancelled. john severin was the artist i liked most, who also did work for EC comics (before my time), mad magazine, and cracked magazine.

i spent the rest of the evening setting up my new macbook pro (not so new, i've had it for over a year now), which i'm bringing with me on my vacation. i transferred over the preference and application support files for bbedit and photoshop from the old machine to the new machine. bbedit seemed fine, but my cracked version of photoshop broke. i downloaded a vibe-coded copy of photocraft - the AI generated photoshop clone - but it's only in alpha phase and doesn't have all the functions yet (like the ability to have floating tool panels instead of everything in a single window). i had no choice but to erase the photoshop (2025) i had and reinstall a new one (2026). a little bit involved, but i got it installed and it seems to be working so far. as for the photoshop preferences, i'll just copy them over manually. another important thing i migrated over were my stickies. i actually use this very ancient macos app to store all my passwords (yes, not very secure). it failed to migrate when i set up the new macbook pro, and apparently there's no easy migration path besides just copying the data manually, which was what i did.

instead of going to the cafe this morning, i went to walgreens first to pick up a few prescriptions. the pharmacy doesn't open until 9am. i was picking up some prescription extensions so my medication doesn't run out when i'm on vacation. the pharmacy is busy in the morning, as half a dozen other customers were also looking to get their prescriptions.

by the time i got to the cafe, it was almost opening time. a bunch of packages arrived at my parents' place yesterday, they brought a few things with them this morning. my mother brought her new tozo NC9 hybrid active noise cancelling earbuds. i didn't expect it to so tiny, so could hide the whole thing in the palm of your hand. i helped her set it up. it took a while, and nobody what i did i couldn't get it to connect even though the battery case was nearly 100%. then i realized it's because of the plastic film over the contact connections. once i removed that, the earbuds connected effortlessly.

it was my first day carrying my new pixel 9 pro, a phone that'd ironically been sitting in my house since august. now that i have my new phone, it was time to set up all the apps i needed for china. first i made an alipay account using my phone number. when i tried to add a credit card though, it rejected it for security reasons, and gave me instructions to appeal their decision, which included verifying my identity by uploading photos of my passport, my credit card, and me holding the passport. that's a lot of personal data shared just to sign up for a payment system that's only used in china. i skipped it for the time being. i had better luck with wechat pay, but i did have to submit a photo of my passport.

kathy showed up in the late morning, came to pick up a bento box for her grandson after first phoning it again. she wanted a combo bento but my mother said no (how would we sell the other halves?) but gave it to her anyway despite my protest. no combos!

my aunt showed up around that time as well. she gave everyone some travel spending money, one of those rare occasions where the entire family was going abroad. she was kind of meandering around while we started getting busy, before she told us her biotech company laid her off after nearly 40 years of service and through multiple mergers. the word is they're going to outsource her entire department. they gave her 1-1/2 years of health insurance as a severance package, and by the time that's over with, she'll be eligible for medicare.

from 11am to 2pm we were very busy. after that, not so much. but just like all the days this week, today was deceptively profitable. that lunch time slam made us enough that we could just basically coast through the rest of the day. not sure what tomorrow saturday will be like, but if it's anything like this week, it's going to be another busy day.

i got sleepy today. wednesday night i slept for 5 hours, and last time i slept for just 4 hours. i can't run a sleep deficit, can't get exhausted before my trip, liable to get sick. fortunately i can sleep in a little bit saturday morning, provided the backyard construction is going full tilt.

close to closing time a new customer came in. he told us he'd just gotten back from a 3 week trip to taiwan and was feeling nostalgic for taiwanese food, so he ordered a bento. he said he was vegan, so his only option was the tofu (or "bean curd" as my father continues to call it, not sure if many people use that antiquated term anymore) minus the tea egg. he cleaned his plate, leaving behind some empty edamame shells.

my parents stayed behind to eat some fried rice my mother was making. she asked if i wanted any, i said no, said i had a frozen pizza waiting for me at home. i took a shower went i got back, preheating the oven. i then baked that aforementioned pizza for 30 minutes, eating half, saving the rest for tomorrow.

