even though i knew i had to get up at 7am this morning, i still went to bed last night at 2am. it was a struggle to get out of bed, but at least it was warm in the house as i remembered to turn on the heat before i got up. the hard part was seeing it was still dark outside.

i left by 7:50am for my 8:30am appointment at mass eye & ear (MEE). i took my trek utility bike, saved me the hassle of having to worry about it. besides, it'd give me some much needed exercise. i noticed the front wheel was juddering yesterday, and it was still doing that this morning. i just had to remember to break softly.

i parked my bike in the hidden alcove opposite the MEE entrance. i was instructed to arrive 15 minutes early, but the audiology department doesn't even open their doors until 8:30am. by the time they started allowing people in, there were already a dozen people waiting. only half were actual patients. many came with caretakers (whether a nurse or a family member), one even came with an interpreter.

my audiologist didn't see me until 8:45am. she asked how i was doing with the hearing aids, and i gave her a bunch of notes. like how i found it really loud, so i normally use it in noise cancellation mode. or how the receivers often time come out of my ear holes. my audiologist readjusted the hearing aids accordingly. she increased the noise cancelling and reduced the base line volume. i was hoping to get some open domes instead of my current tulip domes for better in-canal retention, but my audiologist suggested installing some retention tails. made of plastic, they resemble fish bones. they fit over the receiver and curl inside the curve of the ear, anchoring the hearing aid. they look kind fo scary, but i didn't notice them once my audiologist put them on. replacing the domes would require readjusting the audio settings since different home styles affect the audio signature. my audiologist also discovered that my left hearing aid was missing the wax guard on the receiver so she put in a new one.

we finally finished by 9:30am. i made a 1-year follow-up appointment to see my audiologist. retrieving my bike, i noticed a cannondale ebike parked right next to me. it looked pretty expensive. i looked it up when i got back home, it's a tesoro neo X3. retails for $3400, but on sale at a few bike shops for less than $2000. i noticed it because it has a bosch mid drive, which are more expensive than hub drives, but this particular model is only 250W (while my velotric is 750W).

i stopped by the house to pick up some sausages and oranges i bought yesterday from market basket before continuing to the cafe. i got there a little after 10am. my father was waiting for me to show up so he could take a supply run to market basket to get some pork butts (for making charsiu pork) and grounded pork (for making zhajiang noodles and minced pork). he was gone for an hour.

the hearing aids with the audiologist adjustments worked much better now. the default setting is no longer painfully loud. since i'm not using the noise cancellation feature, all sounds seem clearer now. the retention tails also work very well, i no longer feel like the hearing aids will pop out of my ears.

today was a slow day. given that temperature was in the lower 50's once again, i was sort of expecting it to be busy. a few popular items like curry chicken and fried rice we didn't sell any today. trying to predict when and if we'll be busy is a futile task. i did get a chance to peel some steamed tea eggs; the shells came right off, hardly needed any peeling at all. i could also be imagining it, but the egg yolks seem yellower, less of that overcooked green. the egg whites also look darker, which means they've absorbed more of the tea egg brine (more flavorful).

the day sort of petered out. i doubt it'll be busy temperature, with temperature dropping down into the 20's and single digit wind chills. i left with a container of leftover beef noodle soup, courtesy of beef noodle soup batch my parents made yesterday.

i took a shower after i got back home then had the noodles for dinner. afterwards it was another few hours of cyberpunk. i finished the "beat the brat" mission, which involves getting into fist fights across night city. i also managed to get a bunch of gang members and police to fight each other by secretly sniping members from each side. i also got into a police chase on purpose simply because i was bored. i was planning on ditching and going back to a previous save, but i somehow managed to evade the police, even though i was a 3-star wanted fugitive. the other half of the time i was using the camera mode. i met el capitan on top of the city dam, and ended up spending some time taking photos of my V with the city as a backdrop. i also finished the "stadium love" mission where i entered a contest to shoot mayor holt targets. i only placed third - not good enough to win the smart rifle - but one of the 6th street gang member recognized me and we started a shootout where i ended up murdering everyone. finally, i had more driving practice, both motorcycle and car. i also use autodrive as a shortcut. i wonder if there's some way to record game play videos on macos? because some of the drives are really pretty, like a tour of the city, but i'm usually so worried about crashing, i don't have time to appreciate the scenic city landscapes.

