for whatever reason, i woke up at 7am this morning, couldn't fall back asleep anymore, even though i went to bed last night at 2am. it wasn't raining yet, but the forecast said rain would come around 10:45am, so i had to leave before then.

i left by 10am. my ebike was still outside underneath the tarp, double locked to my regular trek utility bike. i figured if anyone wanted to steal it, they'd have to go through the hassle of taking both bikes.

i passed by the bakery, which was crowded with people, something like 20 customers inside. it still doesn't make any sense they'll closing by month's end. it's not because of business, they're always busy. i did notice the owner wasn't there, on what will be a busy sunday the second to last weekend before they're gone forever. i also saw an article on boston.com about the closing. the owner must know the writer.

i went to the cafe to put away the tea eggs and leftover rice, and to mix the fermenting rice in the fido jars. all the jars were around room temperature, didn't seem like there was much fermenting. the 4L fido jar - the one with properly cooked rice and 3 crushed yeast balls - looked like nothing was happening. it didn't even have a smell. when i started stirring, it started bubbling. i tasted the metal spatula afterwards, no taste. no sweetness, no sourness, just tasted like cold bland rice. the 5L fido jar was cooking. there was a vigorous amount of bubbling and it smelled like makgeolli, with a slight fruitiness. when i stirred it though, the surface went placid, the opposite of what happened with the smaller fido jar. i tasted the spatula as well, expecting som sort of flavor, but it was just as bland as the previous jar.

i got belmont around 10:30am. i took out the battery from the ebike because it was down to 19%, wasn't sure if i'd have enough juice to make it home. it was probably so slow because i left the bike outside, battery doesn't perform wll in the cold. i went to the garage to find a tarp to cover up the ebike and went inside to charge up the battery.

my father made a fried egg, a taiwanese scallion pancake (which i ate with some pork floss), some hunter sausage, a mug of matcha latte (my mother made that for me), and a tokyo banana cake. my aunt dropped it off last weekend, i wasn't able to try it then. it tastes exactly like a banana and shaped like a banana too. makes me wonder: why not just eat a banana instead?

it was supposed to rain the rest of the day but it didn't really. the midmorning rain never really came, just a very little sprinkle at best. in the afternoon there was about round of rain, but just a light cold drizzle. when the battery finally finished charging 4 hours later, i went outside to put it on the bike and remove the tarp so i could get a free bike wash. i wiped off all the mud stains from a winter of riding.

i finally ordered some stuff from rareseeds. once again i waited too long, and two of the things i wanted - asian asters and taiwanese eggplants - were sold out. i ended up getting seed packets for stevia, serrano tampiqueño hot peppers, heavy hitter okra (it'll be our first time growing okra), blue butterfly pea, and swiss chards.

for dinner we had som reuben sandwiches. i brought a can of sauerkraut that i bought yesterday. my mother also made a potato salad but the sandwich was already filling enough.

i didn't leave for home until 7:20pm, waiting for the rain to stop. i put on my rain pants to stay dry, figured i'd be riding through a lot of leftover puddles.

spent the rest of the night playing cyberpunk. i finished one last gig for mr.hand. turned out to be the very last one, he gifted me a sports car and some maxtac mantis claws. the end is near! only mission left is to meet hanako at embers. maybe there are a few more gigs i haven't done yet. i've resorted to calling random people on my phone list, but nobody's picking up.

i woke up at 8am this morning to ride down to belmont so i could spray our flowering cherry/plum trees with horticultural oil. last season we discovered the cherry plum had an infestation of scale insects and wanted to get ahead of it this season. this morning was the optimal time, and would give about 24 hours worth of dry warm weather for the oil to work.

i opted to use 6 tbsp of oil per gallon of water, making 2 gallons worth in the spray tank. that turned out to be way too much, i probably only needed a gallon for the two trees. i started with the cherry plum first. with the thin high branches i wasn't sure if i was getting complete coverage, basically just hope and pray i did. while spraying, i also discovered some black knots which i promptly removed. while i was applying horticultural oil, my father was busy pruning the grapevine. after the cherry plum i moved on to the kwanzan flowering cherry. this tree is much healthier, partly because it gets more sun, and partly because it has fewer thin branches. it's a very healthy tree, and the branches have started to open up into a wider canopy now. the kwanzan doesn't have any scale issues but i sprayed anyway as a preventative.

my mother left for work around 10am, walking to the cafe. i finished up around 10:40am and rode the ebike to join my mother at work. i was surprised my 2nd aunt was already there, she usually doesn't show up until 11am when we open.

my mother only cooked 4 cups of rice, since we had a lot left over from yesterday (3 boxes worth). she also didn't think we'd be busy today, since it'd been a slow week overall. i had the opposite opinion: with weather approaching the 50's today and sunny, it was shaping up to be a busy day. we got a handful of orders just within the first hour. that was a sign it was going to be busy. around noontime we ran out of rice and my mother had to reheat all the leftover rice from yesterday while i cooked more 4 cups in the backup cooker. just around noontime we already made more in that single hour than all of yesterday combined. i didn't mind we were busy, it made the day go by much faster. we should so many bentos today that i ended up cooking another batch of tea eggs. i only simmered them for one hour this time, since they'll be soaking in tea egg brine all weekend and we probably won't start using this batch until wednesday at the earliest, so they'll have plenty of time to steep.

