today was my 14th and penultimate day of lunch delivery to my grand uncle. i biked down to the cafe on the first official day of spring, with temperature today hitting the lower 50's, but i was bundled up for much colder weather. karen herself had biked to work (i knew this because the bike lights were gone), but texted me at 9:20am asking for the combination to the lock. i freaked out when i saw it, fearing that she'd texted me earlier and i'd missed it, but fortunately she texted me just a minute ago, and i quickly sent her the correct combination. it was her first time biking to work, and i believe it was a success because she made it, albeit a bit late. i think she will bike from this point on, unless it's raining. she says it because she wants the exercise, but i believe it's so she can save money by not having to ride the MBTA (mexican pesos don't go very far in the US).

my sister was home, getting ready to take hailey out for a walk in the woods. she said she was going to drop off her dog at my parents' place tomorrow, because i'm going to be there waiting until the evening so i can go pick them up from the airport. while i was at the cafe i also climbed the ladder to water some plants because my aunt told me they haven't been watered in a while.

back in cambridge i heated up a box of trader joe's shumai in the microwave for lunch. it was a little greasy (as typical of cantonese cuisine) and i finished them off with some vietnamese hot sauce.

while having lunch i was browsing youtube via roku and came across a recommended video, "BBC One - Frankie Howerd Up Pompeii 1971." it was a full feature british sex comedy film from 1971. what got my attention initially was the thumbnail featuring a topless woman in a bubble bath (yes, i just discovered that there's actually a lot of nudity on youtube), and i sort of watched the film without paying much attention but then i couldn't turn away. the story takes place during roman time, in the city of pompeii. the narrator (frankie howerd) is a slave, and throughout the movie he breaks the 4th wall to address the audience directly, commenting about this and that. it's a bizarre and compelling film, so i ended up doing some research, and discovered that it was actually a popular BBC series from 1969-1970. it features a particular style of british humor which has a lot of talking and a lot of bawdy comedy. all the episodes can be found on youtube as well.

tom brady's missing jersey has been found! it was taken by a mexican reporter with international press credentials. with the help of the mexican police and the FBI, the jersey was located in mexico. what's even weirder was brady's superbowl 49 jersey (which had also gone missing) was also found. so this guy stole brady's superbowl game winning jersey not once but twice! he also had some other memorabilia, probably stolen from other past superbowls.

i'm experimenting with justified photo layouts in css/jquery again. i'm trying to find a solution that will not only present the photos in a justified grid, but each photo has lightbox and lazy load functionality as well. i've yet to find a free solution that has all 3 of those components. i may have to roll my own but first i have to understand how all those 3 functionalities work before attempting to combine them. i have lightbox and lazy load on my current website, but i never took the time to figure out how they work. i just took the code and tweaked it so it'd work with my layout.

harvard's fairbank center for chinese studies was having a lecture by harriet zurndorfer (leiden university) titled "perceptions of china's sexual economy" at 4pm. i decided to attend, since in my travels through china (as well as southeast asia) i've seen my share of weird sexual dynamics. i'd never been inside the CGIS knafel building before, but it was a simple walk from my place. i didn't think there'd be a lot of people, and in fact i was afraid it would only be me, but the medium-sized conference room ended up being filled to capacity. i saw some chinese men, and was immediately suspicious of them, suspecting them of less than wholesome interests. i figured the bulk of people in attendance were either chinese studies or women studies students.

the lecture was interesting, and used the popular 2009 chinese drama woju (蜗居) as a springboard into chinese sexual economics. "economics" might not be correct term, and the gist of the talk was to highlight a new class of educated young women who become the mistress of wealthy older men for material gains, like a house and money. i found a lot of things zurndorfer pointed out to be true in my own observation of chinese society, but the one thing i fault her with was using a piece of fictional television show from 2009 as a source of truth. 8 years as elapsed since the show was first broadcasted, and in modern chinese society, a lot can change in 8 years.

there was a reception after the lecture but i made my way home, feeling a little out of place amongst the academic elites. there were also some asian studies professors in attendance and i could feel their expertise just from the questions they asked. plus their spoken mandarin chinese were pretty good as well, which for me is a tell-tale sign of someone with exceptional higher learning.

i was expecting karen to be home before dark and began to get worried when it started to get late, afraid she might've gotten into an accident, being unfamiliar with the roads on her way back. for dinner i cooked up a bag of trader joe's mushroom risotto. having just made risotto a few nights ago, this instant version pales in comparison with my own recipe. the mushroom gave the risotto an earthy flavor that i didn't particularly like. nevertheless, i will still make my mushroom prosciutto risotto recipe one of these days. i also roasted half a bundle of asparagus in the oven, this time adding some parmesan cheese to the mix.

karen didn't come home until 8:30pm. she had no difficulty coming back, i was worried for nothing. she must've had dinner already because after a shower she went to her bedroom to work then to sleep. she told me tomorrow she has to be at the clinic by 8am. i will adjust the nest thermostat schedule accordingly.