while waiting for the pizza to finish baking, i uploaded some supporting documents to alipay, as part of the appeal process to get my credit card authorized. passport, credit card, and an unflattering photo of my holding my passport, all sent to alipay. it told me the review process would take 2 hours.

nothing good on television, so i ate while watching political videos on youtube. seems like every day the news gets better for democrats.

later i checked my alipay app. i got a notification: "appeal successful". so i tried adding my credit card again and this time it went through. when i tried to add my debit card (as a backup), i was once again denied pending a review.

another busy day at the cafe, we made the bulk of our profit between 11am to 3pm. after that business sort of tapered off. my mother thought columbus day long weekend would be slow, but judging from last year's columbus day weekend, we may be looking at a very busy saturday. we sold a lot of bentos (particularly salt & pepper chicken, which we're now down to one box after my father just fried a new batch on tuesday) and black soy noodles; i ended up cooking the noodles 4 times. i also made a new batch of tea eggs, we'll need to get more eggs this weekend.

so my replacement google pixel 9 pro was supposed to arrive today, after it was supposed to arrive last weekend. somehow i wasn't surprised but very disappointed when they moved the arrival date to next wednesday, with the caveat that if it still doesn't come, amazon will automatically cancel the order that i've been waiting for almost 2 months. i personally think the 3rd party seller is trying to get me to cancel, because they can sell the phone for much more than i paid. just keep on delaying shipment until i finally had enough and cancel the order. which is exactly what i did. i've decided to keep the first pixel 9 pro (P9P) that came back in august. yes it has a scratch on the screen, but i only paid $520 for it with zero taxes (it now sells for $570). i'll use it for a few years and then upgrade to a newer phone. what ticks me off is had i known the seller were going to yank my chain and keep on delaying the shipment, i could've been using the P9P for the past 2 months instead of waiting all this time.

kathy stopped by the cafe in the late morning, dropping off a bunch of plants she didn't want anymore, including almost a dozen potted hot pepper plants, including 2 ghost peppers. she also gave us two potted flower arrangements. she said we could overwinter the peppers in our grow room. that's a great idea, except we barely have anymore space left.

passion vine slow to flower these days because of the cold temperature, but today i spotted 2 flowers.

close to 3pm we finally had a lull where i could make a quick trip to trader joe's for supplies. once again they were out of edamame beans. coming back, i noticed my rear rack was crooked. that's when i saw the screw holding one of the bottom struts had gone missing.

after work my parents stayed behind to have some chicken noodle soup while i went home empty-handed to eat my leftover fried chicken. when i got back, i was outside trying to find a replacement screw for the rear rack. fortunately i have a large collection and after some finagling, finally found the right size to fix the rack.

i spent the rest of the evening setting up my pixel 9 pro. i started by applying a screen protector before putting it into the rubber phone case. i then migrated my data from my old phone (pixel 7) to the new phone. data migration is pretty routine these days, especially when you're doing a same brand migration. a part of me wants to start over fresh but migrating saves so much time. after it installed most of the apps, i went ahead and copied over some cracked apps to install (nytimes, washington post, spotify). i then logged into each app, making sure they worked. one sticking point was figuring out how to turn off location tracking on my old phone, so i don't get competing timelimes.

since i basically migrated most of my settings and apps over, it still felt like the old phone. the only time i'd notice the difference is when i use the camera. later i upgraded the OS to android 17. i didn't notice any difference, if there were any changes, they must've been very minute.

starting today i have exactly 2 weeks before i leave for taiwan. there's still a lot of preparations i haven't done yet. i need to migrate all my workflow over to my new macbook pro. i'm trying to set up a word press travel blog so i can do quicker updates. i need to think of gifts for people. i need to make my itinerary, figure out where i want to go, what i want to do, things i want to eat, things i want to buy. i haven't taveled in a while so i'm out of practice.