i checked on the progress of our fermenting rice. the 5L jar with makgeolli lees added was bubbling like crazy. i took temperature measurements for each jar. the 5L and the 4L both read 65.8 degrees, which was just 0.2 degrees more than the countertop temperature. the two quart jars were much warmer, both read 66.2 degrees. i opened up the fido jars to give them a stir. the 5L makgeolli lees rice i could already smell the makgeolli flavor through the paper towel cap. the jar was dense with rice, i could barely stir it. the rice itself seemed to have crumbled. the 4L jar with the properly cooked rice and just juniang yeast balls didn't seem like it was doing very much. it had a very faint rotten smell, like the rice was going bad. when i stirred it up a lot of bubbles suddenly started rising from the rice, so there's definitely fermentation going on. i took another smell, didn't smell anything, but at least the foul smell was gone. the fido jars became warmer after i stirred them, to the same temperature as the smaller quart jars.

we tried some leftover makgeolli from the fridge. it's had two weeks to ferment now. it wasn't as sweet anymore, and there seemed to be more alcohol, to the point where it tasted dry and slightly astringent, reminded me of champagne. still very good, but definitely a more mature flavor.

my father showed up around closing time even though my mother told him she was going to walk home after work. i don't know if she did walk home, because i left while my mother was still packing up foods to take home. because i had the ebike, i took the long way home, gave me a few more bonus minutes of riding. i noticed what looked to be rust on the chain but after i rode it the rust seemed to have disappeared. still, it'd be a good thing to rinse the bike, so much road salt and dirt splashes on the white frame.

i went to star market after i got home, to grab a can of sauerkraut for the corned beef and some chex mix. i couldn't find it before because i was looking for a bigger bag until i saw them in smaller shrink-sized bags.

after a shower i settled in for a nice saturday evening of cyberpunk. it seems to be true that the game is nearly over. i'm still getting a few gigs, but it makes me sad since each finished mission just means i'm that much closer to the actual end. i met up with reed who said his good bye. assisting so mi in her suicide ruined the lives of so many characters, from reed, to the president, to so mi. i thought her death was the only option, but apparently you could allow her to live and she ends up going into space just to get away from the blackwall AI. maybe i'll try that option in some future playthrough. i managed to craft the iconic power submachine gun erebus which is like a weapon from hell, sending screaming victims into cyberspace beyond the blackwall through the guidance of a built-in AI that periodically talks to the user.

i reheated the last of my gyudon for dinner than had some blood orange slices.

i packed my rain pants since the forecast said rain after work.

i borrowed the car around 11am and drove to my parents' place to meet up with the mcdonough fence guy. i brought back a corned beef for the slow cooker so my parents could have it for dinner when they returned home. cole showed up a bit before 11:30am. we went out to the backyard to see the fence. at first he thought we wanted to replace the low western fence, which he said was "a million years old" until he saw the broken pieces of the southern fence. he took quick measurements with a tape measure. i asked him if he ever considered using a laser measure: he has one, but prefers the tape measure since most properties aren't that big to begin with. he saw right away we had a cutout for the pussy willow and what used to be apple tree; i told him we'd cut down the willow before they start working.

cole said the fence we currently have looks like something you'd buy from home depot; i personally don't think it's too bad, lasted us 30+ years. i asked about the material, he said cedar wood, like the fence our eastern neighbor put up a while back. would they also replace the posts? he said yes, replaced with thicker 5" diameter posts. he said overall it looks to be a pretty straight-forward job, and he could send me an estimate by tonight. while he was getting into his truck, i asked if this was a busy time for them, springtime yes, today he has 4 more house calls, one to newton, one to somerville. the other busy time is fall, when a lot of landscaping projects happen and people who held off on replacing their fence all year now want to get it down before winter.

i got back to the cafe around 11:40am, surprised my parents that i returned so soon. i was worried it'd get busy while i was gone, which turned out to be unwarranted. not sure what was happening today, but we barely had any customers. i don't even think we had a single online order, no any phone orders. there was a brief peak around 1pm, but that was yet. a regular customer even remarked that business seemed slow. today was probably one of the single worst days so far this year. nevertheless, the time seemed to go by fast, and before we knew it, it was time to go home.

i had some instant century egg rice porridge for a late breakfast when i returned from belmont. in the late afternoon i cooked all the fennel italian sausages in the air fryer. there was an issue of new yorker magazine, sent to the cafe by accident (wrong address). i didn't realize that a single issue of this weekly magazin is now $10.99. that's crazy expensive! i read a few articles, usually i find this magazine at the doctor's office.