i left at 10:30am this morning for chinatown. i was just there on sunday, but i wanted to go to the chase bank to get a chinese new year calendar. that was basically my whole reason for going. i took the ebike, which made the trip effortless. i brought my litelok ulock as my main lock, and a smaller abus chain lock in case i wanted to secure my front wheel.

i went to chase bank first to get the calendar. i locked the back wheel through the rear frame triangle to a parking meter post. the u-lock isn't long enough to include the actual bike frame, so this isn't the most secure lock job. i could add the chain lock as a secondary deterrent but it was a high traffic area and i decided it wasn't worth the hassle. a bank clerk asked how many i wanted, i said two. somebody had already posted a sneak preview of the calendar so i'd already seen it. this year is the year of the horse, and they used a calligraphy brush artwork style.

next i went to ming's market next door. we had a lot of beef noodle soup sales on tuesday that it depleted the bokchoi we'd bought on sunday, so i got a little bit more just to be safe.

my original plan was to go to chinatown cafe to get the salt & pepper porkchop but didn't think i'd have enough room on the bike. instead i went to hong kong eatery in chinatown proper to get some duck for my mother and some thai style marinated chicken feet. they didn't have the duck she wanted. so i called her up and told her, and she asked my 2nd aunt who actually bought it, and she said it was the "pipa duck". fortunately it wasn't crowded yet and i went back in line to order the duck. while i was waiting, a crowd of old lady filled the eatery, waiting in line to get their order.

once i got my duck, i started heading back home. i noticed the traditional chinese medicine herbal store next door had gone out of business. not a surprise, but still a little sad. chinatown just isn't what it used to be, where they used to be a fish store, a book store, herbal store, and several actual supermarkets within chinatown proper. a least the live chicken butcher shop is still there (right?).

still a little annoyed that i wasn't able to get any lunch from chinatown, i decided to make a detour to mulan, to get their lunch special. they also have a salt & pepper porkchop that i've always wanted to try. i called my mother asking her if she wanted anything. when i went inside the restaurant, the place was packed. are they always this busy around lunchtime, or was today a special event? seems like a lot asian people were coming from kendall square. they were so busy the parking lot was filled and there was still a line of car all the way out to the street. not wanting to wait, i abandoned my takeout idea.

i could've just gone home, but i went directly to the cafe to drop off the duck and some chinatown supplies. it wasn't a big deal on the ebike, not like i was actually shedding any significant calories. my mother started using the steamed tea eggs today. she reported they were surprisingly easy to peel, so i will definitely be steam cooking my tea eggs from now on. i finally headed back home, getting back by 1pm.

i had a few more errands to run. i had a few things to return at the UPS store. the wire connectors i bought on amazon, for some reason i couldn't return it at whole foods, but had to either bring it to an amazon store (like the one in central square) or to a UPS. it also needed to be packaged up but i didn't need to print a label, just bring the QR code for them to scan.

after that i went to market basket. i found lunch in the form of some super crunchy california roll. i also bought a 12-pack of seltzer, but it seemed to be too heavy for my rear rack and the extra weight was doing something weird to my bike where the front wheel wobbled whenever i braked.

back at home for good, i ate the sushi while watching some youtube videos. after that i snacked on some thai marinated chicken feet.

