it rained for most of the day, a warm rain reminiscent of spring rather than winter. for lunch i heated up the rest of my trader joe biryani (purchased probably about a year ago). thoughts of grocery shopping were dashed, but i did walk down to harvard square to talk to michael about his computer hardware upgrades. i tested parallels earlier and it looks like it'd be able to run his PC-based customer database software within OS X. that gave him the go ahead to buy a macbook pro, at which point i'd help him set up the PC stuff on it. he said he also wanted to upgrade to a wireless printer.

i saw a lot of red buds on trees that i thought were flowers from trees confused as to what season it was due to the recent stretch of warming weather. but upon closer examination i realized they were red berries, not flowers. so the trees haven't been tricked after all it seems.

later in the evening i heated up some french bread pizza for dinner. alfonso came home afterwards around 8:30pm with his friend gaby. they invited me out to burgers, but i declined since i already ate. while they were gone, i checked the fridge and saw that alfonso had bought more beer, almost like he was planning on having a party here afterwards.

when they came back they had a beer in the living room, but there wasn't a partyesque vibe, as gaby left soon after finishing his drink (taking the rest of the beer with him). gaby was chatting about how promotions are handled in the US and that you need to ask for a raise. i told him it all depends on the company, and that a good boss/company would have a system to automatically increase one's salary without asking first, which can create awkwardness at work, especially if the raise isn't granted.

then we talked about colombia, where gaby is from. he confirmed that more tourists are visiting, and there are hardly anymore dangerous places, maybe just in the remotest of jungles where tourists would never venture. i jokingly said that the worst thing colombia seemed to have suffered recently is the lost of the miss universe beauty pageant crown (steve harvey announced the wrong winner when it should've gone to miss philippine). gaby told us that while beauty pageants might be looked down up in other countries, in colombia it's still considered something very prestigious and that this was big news in his home country.

after gaby left, alfonso finished packing his things. we watched concussion afterwards, but after 30 minutes he fell asleep on the couch. it's his last night in cambridge; tomorrow he returns to spain.