first thing i did this morning was go down to walgreens pharmacy. because i'd be on vacation for a month, some of my prescriptions might run out. i did an inventory last night and found out i only have a 20 day supply of ezetimibe. so i asked the pharmacist if i could get my refill early. i thought it was going to be complicated but the pharmacist said sure no problem. i then asked her if i had any other prescriptions that were due to expire before i got back. she found two more and added them to the refill list. she told they'd be ready by friday afternoon.

i went to market basket to get a few supplies for the cafe: milk, baby cucumber, 12-pack ginger ale, orange juice for my father. nothing for myself, i had a bunch of frozen foods in the freezer i want to finish. when i got back home, i pulled out a bunch of stuff from the basement i wanted to move to the cafe basement: small 18" weber kettle grill (i found a larger 22" weber grill earlier this year), sharp air conditioner, and a phillips 3-speed english bicycle i found a few months ago.

i then took the ebike to the cafe to drop off the supplies. i borrowed the car and drove back to my house to pick up the weber grill and air conditioner. there was no more room for a bike so i left it behind. i then drove back to the cafe and moved everything down into the basement.

i biked to belmont, where i took the other car to get some garden supplies. i went to hillside ace hardware store to get a 15 lbs bag of jonathan green winter survival lawn fertilizer (10-0-20) ($26). surprisingly, there was no taxes. is it because fertilizer counts as plant food? i then drove to the watertown home depot to get some potting soil. i got two bags of miracle-gro potting soil ($8 each, 25 qt) and a bag of vigoro potting soil ($8, 32 qt).

the potting soil is for the pepper plants i'm going to dig up and try to overwinter. however it was warm enough today that i'm going to wait before an actual killing frost to dig up the pepper plants, give the peppers a few more days to possible turn red (doubtful). i also need to repot one of the tradescantia into hanging planters. what i ended up doing was planting the rest of our potted foxgloves. this weekend (sunday) i'm going to clear RB3, dig up the rudbeckias and foxgloves and move them elsewhere. raised beds are too valuable a resource to devote to growing perennial flowers. i'm going to move them to some side plots.

i left belmont around 1pm. instead of going straight home, i took a detour to the community garden where i haven't visited since september. i was surprised to find about half a dozen red serrano peppers. i saw my first monkshood flower of the season. i also harvested a few tomatoes. after watering the garden i returned home.

i threw a frozen cordon bleu in the oven. it takes 35 minutes to bake a tiny little chicken morsel that i can practically eat in a single bite. while waiting for my lunch to finish baking, i looked at the star market circular and saw they had a sale on fried chicken. so i decided to get some fried chicken as well, as rode to the porter square store on my marin bike.

when i got back home, the cordon bleu still had 5 minutes left to bake. i ate a piece of fried drumstick and wing before the cordon bleu was finally ready. later i made a brown cow (vanilla ice and root beer).

i finally got around to doing some bike repairs. i jacked the trek fx hybrid on the repair stand and attached the kickstand with the new stainless bolt i got from aliexpress. these were 3/8"-16 socket head cap screws 1-1/4" long. after three tries, i finally got the right size, they fit perfectly. i did have to loosen the front derailleur to have enough clearance to use a 8mm hex wrench to attach the kickstand. after that i attached a front basket. this was previously on the 3-speed phillips, and one reason why i took that old bike was so i could pilfer the front basket. the cabling sort of got in the way on the trek fx, but i have to replace those anyway, they're too short after i replaced the handlebars.

i didn't do anything with the phillips bike other than to inflate the two flat tires (they filled up with a satisfying crunching sounds of the dried rubber wheels) and clean the frame with furniture polish. cabling on the phillips all work (a little sticky) with the exception of the rear brakes. this bike would be rideable if i changed out the cables.

because it was so hot today, i put my pepper plant back out on the 2nd floor deck. maybe a few more days of sun might turn those green cayenne red. i took the empty 13-gallon trash can from the basement and filled it up with water. this used to be my aquarium cistern. i'm now going to use it as the reservoir for my automatic houseplant drip irrigation.