around 3:30pm i started playing cyberpunk. i played for the next 8 hours, stopping only to have dinner (some french bread pizza). i was supposed to make my egg tart but totally threw that plan out the window. i'm only playing a third of the time; the other two thirds i'm using camera mode to take photos. i spent a lot of time in this "central park" area. i dove into a man-made pond to loot items from a body at the bottom of the water. the park is surrounded by trash, and for some reason there's an abundance of ashtrays and johnny silverhand albums (must be some inside joke). i went on a side gig where i helped bartender pepe follow his wife whom he suspects of cheating. turns out she's making frequent visits to a plastic surgeon to erase traces of her former looks (that's why their children look so different). i finished the evening by doing some more car driving practice. there was a roadblock on the highway and i plow ahead to investigate, only to realize it was a freeway shootout between cops and gang members. i tried to help out the police by using my car to hit the bad guys. that only got them angrier, as they started to surround me and shoot up my vehicle. it got pretty crazy. after i eliminated all the gang members, i took one of their cars and drove back home.

soon after i arrived at the cafe this morning, i left for trader joe's to pick up a few items. today ended up being a busy today, made the same amount as last tuesday. the tall stack of empty 16 oz. containers meant we were short on supplies: beef noodle soup, ramen, and curry chicken. my father started preparing the soup for the beef noodle and ramen, before making a new batch of curry chicken. we didn't have time to portion them out yet.

a few big news today. scott adams the creator of dilbert died at age 68 from metastatic prostate cancer. there was a time when dilbert was one of the most popular comics, until adams' started sharing his toxic opinions - sexist, racist, and anti-semitic. not a surprise he was also an early trump supporter. the other news was the resignation of pittsburgh steelers coach mike tomlin. last night was his seventh consecutive playoff loss. the steelers were stuck in a limbo where they were always good enough to have a winning record during tomlin's 19 year tenure, but that ended up hurting them since it meant they could never get any high draft picks, so they just basically wallowed in mediocrity. the steelers will need to suck for a while in order to rebuild itself back to a championship caliber team.

my 2nd aunt got lost in boston today, trying to get to the taiwanese embassy. she called and i tried to guide her to her destination, but she ended up not listening and asking for directions herself. she just needed the address. my 2nd aunt does not know how to use the google maps app on her phone. she navigates from memory. the fact that she didn't call back meant she finally found it.

a count of 20 tea eggs this morning got all used up today (which indicates just how busy we were), so i had to made a new batch. i used the steaming technique to cook the eggs. we still haven't used the steamed batch i made last week, but while transferring them from the stainless steel inset pan into the slow cooker, a few shells were falling off the eggs, so that's a good sign they'll be easy to peel.

close to closing time, while i was cleaning up the kitchen, a taiwanese man came into the cafe and ordered a bunch of stuff. it was his first time here. after we closed, while my parents went home, i stayed for a few extra minutes, waiting for the tea eggs to finish simmering so i can take the pot off of the induction cooktop. my mother left me with a bento of leftovers from last night that i took home.

first thing i did when i got back was to prepare the additional 10 egg tart molds. that'll allow me to try baking the egg tarts tomorrow. afterwards i took a shower before eating dinner. i played cyberpunk for about an hour before writing yesterday and today's blog posts and throwing out the trash.

i worked on my egg tart project this morning. my roll of buttered pie crust did not look like the pastry dough roll online. that roll was thick; mine was thin. so instead of cutting it into 20 pieces, i opted to cut mine into just 10 pieces. i flatted the segments into discs, floured one side, before pressing them into aluminum egg tart molds. i put the finished tart crusts into the fridge while making another roll so i can fill 10 more molds.

i hauled my ebike out from the basement and left around noontime. i stopped by the cafe to take out some frozen foods from the freezer so they can thaw overnight for tomorrow when we open. i discovered the wifi was down, and the nest thermostat said it'd be more than 6 hours since it last communicated online. while waiting for the router to reset, i hung up the fern and vacuumed all the fallen leaves. with wifi back up, i continued to belmont.

my mother made scallion egg pancakes for lunch, rolled up with some pork floss. she also made me a cup of sugared coffee drink with the keurig machine. afterwards she gave me a haircut. the last time i had a haircut was back in june, so nearly 6 months ago. i wasn't yet able to pull it into a ponytail, but it was getting close. i was a little bit afraid, because cutting my hair short would expose my growing bald spot. my mother noticed my thinning hair. once my hair grows back out it won't be as noticeable. the amount of hair that was cut was probably enough to make a wig.

