i had the house to myself when i woke up today. i heated up some canned ravioli for lunch and finished watching the rest of tarantino's inglourious basterds. my neighbor renee finally found me - she'd been trying to get in touch with me for the past few days. turns out she actually went ahead and bought a new macbook. if i thought this would spare me from having to make regular trips to her house to fix her computer, then i was wrong. she complained she couldn't get on the internet, not realizing she had to plug in her macbook to her dsl modem first (she didn't have a router). then she wanted me to create a new account on her old pc so her son could use it during the week while he's back from school. i did her one more favor by connecting her to a neighbor who had open wifi access. i couldn't quite tell her this because she was on the phone with a friend (i waited for 5 minutes before just letting myself out). the only good thing that came out of all this is i got a chance to play around with the brand new macbook (it's impressively sleek and small).

my father gave me a handful of orphaned wrenches the last time i visited the cafe. i tried to find one that can remove the rear tire on my bicycle. turns out the 16mm was a perfect fit and just small enough to carry around in my emergency pack. i wonder if i'd be better off with an adjustable 4" wrench, or maybe a 15 in 1 bicycle wrench? i brought the open-end wrench back inside and gave it a light cleaning with some WD40 spray, a steel brush, and some steel wool. it's an unusual wrench, 16mm on one side, 7mm on the other. it's also been personalized on both sides with the letter "p" created in stipples.

my roommate came back from wandering boston around 2:30, but left at 5:30 for the galleria mall to continue his search for an electric shaver. i gave him directions until he pulled out a chinese smartphone that had a downloaded map of the cambridge streets (so that's his secret!). he came back hours later with new shaver in hand. i'd already had dinner by then (some dan dan noodles with kim chee) but he came out in the living room to eat his beef stew. we chatted about traveling and minority civil unrest in fringe chinese provinces.

later in the evening jiang came out and asked me about ordering things online. i don't think it's a very common practice in china because he was worried that his shipment might get lost or stolen. he also wanted to know about the tax situation. i asked him what he was thinking about buying, and he said he saw a camera at best buy for $1700. "$1700 US money?" i asked him in disbelief. i searched for the item online. it was combination deal of a canon 50D with a 28-135mm lens and a 70-300mm IS telephoto. "i didn't know you were interested in photography," i told him, "have you used an SLR camera before?" he revealed this would be his first SLR, and his primary reason was just to upgrade from his regular point-and-shoot. two things: first, he must be rich if he can afford to spend $1700 on a camera. second, he couldn't have found a better person to talk about digital SLR's. "i know a little something about the subject," i said, pulling out my bag of camera equipment from underneath the table and spending the next hour teaching him about SLR's. i recommended the canon rebel T1i instead, a less powerful camera, but $300 cheaper. since this was his first DLR, i suggested he start with something smaller (both in terms of size and performance). with the money he'd save, he could invest that in an additional lens. regardless, i told him to wait until after thanksgiving, when all the sales will occur before making any decision.