today was my usual trip into boston. since there wasn't much the last few times i went to haymarket, i decided to skip it and go to chinatown instead. i woke up at 8:30am and set out by 9am. victor caught me right when i was leaving, and then chatted with me with for 15 minutes before i told him i had to go. even though i managed to bike into boston in good time, i ended up not getting into chinatown until 9:40am. next time i should leave even earlier.
i went to c-mart first, to check prices and buy anything good that was on sale. i ended up getting most of the things on my grocery list, and i could've returned home at that point, but decided to visit ming's market as well. i picked up a bunch of produce, including a head of taiwan cabbage, scallions, baby cucumbers, daikon radish, bokchoi, and some water spinach. i got so much, i was worried i wouldn't be able to fit everything in my rear baskets. i got the same cashier who sold me all those bottles of plum drink, and she seemed to recognize me.
i spent several minutes repacking my rear baskets so i could fit everything: heavy and non-crushable items on the bottom, light produce on top, and anything fragile goes into my messenger bag. the amount of things i haul, i should really be looking into a trailer, or one of those real cargo bikes (even better electric) with a large front hopper bin, but i'd be afraid it'd get stolen parked in boston.
i decided to return home via a completely new route: washington street to mass ave, then keep on riding mass ave over the MIT bridge, through central and harvard square. google map said it'd add an extra 5 minutes to my trip, but it was worth it to experience something new. this route is only made possible because boston and cambridge have added to their biking infrastructure over the past few years. now there are dedicated bike lanes, where in the past you'd just fend for yourself riding in the road with car traffic. the whole trip i rode on bike lanes. the only annoyance was delivery vans and cars parked in the bike lanes. to make it even more unique, i cut through the harvard divinity school to get back.
i got back home by 10:50am. the outbound trip took me just 28 minutes, compared to my inbound trip earlier which was 25 minutes. it was definitely the more scenic route. if i ever took someone on a bike ride into boston, this would be the way i'd go. would i consider this my go-to route for getting home? probably not, as a few minutes difference is still a few minutes difference, and when i go home i want the quickest route.
i changed out of my sweat-soaked clothes and took a quick shower, before getting to the cafe by 11:20am. it turned out to be a busy day. my parents cooked another batch of rice with our new zojirushi rice cooker. we finished our current batch of tea eggs and started using the new batch my mother made just yesterday. twice i cooked soy sauce noodles, though my mother did the mixing as she does it quicker than me. i collected 7 boxes of ice from the ice machine. my father cooked some more boba. there was a very busy stretch around lunchtime, when we got half a dozen orders all at once, at the same time the ticket printer started to malfunction, so my father had to relay all the orders manually, so it was hard keeping them straight.
in the afternoon my father cooked up the water spinach. this batch was in much better quality than the ones i bought from haymarket a few weeks ago. he saved some stems for propagation purposes.
i finally left around 4:15pm, during a lull period. by the end of the day though, we had made double the amount of profit we made last friday, and just about equalled the total weekly amount made last week, and we still had one more day (tomorrow saturday) left. because we didn't get supplies last weekend, we need to go this weekend. my parents are running a medford-everett supply run tomorrow morning, and then probably monday we'll need to visit baifu in the south end.
lauryn returned home around 5:30pm today, the earliest she'd ever been back. she started immediately cooking dinner. i could hear the sizzle of splattering oil in the kitchen, and took all my will power not to run back and yell at her. she's just here for a little more than a week! i keep telling myself. later around 9pm when i made dinner (same salad from yesterday), i surveyed the damage. she keeps touching the stainless steel doors of my fridge with oily hands, to the point where i can't clean off the stains anymore. besides oil splatter all over the stovetop, she also managed to burn one of the burners so badly it's completely black. i ended up spending half an hour cleaning the stove, taking it apart, scrubbing the burner with a brillo pad, and reapplying a sheet of protective heavy duty aluminum foil. only then did i finally eat.
i ate my salad while watching the world cup match between USA and vietnam. is it okay to say that i hate the US team? they carry themselves with a level of arrogance only the no.1 seeded team would have. just watching them play on the field, you can see the obvious mismatch: the USA women are all giants compared to the vietnamese players. the US team plays with tactics, while the vietnam team plays keep away, their strategy seems to be kicking the ball as far away from their goal as possible. USA won 3-0. their next opponents in group stage are the netherlands and portugal. i will be rooting against them. i'm hoping japan makes a good showing, that's the team i'm rooting for. i still remember when they beat USA in the 2011 world cup.
we also had some severe thunderstorms tonight. it was a relief, because for much of the day, it was raining in western MA, while eastern MA didn't seem to be getting anything. but finally we got some rain, after it'd been dry for much of the week. the plants will be happy.