i spent nearly 2 hours in the basement, tending to the grow room. today i did the whole treatment: insect growth regulator (IGR), yellow sticky traps, and Bti-infused water drench. i started with the IGR; i wasn't sure how much to apply, so i used the numbers i had for last time, which was 4ml of tekko pro to 500ml misting spray bottle. i used a syringe to extract 4ml. i thought about wearing some gloves so i wouldn't get IGR all over my hands but couldn't find them, so went bare-handed. i sprayed the soil surface of all the plants. i followed that up with a Bti-infused drench (just a fancy word for watering), hoping to infuse the IGR further into the soil. finally i replaced most of the yellow sticky traps. i finally finished by 4pm.

for dinner my parents made braised pork with arrowhead roots. arrowhead has a distinctive flavor, kind of like a potato but sweet, sort of reminds me of chestnuts.

i went home after dinner. i checked the odometer on my ebike when i got back, 221 miles. i didn't think i rode it all that much, but all these short trips add up. makes me wonder how many miles today i ride per year. must be a few thousand miles at least.

i had the texans-steelers game on in the background while i settled in for a long night of cyberpunk. i spent most of the time playing in camera mode. i'm trying to work in external lights, and using the time scrubber to change what time of day it is for different effects. i finally stopped playing by 1am.

as for the football game, the steelers lost, the score was a lopsided 30-6. how did that even happen? honestly, i wasn't paying close attention, but didn't realize pittsburgh didn't even score a touchdown.

i raced down to belmont via ebike by 11am this morning to go on a chinatown supply run. we went to baifu first to get some supplies. i went in search of korean dolsot but the closest thing i found were chinese clay pots ($17 for a 6") which i don't think are as durable as korean stone bowls. i may look to h-mart to see if they sell any, or maybe nearby reliable market (but i have a feeling they'll be expensive). carlos usually helps us load our car, but today we got the chubby hispanic guy. my father gave him a $5 tip. the area was surprisingly free of the usual crowd of homeless drug users. there was a police car parked in an alley with its lights on, ready to pounce on the first sight of anything illegal.

next we went ming's market. because baifu was so empty, we figured the same would be true in chinatown. that turned out to be wrong. first they ran out of shopping carts, so i stood in the parking lot waiting to intercept any returning carts, while two other people cut ahead of me "in line" to grab the carts before i could. it wasn't that busy in the main part of the store, but everyone was crowded in the produce and meat department. my mother noticed the prices were a little high, there weren't too many sales. maybe it's just because of the winter, or maybe it's tariff related, who knows. we filled up a shopping cart and went to pay. they don't bag for you; instead they'll just stand there passive aggressively, waiting for you to take away all your purchases so they can ring up the next customer. so i was the bagger today, quickly throwing everything into four large shopping bags.

we arrived at the cafe around 1pm. after unloading everything, we returned to belmont. because we made a supply run today, it means we have all of tomorrow off.

some more aliexpress items arrived yesterday, including an easel i bought for holding one of our outdoor ground-level 100W solar panels. it's a little flimsy, but for $10 it's not bad, gets the job done. i'm just curious how well it'll handle the elements.

my mother made some wonton soup for lunch. the 1pm had already started between the bills-jaguars. it was a close game, i was rooting for buffalo. bills eventually won 27-24 when their defense intercepted the ball with about a minute left, preventing the jaguars from scoring.

my sister showed up with esmei. all that dog wants is food, it could care less about greeting humans. first thing she did was run straight to the kitchen looking for food scraps on the floor.

i brought home the mini wok and used it to make another batch of popcorn. we gave some to my mother while my father and i finished the rest in just a few minutes.

the late afternoon game was between the 49ers and eagles. i had no favorites, but wouldn't mind seeing mac jones go the distance in the playoffs. once again it was a close game, but san francisco won it 23-19. just like that, the eagles - last year's super bowl winner - had been eliminated.

my father made some braised salmon for dinner, with some braised shrimps piled underneath. it made for a fishy entree, but i powered through it and ate what i could. my mother made a stirfry of chinatown cauliflower with some wild mushrooms my 2nd aunt gave us.