today was the second and last day of amazon's october prime day. i bought some waffle knit thermal long sleeve shirts, they're my goto wear during the cold seasons. my jeans and chinos arrived in the evening. the chinos were amazon brand with stretch fabric, they fit pretty well. i got them in straight, but maybe i could've also gotten them in skinny. straight gives me a little more room if i'm wearing thermal underwear underneath them during the winter. i got a pair of amazon jeans. it was stretch fabric but it felt a little tight. maybe they just need to be broken into. finally two pairs of levi's jeans, one straight one regular, but i couldn't tell the difference. they were comfortable, great fit, but i could only get them in long so they need to be hemmed (which i'll do in taiwan).

for dinner i ate a few more pieces of fried chicken. it finally hit me, that gross queasy feeling i get after eating greasy fried chicken.

i guess nobody told my father he had to deep fry a new batch of salt & pepper chicken because we nearly ran out on saturday. we first had to toast the sichuan peppercorn before blending it into fine powder for the marinade on the chicken that had to be defrosted first. after dredging the marinated chicken in coarse sweet potato powder, he deep fried them. the whole thing took much of the morning.

i brought in some china money to give to my mother for their vacation. on a whim i decided to flash the renminbi with a UV light. besides speckled with color UV threads, the paper money also featured an invisible glowing "100" mark that can only be seen with UV light. i also tried it with a NTD$1000 bill and it also had special hidden UV patterns.

it didn't feel like we were that busy today. sure, it got a little crazy around lunchtime, but nothing unusual. so i was surprised when my mother told me we made above our daily average by day's end. that's a good thing, we need all the profit we can make since we're closing the cafe for 2-1/2 weeks at the end of october.

the big news today was another amazon prime day. i told my mother who didn't seem interested at first until i saw her browsing the amazon app for deals. she wanted to get a new set of luggage, was afraid the suitcases she gave me would break, especially since one of them has a bad zipper. i personally prefer a hardshell suitcase versus the traditional soft fabric ones. there was samsonite of course, but a cheap chinese brand kept popping up - coolife - and we ended up getting a set (20-24-28) for $114 in purple. unfortunately it's not due to arrive until next wednesday, so that's cutting it close.

temperature tonight is supposed to drop into the 30's. not enough to frost around the city, but further out in the suburbs and beyond will basically mean the end of the growing season. i loaded up the car with some outdoor deck plants - the indian jasmine and the honeysuckle. the potted passion vine is still out there and should really be moved but difficult because all its vines are intertwined on the deck railing. it will need to be cut out. we're trying to save some of the vines for cuttings, don't know if we'll succeed.

my mother packed me a leftover bento for dinner, some ground beef and fermented long beans from last night. once i got back home, i moved all my outdoor houseplants inside the house. would they have survived the night outdoors? probably, but why risk it? they should be coming inside anyway, so i can set up the automated watering system while i'm gone.

after a shower i had dinner. i spent the rest of the night watching political videos on youtube. i also watched a well-made video recreating the events of apollo 13 using computer animation and actual command center audio during that time.

i woke up at 8am this morning to ride down to market basket to get a few paocai ingredients (vinegar, salt, sugar) then go down to the cafe to make a new batch of paocai. i had 4 large heads of taiwanese cabbage but it was way too much, a total of 27 lbs. i removed the lightest head and was left with a more workable 20 lbs, 19 lbs. after i removed the cores.

it takes about 3 hours to make a batch of taiwanese paocai, from start to finish. working on a day when we're closed allowed me work peacefully. watch some television, refill the drink fridge, vacuum the floor, thaw some foods for tomorrow, water the plants. i ended up making 11 containers of paocai, with a leftover container of sugar vinegar for my mother to use for pickling the cucumbers.

i finally left around 12:30pm. i bumped into my sister walking esmei. esmei was all excited to see me, a farcry from her usual demeanor which is bored indifference. i think she only gets excited when she sees people she recognizes outside of her usual spots.

i got to my parents' place with a bag of frozen wonton my mother would use to make lunch. my sister showed up as well, she had some wonton soup too before leaving.

