and i bust out my impeccable mandarin, telling the lady behind the counter what days and times i'm leaving and coming back. initially she replied in mandarin, but midway through she switched to her broken english. what's going on? i take offense to that. it's like going to a chinese restaurant and they bring you a fork because they think you don't know how to use their chopsticks (actually, that doesn't really bother me, and that's never happened to me before). anyway, i interpreted her switch as 1) my mandarin was so bad she couldn't understand me, or 2) she used english because she didn't consider me chinese enough to speak mandarin with. anyway, mountain out of a molehill here, i paid for my tickets and left.
i treated myself to lunch at suishiya. i haven't been here in a while (the last time i was here was back in december), after their lunch box specials started to degrade in quality with each subsequent visit while the price steadily increased. but i figured i'd give them another try, maybe they've improved since then. 
though i was all ready for the box lunch, at the last moment i had a sudden change of heart and ordered this korean cold noodle dish that i've never tried before. while i wait for the food to arrive, i scribbled some notes into my journal (risque secrets like, "i am here at suishiya waiting for my food"), and spend some time writing out checks for bills. i noticed a young guy, in his twenties, also alone, sitting at a different table. 
i noticed him because he had the weirdest way of eating, every bite he took he'd blow on his food and make a face like he was in pain. i also saw a sign on the window for "boo dae ji gae". not sure what it is, but one of the ingredients is spam. hmm, is that something they want to advertise? at least they're honest and don't call it "special ham" or something.
my order finally came, a thick clump of soba noodles that the waitress had to cut for me with a pair of scissors. 
also a few beef slices, half a boiled egg, fermented radish slices, and slices of japanese water pears, with hot sauce over the whole thing. a few side dishes of assorted kim chee, and a bowl of water that the waitress said was for the noodle if i found it too dry. it was an interesting meal, but on a relatively cold day like today, it's better to have hot food (temperature wise and spice wise) versus cold food. something about eating anything cold makes me think it's uncooked (unless it's cereal or ice cream). i like the water pear slices though, for some reason they seemed to work.
originally after work today i planned on doing some blog bowling, but i wasn't feeling too well on the account of my little lunchtime food experimentation. nevertheless, i decided i'd go running after work instead, just because i haven't done it for a while (last time i ran was a week ago) and i could use the exercise. the weather outside was also pretty nice, started to warm up to the mid 50's. the past few weeks i've pretty much fallen off of my running schedule, so my body wasn't able to keep up. plus, because i decided so last minute, once again i didn't properly hydrate (a 20 oz. minutemaid orange soda was all the fluids i had today), and i had all that korean food in my stomach that was trying to revolt. i ran around the charles but i probably did more walking than running. i'd run just enough to cramp up and then i'd walk it off. on top of that, the pedestrian walkway of the longfellow bridge was closed (at least the onramp getting to the bridge), so i had to walk another 2 miles up to the science museum and back to finally cross the river to get to the office. fortunately the weather was nice and i was able to bask in the warm rays of the setting sun.
return to castle wolfenstein: tonight, i met the elite force composed of well trained nazi femme fatales who kicked my ass for 44 consecutive deaths before i was able to advance into the next round. later, i met the first boss monster (helga, is that you?), and once again i died a few dozen times before finding a safe place where i could blast it without getting hurt myself.