i returned home to watch the final game of the night between the chargers and patriots. this game made me feel nervous. gave me the same anxiety when the old patriots made it to the playoffs all those years. it was a low scoring game, with the two defenses going after each other. no score in the first quarter, while the chargers had a single field goal while the patriots had two in the second quarter. the third quarter was also a slog, but the pats managed to eke out another field goal. it wasn't until the fourth quarter that the pats finally scored a touchdown. turns out we didn't really need it, because the chargers never scored another point other than the 3 they got in the second quarter. patriots win 3-16. they'll face the winner of tomorrow nights game (texans vs. steelers). i'm rooting for the steelers to win, so new england can have a rematch to avenge their loss to pittsburgh at the start of the season.

i actually had the patriots game in the background because i was playing cyberpunk. i'm on the mission where i help delamain track down all its rogue AI chauffeur cars. i also played around with the camera mode. a lot of the gang members have very beautiful distinctive looks, it's a shame when i need to engage them and shoot them all to pieces. maybe i'll play again but this time without killing anyone, only to take photos. it's crazy the amount of detail the game creators put into each NPC. the last time i played an open world game was elder scolls (skyrim), and the level of detail and the amount of NPC was never like this. not only that, but the graphics have improved so much.

i woke up early and went to market basket once again to pick up a few things. this included some 2-gallon ziploc bags i forgot to buy yesterday, and some milk and heavy cream for my forever egg tart recipe. i returned home to drop off the supplies before leaving for the cafe.

before we even officially opened, a guy came in, bought a drink, and proceded to camp out with his laptop. i know this is a cafe and a part of the customer demographics are "laptop people" (not sure what to call them), but they are one of my least favorite types of patrons. just because they buy a cup of coffee for a dollar or two, they expect to stay here all day, table up a table, use our free wifi, and steal our electricity. even worse are the people who camp and don't buy anything. we've had a few, usually in a group, one person buys something, and the others see that as their "payment" to settle shop. anyway, luckily this person only stayed for about an hour, once he started seeing we were getting busy.

speaking of busy, for the first two hours everything was pretty calm. but the thing with saturdays is often times we don't really get busy until 1pm. and just like that, around 1pm, we started getting quadruple the business we had just an hour ago. it started getting into the crazy zone, as my 2nd aunt flubbed a few orders that my mother had to fix (e.g. she heard chicken bento when one customer wanted chicken curry). but once it was over, everything turned peaceful again, and after 3pm we didn't have another customer. at the very least we managed to make a little above our average, when this week we had two days that made below that (wednesday and thursday). a decent week, considering we're still in the slow winter break stretch before the college students return.

we started using a new batch of tea eggs (but not the ones i prepared using the steaming technique). these were made with new eggs (just purchased from costco the day before), using the boiling method, so we already knew they would be very difficult to peel. for the most part they were okay - you just need more time to peel each egg - but one of them was especially difficult and i ended up peeling off half the egg white.

i made popcorn using my mini wok. that's actually the perfect diameter and height for stovetop popping. the carbon steel also allows for even heat distribution, not just the bottom. i measured, and it takes about 4 oz. of popcorn kernels, which means slightly less than half a tablespoon of flavacol salt. because it has a handle, it was easier to lift and pour out the popped popcorn before setting it down to pop the remaining kernels. when i finished popping, there was no flavacol residue left at the bottom (a constant problem that i have in all the pots i've used). i thought it'd popped all the kernels, but a few managed to escape when i poured the popcorn into a bowl (which i found out after we finished the popcorn). i use orville redenbacher's popping oil, which is just soybean oil with some natural food coloring. i don't often see soybean oil at the supermarkets. it has a high smoke point - 450 degrees - similar to refined coconut oil, which is one of the more popular oils for popping popcorn. it's $3.99 for a small 16 oz. bottle, so i keep on wondering if i can use a different oil. canola oil comes to mind, but i see differing smoke points - anywhere from 400 to 450 degrees.

