this morning began the 3rd day of impeachment hearings with national security council ukraine expert alexander vindman and vice president mike pence's personal assistant jennifer williams. it messes with my daytime routine as all channels live broadcast the hearings, which means noontime news broadcasts all get preempted.

there was street cleaning on my side of the street this morning but i was surprised to see that the dumpster was still parked on the sidewalk. a large flatbed mack trunk finally arrived around 11am and took the dumpster away. city crew must've been waiting nearby because as soon as it was gone, the street sweeper vehicle came by and finally cleaned the street.

after eating the last of my yogurt mixed with granola for lunch, i went outside and raked a barrel of dead leaves from the backyard. i then relocated to my bedroom to work. i'm a lot more efficient when working from a desk, and less prone to snacking (i don't have a habit of eating in the bedroom). it was just a lot darker. when i turned on my lamp i discovered it interfered with the HDTV signal, so i kept it off.

i left the house around 4:30pm for a hong kong protest discussion at harvard. the lecture room was filled to capacity, and they were also livestreaming it at another overfill location. each speaker spoke regarding a different country and how the protests affected them: south korea, japan, taiwan, and the US. the final speaker was a historian who put the protests in the context of history, from the 1989 tiananmen massacre to the 1919 may fourth movement. once again i sat next to some annoying people. the young man to my left seemed bored and kept spinning his phone on the desk. the young man to my right seemed distracted, highlighting a paper he was reading rather than actually paying attention to the talk. the discussion was interesting, the korean and japanese perspective not so much, the taiwanese portion interesting but not really explained well (fortunately i already know a lot of the backstory), the US perspective was the best. mary alice haddad gave that talk, she spoke about on-campus discussions on her own campus between mainland chinese and hong kong chinese.

for dinner i returned to my grilled ham and cheese sandwich. it wasn't that good, i may just make regular sandwiches from now on.