today was the day where we move the bulk of our outdoor houseplants inside the basement grow room. before we did that, i sprayed everything with a bifenthrin solution (1/2 gallon water to 1/2 tbsp of concentrated bifenthrin) to kill any bugs. i use it primarily to get rid of mealybugs and spider mites. ever since i started using bifenthrin, i don't see them anymore. fungus gnats are a different story. there might be larvae in the soil. for that i use a combination of yellow sticky traps to monitor and trap for adults, and insect growth hormone as a soil drench to kill any larvae in the soil. it worked last season but by the time i figured out what i was doing, it was almost time to move all the plants back outside.

once i finished spraying, we started moving all the plants into the basement. my father and i assembled another metal rack shelving with wheels from parts i've found earlier this year. when it was all over, we had a pretty good looking grow room, all set for the long winter.

back upstairs, i added some more garvee portable AC heat pump commands. the on/off button was more complicated than we thought. not only does it send different IR signals for on and off, but it's also different depending on whether you want turn on cooling or heating.

we had sour fish stew for dinner. my mother also found and harvested three long asian eggplants growing in RB2, which my father stir-fried with some basil KC gave us.

it took me 12 minutes to ride home. not as fast as yesterday but still pretty darn fast.

after a shower, i alternated between the yankees rays game and the falcons saints game. rays won, falcons won.

i ordered a bunch of pants off of amazon, including two pairs of levi jeans that are a bit long. judging on how well they fit, i may take them to taiwan to get them hemmed (much cheaper).

i made it to belmont by 10am via ebike. the thing i noticed immediately when i got to my parents' house was how green the front lawn was from all the stubbles of grass seedlings. it's just been 2 weeks since we aerated and reseeded the lawn. the grass is about a 2 inch tall right now. once they reach the 3 inch mark we need to mow it. at some point in november we'll need to apply a winter fertilizer, one that's high in potassium to strengthen the grass roots for winter.

my father and i left for a baifu/chinatown run shortly afterwards. my mother already told us yesterday she wasn't coming and didn't change her mind. she made a supply list that i gave to my father. we went via storrow drive, getting off at kenmore and connecting to mass avenue by the berklee music school the rest of the way to baifu. there was a line getting into the parking lot, they closed the other side so all cars had to enter and leave through the same entrance which created a jam.

there's never really any browsing at baifu; we grab what we want and leave. of the two brands of bubble tea ingredients, the warehouse seemed to be running low on bossen products. their taro powder is the best, but since they didn't have any in stock, we went with possmei gold taro which is more expensive but supposedly better than possmei regular taro powder. baifu also did have any three elephant brand medium size pho rice noodles we use for our pad thai.

check out took a while because the register girl miscounted and basically had to redo everything until she figured out which item she missed. if she only put the items she scanned in a box there would be all this confusion. all the cart helpers basically abandoned us, even carlos our usual guy. we ended up having to push the cart ourselves and load everything into the car. during the transit, we dropped a can of sesame oil. a miracle it didn't explode, but the can was severely dented. my father said to keep it (i don't think baifu would take it back anyway), we could always pour the content into the old can. a cart pusher actually had the audacity to come and try help us load (fishing for tips) even though we were almost finished. i waved him off.

next we went to ming's market on chinatown's outskirt. passing through mass and cass, there's hardly any homeless drug users anymore, though we still managed to see a few, with their telltale zombified shuffling. continued police presence drives them away. we also saw some group giving them food and supplies, not sure if it was legit. i read a lot of religious groups do this without permission from the city, trying to help when it just perpetuates the problem.

there was no shopping carts at ming's market. either a bunch of them got stolen or they simply don't have enough. what they did have were smaller plastic shopping baskets with wheels and extendable handle. we used that one instead even though it wasn't large enough to hold everything. we ended up carrying the heads of cabbage in the grocery bags.