my mother made some shredded sichuan peppercorn oil chicken with the drumsticks i got her yesterday. she packed me a bento with some chicken after we closed. my father came to pick her up and gave my 2nd aunt a ride home along the way. a new 9.5" non-stick deep frying pan (bobikuke brand $26) arrived shortly after we closed. i went over to my sister's place to grab it. it's the cheapest 9.5" deep non-stick pan i could find on amazon. one interesting feature is it has a detachable handle. i was worried that'd make it wobbly and loose, but happy to learn it attached very securely. it also had two pour spouts, a rubber-rimmed tempered-glass lid, and came with a complimentary silicone spatula. my mother saw it and gave it her seal of approval.

as soon as i got home i started playing the dream on mission in cyberpunk. i tried the hack where i fast transported to the van's hideout before the van arrived hoping to catch them. that hack partially works because all the maelstrom goons are there to fight, but the van is missing, and accessing the van is the only way to advance to the next part of the mission. so i tried following the van from the construction site a few times but failed every time. after an hour, i gave up and quit.

i took a shower then had dinner at 8pm. there was a rams-panthers game at 4:30pm when i had on in the background. i was rooting for the panthers, hoping they'd knock out matthew stafford and the gang, which might give drake maye a boost in the MVP race. the general consensus is that LA would win, since carolina shouldn't even be in the playoffs with their losing 8-10 record (handful of other teams had better winning records but were eliminated). rams had the early lead, but panthers came back. in the end it was obvious why panthers had the losing record, as they made timely mistakes and couldn't convert on rams turnovers. final score 34-31, rams advance.

i went back to cyberpunk after dinner. i learned how to use throwing knives. armed with a neurotoxin blade, i decided to try the van chase again. this time i managed to follow the van all the way to their headquarter. i engaged the maelstrom gang, which i'd already fought a few times, so i knew what to expect. afterwards i found the empty van that advanced the mission. the throwing knife is fun, but takes a few seconds to regenerate and come back to me. i don't know what the throwing range of a knife is (i think it's in the weapon specs), but i don't think it beats a sniper rifle.

i spent the rest of the time playing with the in-game camera mode. using a narrow field of view can create some stunning images, with characters rendered in near photorealistic quality. i could spent hours roaming around night city, taking photos, something i love to do in real life but haven't had a lot of opportunity recently. there are so many non-playing characters (NPC) in the game, all seemingly doing their own thing, regardless if they're being watched or not.

the 8pm game was between the packers and bears. i didn't even watch it because there was a better game to see: spurs versus celtics and the return of luke kornet. celtics lost 100-95 but the intensity was insane, felt like a playoff game. no shame in losing to wembanyama, who's a one person wrecking crew. as for the football game, chicago ended up winning 27-31.

i woke up early so i could leave the house by 8:30am and make a market basket supply run. temperature this morning was in the 30's with a forecast of rain after dark. i brought my rain pants just in case. there were icy patches on the road, but the glare of the morning sun made them very obvious to see and avoid. even though market basket wasn't very far, it still took me an hour total to pick everything before i finally arrived at the cafe by 9:30am. i was soaked in sweat and stripped down to my t-shirt.

my mother was making scallion bread with the surplus scallions we bought from costco on monday. the first dough didn't rise very much, so my mother made a second dough. we using the proofing function of the breville oven - 80 degrees for half a hour. the second dough had a better rise, but deflated once my mother starting working with it.

we were busy today from 11-2pm. a handful of new customers ordered online.

binbin showed up in the early afternoon. my aunt told us last time that binbin got approved for her green card. it only took 10 years! it came as a surprise, since the current administration is so anti-immigration.

