my sister stopped by, leaving esmei in her car. i went to go see her dog, who wanted to get out the moment i opened the door. i found a green paisley bandana yesterday and put it on esmei as as scarf. i brought her out of the car so she could greet my parents before my sister took her.
today a part of the global digital infrastructure crashed. it wasn't hackers or cyberattacks, but rather a bad software update for microsoft security causing the international chaos. airlines, banks, 911 system, hospitals, websites, even starbucks - anyone using the windows platform. i thought i saw it here locally because there were private charter buses marked with "red line MBTA" seemingly shuttling passengers from porter to harvard. turns out that was something else (part of the red line is shut down until the end of next weekend). regardless, it felt like an episode mr.robot.
today was busy but a lot of simple orders with stock we already had on hand. we did nearly run out of salt & pepper chicken and my father had to fry a new batch in the deep fryer. we sold at least 17 bento boxes, felt like every order that came in was a bento order. my mother cooked 7 cups of rice in the morning but that wasn't enough and we needed to cook 4 more cups, plus reheat all our emergency reserve rice from the freezer.
this is the state of my life: getting excited about a brand new dishwashing brush. we've been using the dawn-brand compact head brush. it's pretty good, but has a hard time washing the corners of containers. that's why i got the new "fan" brush. it pretty much resembles a toilet bowl scrubber that's cut in half. despite it's funny appearance, it works miracles on corners and crevasses. it does however had a tendency to spray back if you angle the bristles the wrong way. but i like it and it makes dishwashing fun again, if that's even possible.
my aunt stopped by in the early afternoon after we went through our busy lunchtime period. she had the sausage bento and my parents saved her some frozen mojito from last weekend. my father reconstituted the drink in the vitamix blender, adding more syrup and sugar. the final result taste even better when fully sweetened. my mother said my 2nd aunt added some li hing mui powder which made it taste even better. i tried some to test, it added a saltiness/sourness to the mojito that wasn't bad.
later in the afternoon during a lull, we had lunch. my parents made a new batch of chicken curry. i wasn't going to have any, but decided to fix myself a bowl after all, mixed with some pickled mustard green, some pickled crunchy bitter melon my 2nd aunt made, and some hot sauce. it tasted pretty good. never thought i'd be a fan of bitter melons but i like their crunchiness and don't mind the bitter flavor.
it got busy again around 5pm. customers kept coming in as late as 6:20pm when we were about to close up for the day. fortunately they only wanted drinks and a few takeout items. as soon as they left we turned off the lights.
i made some quick noodles for dinner, mixed with a spicy sauce packet, some pickled mustard, and chopped scallions. nothing fancy, probably similar to ramen but maybe a smidge healthier.