there was some major drama while we tried to load up the car. another car was parked so close to use i could open the driver side door to open the rear swing door. i saw there was a guy inside the car so i was tried to be car, but there was simply no clear, and i could hear the door opening and bouncing off his car. i thought nothing of it, until the man got out of his car and started screaming at me that i damaged his car. there wasn't even enough space for me to turn around to see what was happening, i was so trapped in that space. finally i managed to free myself and see what he was talking about. there was a small nick on his door handle. yes, i could've caused it, but it could've also happened when he got out of his car and slammed his door against my door. besides, he was driving an old car with plenty of other scratches, just like our car. who cares if there's one more scratch? i looked to the other side of his car, which was just empty space. if he was so worried about someone hitting his car, why didn't he park farther away? the fact that he was freaking out triggered something in me and i started shouting back at him. he said something about apologizing, but i didn't feel like i did anything wrong. he then started swearing at me so i shouted back at him. it was at that point my father came around to see what was going on. i told the guy to shut the hell up and get back inside his car. he said he was going to call the police. i said go ahead. i asked him if his was wife inside the supermarket. i told him to call her out so we could settle it. he went to get his wife, at which time i told my father to get in the car so we could drive away. the man ran up behind our car to try and stop us, and then went to the drive side door to pull my father out. i jumped out ready to punch the guy. there was a shoving match. people were watching. finally someone came to break up the tussle. the man went to take a photo of our license plate, we did the same to his car. i was so angry at one point i kicked his car, which was all i could to do to not punch him. i honestly don't know what happened. if only the man approached the situation calmly, instead of going crazy. and the swearing! it was in english, but he had an accent, which kind of made it funny, like he was using some bad words he learned. i would've been happy to apologize, even though i personally don't think i did anything wrong given how close he parked to us. but i wasn't going to back down to him after he escalated, and if he wanted to ruin his sunday morning, i was more than happy to oblige. i hope he looks at that little dent on his door handle every time he gets into his car and think of me. as for me, other than this post, i intend to forgot all about him.

driving back along storrow drive, there was serious traffic going inbound to kenmore square from both directions. we were in cambridge outbound lane so it didn't affect us, but had we left for baifu a little later, that would've been us stuck in bumper to bumper traffic all the way down storrow drive.

we stopped at the cafe to drop off the supplies. my father took out two large boxes of frozen raw boneless chicken thighs that need to be marinated on tuesday and then deep fried as we're low on salt & pepper chicken. i got 4 large taiwanese cabbages which i'll come tomorrow morning to turn them into paocai (it'll tak 3 hours). i weighed them before we left, about 7 lbs. each, enough to make enough paocai to last us until we get back from vacation.

we finally returned to belmont around 12:40pm. my mother made chicken rice noodle for lunch.

my sister brought esmei to belmont. esmei was full of energy because my sister hadn't taken her on a long walk yet. we let her out into the backyard at one point, she didn't come back even after we called her multiple times. back inside the house, she eventually got bored, got a bout of the zoomies and ran underneath the bed to hide. my sister finally took her home.

i set up the wifi IR blaster. it wasn't hard, although garvee wasn't a brand that showed up in their list of products, so i made it learn the remote button functions manually. even though the garve AC heat pump uses the same on/off button to turn on/off the unit, the button actually emits two different signals depending on whether it's on or off. once the IR blaster learned the two commands, we set up a test timer to see if it'll automatically turn on the garvee and then turn it off. when the time came, it performed like magic. most importantly was turning it off. the whole reason why i got the IR blaster was so we could turn off the unit gently (like with the remote) instead of just cutting off the power (like using the smart plug). it has to close (shut down) gently because it has to perform a few functions like fold back the fins and cycle cool air into the unit.

there was a football game! between the patriots and bills! after new england's poor performance the past three games, i was pretty sure we'd lose. so imagine my surprise when the pats managed to hold their own, going toe to toe with buffalo. even more shocking was new england actually winning 29-26. both sides made mistakes, both sides made good play, and honestly the game could've gone either way. talent and grit were definitely factors, but so was luck. patriots gave the bills their first lose in their new stadium, which is fitting. the kind of generational damage tom brady did to the bills (a record 33-3) makes buffalo still questioning themselves whenever they face the patriots.