i had to make a new batch of tea eggs today which gave me a chance to try out the steam technique for cooking the eggs. fortunately we have large-size steamer pots that we use for making the vegetarian buns. it was big enough to just barely fit 30 eggs. i waited for the water to boil before putting on the eggs. i read 13 minutes is a good time, but i went with 15 minutes - 5 minutes for the cold eggs to quickly come to 100 degrees celsius and then 10 minutes of cooking via steam. when it was done, i rinsed the eggs under cold water so they were cool enough to handle. i wasn't sure if they were cooked all the way through, and tested one egg to see if liquid egg whites would leak out when i cracked the shell. the egg was properly cooked, at least solid enough to crack the shell. so i went ahead and cracked the rest of them. the shells felt brittle and very easy to crack, the kind of property of old eggs. i won't know for sure until we start using this new batch next week, but it seems like this might be the new way of cooking tea eggs from now on.

my aunt showed up in the late afternoon. my 2nd aunt showed up as well, in a very worried state. with my california uncle getting a lung cancer scare (his family spoke with the surgeon yesterday, who assured them it wasn't a death sentence and they still don't know if it's actually cancer or not), everyone in my family now thinks they have cancer too. hit especially hard is my 2nd aunt, who by nature is a hypochondriac. she went to the doctor this morning to get a chest x-ray, to make sure she doesn't have lung cancer. the hospital sent her a text soon afterwards which she assumed must be bad news, so she raced to the cafe as soon as she can to ask me to translate. the text was just one of those feedback services. if they did see something serious on the x-ray, they certainly wouldn't inform her via text.

because my 2nd aunt brought over some vegetables she bought from haymarket and boston market today, that meant i didn't need to go to chinatown tomorrow morning. instead my parents and i will take an official supply run to chinatown on sunday, saving me a trip. i was kind of looking forward to the ride, but not waking up early.

when i got back home, i finally started my portuguese egg tart recipe. it involved rolling a sheet of readymade pie crust as thin as possible, then coating it with a tablespoon of melted butter, before rolling it up. the roll was supposed to be salami thick - but my roll was pencil skinny. so i felt like i did something wrong, or maybe i didn't have enough pie crust to begin with. i'll let it rest overnight in the fridge before cutting the roll into medallions and pressing them into the aluminum egg tart molds. i have a very strong feeling that this recipe will end in failure. but i have 6 leftover egg yolks in the fridge that need to be used up, so i'm going forward.

for dinner i had some indomie mi goreng. i really love the taste of this particular brand of instant noodles. i've love to experience more indonesian food, but unfortunately it's not as prevalent as some of the other asian cuisines: chinese, korean, vietnamese, japanese. i've also heard on many occasions that singaporean street food is one of the best in the world. i'd love to visit one of these days just to sample them.

after dinner it was cyberpunk time. i'm still stuck on the dream on mission. i tried the trick where you jump onto the van before it peels out of the construction site but i always hit the garage doorframe on the way out. i tried chasing the van on a motorcycle which is slightly easier to control than a car, but i still ended up crashing. i figured out where the van was going, and tried a hack where i used a fast travel waypoint to teleport myself there before the van arrived. it didn't seem to work because the "follow the van" action failed and i was told to call elizabeth. however, when i got to the location, it was populated with angry maelstrom gang members, who weren't there before when i came here on a reconnaissance mission. so there might be a chance i could bypass the van chase? but it's going to take a few more iterations, and i was already losing my patience. i just might try doing the chase again with a motorcycle. i think i almost made it last time. the more i do more, the more i'm starting to memorize the route. if that doesn't work, i'll try the fast travel hack again. the next part of the mission is to connect to the access point of the parked van, which i'll need to find.

i vacuumed the cafe this morning before mopping up the salt stains all over the wooden floor. a diluted vinegar spray, mopping with a dry mop, before mopping again with warm water to rinse away the salt. the front of the did smell like vinegar for a while, but the air purifier took care of that after a few hours.

my father deep fried a new batch of salt & pepper chicken, not realizing we still had a box of frozen prepared chicken in the downstairs freezer. we also fried some potatoes to make fries as well as some frozen vegetarian (potato-filling) spring rolls. we were almost done with deep frying the chicken when we had a big ubereats order. it was only 9 items, but made complicated with different sauce additions and everything had to be labeled.

