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DEC 16 2001
tonight i watched my very first episode of alias and i think i like it better than dark angel. this season of dark angel has become very surreal with the introduction of these genetically engineered characters that seem like cats wannabes. there's just too much fantasy and not enough storyline grounded in solid reality (not that a post data apocalyptic world controlled by a military police state is anything too solidly real). alias is more about espionage. the girl in alias isn't genetically engineered, and she gets her ass kicked just like the rest of us. but there's that secret agent 007 factor, with cool gadgets, and because she's a girl, she gets to go undercover all the time and dress up in these cool outfits. that's all it really takes to win my tv viewership, the gadgets and the outfits.
originally when i saw the preview for alias, i thought it was just abc's weak attempt at trying to capitalize on the girls who kick ass genre of television programming, a la buffy the vampire slayer, a la charmed, a la dark angel. but after seeing an episode, alias is definitely different and it's not some cheap knock-off. the show has also received much critical acclaim, something that usually doesn't happen for shows of this type.
DEC 16 2001
coldest dim sum to date! i woke up this morning staring at 30 degrees fahrenheit on the digital thermometer. i got a ride to alewife and took the subway into harvard square. before getting off, sinali and i saw each other from opposite ends of the train cabin. together we walked out and waited for laurie by au bon pain. i played twenty questions with sinali, getting some more details on her interesting life, like her year spent in thailand, and how she wound up here in boston, being originally from jersey and having gone to school in pennsylvania.
china pearl was a 15 minute wait to be seated. i bumped into jeanne with her daughter again. we ran into them the very first time laurie and i came to china pearl for dim sum. it's kind of befitting, with the year almost over, that we should meet again.
speaking of patrons, i just realized today that dim sum is one of those things that crosses all barrier, young and old, boys and girls, asians and non-asians, low and high brows, the tacky and the trendy, all sorts of social economic classes coming together to eat. what a spectrum of people you can expect to see when you go to dim sum in the morning!
today was the first sunday in a long time where i didn't go see open houses. i'm just too tired to look anymore. i'm going to give the housing market a few weeks to fill some new listings. with two more weeks left in the year, house hunting is the farthest thing from my mind. i like to enjoy the remaining few days of 2001. winter is a drab time for photos, but today i was on a mission to find some colors and interesting shapes in the backyard. in the air i saw two birds circling without flapping their wings. it was a few minutes before i realized they were raptors. they disappeared before i could snap a photo with the 24x zoom.
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so we ate. laurie got a special order of clams. in one of them i bit into something hard and crunchy (they all have something hard and crunchy in them, it's called sand). i pulled it out of my mouth and discovered it was a small crab! how it wound up inside of a clam, i have no idea. i joked about how i would probably get sick from the shellfish, but since i didn't have to go to work today, it wouldn't be so bad if i spent the rest of the day with food poisoning. but that's what makes dim sum exciting, that russian roulette element that patrons keep on coming back for!
afterwards, laurie parked her car at her parents' place, and while they went off to work, i took the bus home. waiting for the bus i sat next to this guy who couldn't stop moving, stretching his legs, swinging his arms, going through his whole exercise routine. he asked me what time it was, i told him "12:17." minute later, a pretty brunette comes by and asks him what time it was. "12:20" he said without looking at his watch (which he doesn't have). i was shooting him with mind bullets.