a bunch more aliexpress items arrived yesterday, some my father already opened. it included a warsun 2000 lumen flashlight that takes 18650 and 21700 rechargeable lithium batteries. for $13 it's okay but you definitely get what you pay for. there was an adjustable phone lanyard which was better than the one my mother got from temu, i gave it to my father to use on his vacation, i have my own wrist lanyard and i just might buy another one off of aliexpress. i got a portable luggage scale which will come in handy when i come back from vacation. a CR2032 battery wasn't included. i also got a new bracelet for my mi fitness band, a translucent blue-green with colored polka dots. my mother said it looked like something a child would wear.

for dinner my parents made ground beef with fermented long beans and a swiss chard stirfry. every time we eat swiss chard my father mentions how amazing these plants are, that we can eat them practically all year round. we also grew some bokchoi but those have a bitter taste, maybe they're too old. swiss chards are more mellow, though they do have a beet flavor to them.

it took me just 11 minutes to get home, i was flying on the ebike. i don't think i ever stopped for a red light until i was almost home. it takes longer to drive than the time i made on the ebike. no wonder i prefer taking it over my motorcycle, which is now stashed away in the garage.

after a shower, i watched some more political videos on youtube. with the midterm election just a month away and with democrats slated to make major gains, i've been following more political coverage than ever before.

i went to market basket this morning to get some bean sprouts before i left for the cafe early around 10am. my parents showed up about the same time. along with a new batch of tea eggs, i also made two batches of black soy noodles.

temperature today reached 70 but it was in the 60's for most of the day, which is where we should be this time of the year.

my father cut down the monster luffa that was growing in RB3. he noticed it was rotting and decided to cut it down to help save it. he peeled off the skin to reveal a lovely piece of luffa sponge in the middle. he managed to shake out the seeds like a piggy bank. some of the seeds were undeveloped, but most of the seeds look viable enough to be planted next season. as for the luffa, he washed it a few times to clean off any residual flesh before we left it hanging to dry. we have a second luffa we reserved for seed harvesting by the bitter melon trellis on the western bed.

the cambridge bowtie ride rode by the cafe in the late morning. i was going to join them, but i've done it enough years that the novelty has worn off. it didn't look like a big turnout.

for the first 3 hours after we opened it was busy. we made above our daily average, making it a very profitable first week of october. we would've made more except my father let someone eat free after he said he'd come back later with the money. we never saw that person again.

my father made another stirfry of luffa gourd mixed with fried tofu and eggs. i don't think we have very many luffas left anymore, having given away more than half and eating the rest ourselves. luffas were a tremendous success this season. it's a vegetable that we like to eat that we can't find in any asian supermarkets and we figured out how to grow them big with our raised platform trellises, growing in grow bags with fertilized drip irrigation. i think next year my father wants to grow even more, we're planning on clearing out RB3 and converting that into a luffa bed. next year we've decided not to grow anymore squashes or tomatoes in the raised beds. instead it's going to be okras, swiss chards, some peppers, and roselles.

we also roasted the 6 lbs. whole chicken that'd been marinating in the fridge since thursday. after taking out the chicken from the brine, i wiped it dry with paper towels before my father sprayed a coat of vegetable oil. we set the timer for 90 minutes, roasted at 400 degrees with convection for 20 minutes before lowering the temperature to 375 degrees. my mother put a piece of tin foil over the chicken at the midway mark to help it from burning. it came out the perfect temperature, between 160-170 degrees. my father added more salt to the brine this time, so the chicken had just the right amount of saltiness this time.

i took home a plate of roasted chicken with scallion ginger sauce for dinner. originally i was going to do some bike repair work, but felt too lazy after a week of work, decided to do it wednesday instead.

later in the evening i heard fireworks. i rushed out to the 2nd story deck and launched my drone in the hopes of capturing some fireworks but i was too late. i took some photos before landing the drone.