given the nice weather today (blue sky, temperature in the 40's), i figured it'd be busy. we did have a busy lunch period, but after that, not so much. there were even some stretches when we didn't get any customers. i've gotten used to temperature being in the 20's that the 40's today felt downright spring-like.

on the news today was yesterday's murder of a minnesota woman by an ICE agent. he didn't even needed to be doxxed because the white house revealed his identity for some strange reason. it'd be one thing if she was illegal (i feel like immigrants have been murdered by ICE in the recent past), but this woman was a full-blooded american citizen. of course trump's cabal did everything they could to disparage her, from saying she was brainwashed, to claiming the shooting was self-defense (the default excuse whenever law enforcement murders someone).

i also learned that the dolphins fired mike mcdaniel today. in hindsight it seemed pretty obvious, after they fired the GM and benched the quarterback. so it was a surprise when he was still left standing - that is until today. maybe the john harbaugh firing by the ravens got miami interested in the harbaugh lottery.

after work my mother packed me a bento with some stirfry chicken she made. i returned home, took off all my deep fry smelling clothes, and took a shower. i washed my hair twice but it still smelled like fryer oil. after i ate dinner, i played a few more hours of cyberpunk. i'm on the dream on mission where a wealthy political couple hires me to investigate some strange going-ons in their penthouse and i end up discovering that their security team has been secretly spying on them. i was supposed to chase after a security van but in a dozen tries it always seems to get away. since i wasn't saving, i ended up going rampage on a bunch of police officers until i got swarmed. i learned about the wanted level, which is indicated by up to 5 stars. i was on star 4. i also saw my second heart circulatory cyberware in action: the police shot me to death, but i came back to life after a few seconds.

my upstairs neighbors came back. he sent me a text, but i could already tell since the lights upstairs were on. not that i care: they didn't tell me when they went on vacation, i only found out later when i told them that their hot water tank was leaking. nor did they let me know that people would be living upstairs while they were gone, i found out indirectly when they e-mailed their plumber. i hope they go on vacation again soon.

i slept in the guest bedroom last night, so i could have an uninterrupted night of dark sleep. i woke up at 10am this morning, after the scheduled heat in my house had gone off. i was already reports of slippery road conditions and wasn't on planning on going out today. my mother even called telling me to stay inside, that their car slipped in the parking lot when they arrived this morning.

this being my day off, i went all in with cyberpunk, even forgoing lunch so i could keep on playing. i learned today that i can call my car to autodrive to my location. not too much good it does me because i still drive like a little old lady. one time the police even chanced me down, shooting at me while i drove, thinking i was some hardened criminal swerving on the roads. i got out just in time before my overturned car exploded in a ball of flame. i thought i stole a car one time that had an autodrive function. need to look into that.

not a very constructive day. i did take down my christmas lights, managed to lose a few more bulbs which i glued back on with the electric glue gun. i looped the strands on a strip of cardboard so they'd be easier to unspool for next season.

i finally left the house at 3:40pm. the rain/snow had stopped, they grey sky now with some breaks of late afternoon sunlight. i ordered a pair of subs from subway (using the app) and went down to grab them. $13 for two foot longs, chicken teriyaki and american club, not a bad price. i stopped by star market to stock up on some seltzers. i ate the chicken sub once i got home.

once again i returned to cyberpunk. in a lot of missions, i try to use stealth at first, but it always ends in disaster and i end up shooting the place up. there must be a different way to play where there isn't so much destruction. stealth mode is okay but it takes so much time. it's much quicker going in with guns blasting. learned that silencers and scopes on guns can be swapped out, but not mods. i upgraded all my iconic weapons as well as my cyberwares. i believe tier 5 is the highest you can go. i'm now using only tier 4 or above weapons and accessories.

i stopped playing at 7pm and ate the other subway sandwich. i felt a craving for some more movie theater popcorn but was too lazy to make more. ever since i started making my own popcorn for snacks, i've actually snacked less because sometimes i just don't want to deal with the hassle. i did have mandarin oranges though. there was a star market sale on cherries ($2.99/lbs) but the cherries were so dried up i didn't bother getting any.