my google pixel 9 pro phone drama continues. so i bought on back in early august during tax free weekend. when it arrived i noticed a deep scratch on the screen. so i decided to buy another one and send the scratched one back. the price had gone up, i had no choice but to eat the cost. but then i saw the price had dropped briefly, so i cancelled the second order and reorder another pixel at a lower price. the only caveat was it wouldn't arrive until october. not a big deal, i can wait. until i decided i was going on vacation, and now i want to get the phone before i leave. so i waited. then this week amazon gave me some good news: the new phone would arrive this weekend. however i informed me today that it won't get here until thursday. they keep on changing the goal post, i'm worried they'll eventually just cancel the order. or i get the phone and it's in awful condition as well. the funny thing is i still have the original phone from august. if i wanted to i could start using it now. if it still doesn't get here by thursday, that may be my only option.

i watched i love boosters (2026). originally i thought it was going to be an absurdist comedy about a group of women who steal stuff then sell them, before the movie devolved into an absurdist scifi fantasy comedy, along the lines of everything everywhere all at once (2022) or good luck, have fun, don't die (2025).

i went in search of my taiwan subway card, i had one before, just need to find it. i didn't find it but i did find my old chongqing subway cards, a HK subway card (octopus), two ICBC bank cards (i wonder if my money is still there), and a stash of mao red bills, back when china still took cash. even better, i found a bunch of US cash i didn't know i had. did my mother give it to me at some point to keep it safe? or it's simply money i had left over that i didn't deposit into my bank account? in any case, this cash will come in handy for my upcoming vacation.

i harvested 3 red cayenne peppers from the plant growing on the 2nd floor deck. my backyard is now the best place to grow peppers with all the sunshine i get. i don't often see fresh cayenne for sale at the supermarkets. they have a scoville unit of 30-50k, much hotter than jalapeño which is only 2.5-8k, and hotter than serrano which is 10-23k.

weather today was so hot (84 degrees and humid) that i wore my shorts to work. i imagine this is probably the last time thing year i'll be wearing shorts. it felt downright summery.

my new rain jacket finally arrived: nordic outland $40. it's better than the pioneer camp rain jacket i bought back in september 2024 for $55 in that this jacket has armpit vents. you don't know how important vents are until you exercise in them (like ride a bike) and start sweating and it's like a sauna inside the rain jacket.

we got slammed again during lunchtime. the key is not to panic, everyone keeps a level head, survive the next 1-2 hours. by the time it was over, we already made our daily average.

KC and her grandsons came again this afternoon. it's the third time this week, after we haven't seen her for over a year. she brought a potted basil for us. last time she brought an ornamental pepper and an aloe.

after KC left, my aunt showed up. my parents were trying to coordinate with her as to what hotel options before and after my father's childhood friend reunion gathering in shanghai. turns out my aunt already booked the hotel rooms, staying in the same hotel. my parents were trying to save some money and got a cheaper hotel 500m away ($60/night), a room with no window. my aunt guilted them into changing their reservation so they remained at the more expensive hotel ($140/night). my parents were also very concerned if the reservation included breakfast. it doesn't, it's a $15/person addition. i told them they could just grab breakfast at the many shops surrounding the hotel. i showed my father a map of local eating options.

we got busy again in the early evening. not as busy as during lunchtime, but still pretty busy. we even had some customers come in 10 minutes before we were about to close. it was a chinese couple who took the bus just to get here to eat. my father took pity on them and let them eat here instead of having their food to go. when it was all over, we made more than twice our daily average, like getting two days' profit in just one day.

it rained a little bit in the late afternoon. tempest weather station tells me just 0.02" fell. a paltry amount, but any rain is a blessing for our reseeded lawn. it was dry by the time i went home. i put on my rubber spoke lights earlier so i'd have more visibility riding home in the dark. they actually work very well, the only issue i have with them is they use non-rechargeable cell batteries.

i brought home some scallion bread my mother had made. after a shower, i finished the leftover pastries my godmother made along with the bread. there was nothing good on television so i ended up watching some youtube videos about the upcoming elections. i'm actually bummed i won't be here in election day (but i plan on voting by mail). my plan for that day is to stay in my hotel room and watch live political coverage while ordering takeout food.