reading the cooking instruction on our bag of indian sona masoori rice, we found out you're supposed to use 2 cups of water for 1 cup of rice. that's why the rice we cooked yesterday seemed so dry, because we used the typical 1:1 ratio for asian rice. so we decided to make a new batch using sona masoori rice, putting it in a 4L fido jar i had at the cafe. we used about 660g of rice. this time around the rice came out fluffy, although still individually grained (due to low starch content). after we rinsed the rice in cold water to lower the temperature, my father mixed in 3 grounded juniang yeast balls. we didn't want to completely fill the fido jar, so we put some rice in a 1-quart wide-mouth jar. to that jar we added some makgeolli lees, basically recreating the rice fermentation experiment from yesterday. we then topped both jars with water until all the rice was submerged.

we stirred the fermenting rice in the 5L fido jar, which is what you're supposed to do for the first 3 days when making makgeolli. just a day later, there didn't seem to be any signs of fermentation. the rice itself at a very faint foul odor, like what wet rice would smell like if you left it outside. we had a feeling this batch was going to go bad. so in order to save it, we dumped everything out into a large stainless steel bowl and added several clumps of makgeolli lees. we reconstituted the lees in water (turning it back into a slurry) before adding it to the rice. we then put all the rice back inside the 5L fido jar.

that makgeolli lees is still pretty potent despite being in the fridge for a week. as soon as we refilled the 5L jar with rice and lees, we could see bubbling action. we also added two teaspoon of sugar to this jar, not sure if it was necessary, but give the yeast something to feed on while bacteria converts the rice starch to sugar. it wasn't just bubbles: using an infrared temperature gun, the two new rice jars we made today were both at 63.3 degrees, while the 1-quart jar of slightly cooked sona masoori rice with makgeolli lees was 67.2 degrees, and the 5L fido jar was 65.3 degrees.

i left work early for a change. i had my eye on the weather and the doppler radar showed rainstorms on boston's doorstep. if i left early, i could avoid getting soaked. so i left around 6:10pm. i already felt a few drops of rain, but otherwise i escaped unscathed.

mcdonough fence got back to me with a quote. my mother guessed $2000, my father was thinking $3500, while i went with $4000. actual price? $4650. so i was closer, but even i was a little shocked, didn't think it'd be that expensive. included in the price is also concrete bases to set the pressure treated posts, something i don't think many other fence contractors would do. if we agree to let mcdonough do the work, we just need to pay them half the amount and then we'll be put on their installation waitlist. i still have contractors to see on wednesday and friday.

for dinner i some leftover gyudon. i brought home some more rice from the cafe, we barely used the 7-cups we cooked this morning. i played cyberpunk for 4 hours until midnight. i finished the save songbird mission, the game actually rolled the credits afterwards. i thought maybe the entire game was over at that point, but i found myself back in my apartment, waiting for a phone call from reed. besides that, i have just one more mission left, to meek hanako at embers. i know that is the last mission that officially ends the game.

this morning my parents made a batch of vegetable buns while i made a batch of tea eggs. i also brought the two heads of cabbage i bought yesterday and turned them into sauerkraut. what would've taken me a hour to shred took my parents a combined total of just 10 minutes. i figured out i had 3198g of cabbage, so i added 2% salt - 64g - to reduce the cabbage. i also added 2 tsp of caraway seeds and 4 cloves of chopped garlic. the recipe asked for mustard seeds but they were in belmont so i didn't add them.

i bought a packet of nissin geki spicy hot chicken ramen that i had for lunch in the afternoon. it's nissin's answer to buldak spicy korean ramen, down to the cartoon mascot (a lion?). the ramen was definitely spicier than your typical instant noodle, but it didn't exactly taste like buldak (which is super spicy). the noodle itself is thick and wavy. one word of caution: it's incredibly salty (2100g) so don't drink the broth.

we also fermented some indian sona masoori rice. not sure where we got it from, probably left behind by one of the astrophysicists. apparently it's a premium rice in india, but not a rice for the chinese palate. it's not a good rice for making rice wine because of its low starch content. because of that the grains don't really stick together once cooked. we cooked 1kg of sona masoori rice in the rice cooker. when it finished it didn't even looked cooked because the grains looked so dry. we rinsed the rice in cold water until it cooled down. instead of nuruk we mixed in two grounded jiuniang yeast balls. my father then scooped the rice mix into a 5L fido jar. we saved about a quarter and mixed it with some leftover makgeolli lees just as a side experiment. into the fido jar we added 1.5L of cold water to keep the rice submerged. as for the sona masoori makgeolli jar we added enough water to cover the rice. now we wait to see if anything will ferment.

we were busy around lunchtime, then not so much the rest of the day. we didn't make our daily average based on square profit alone, but combined with a handful of ubereats and grubhub orders, we did make more than average. my father left in the late afternoon for his 4:30pm physical. my aunt showed up afterwards looking for something to eat before her tennis match. we watched a taiwanese couple's videoblog of their independent trip to istanbul.

when i returned home there was a fancy sports car parked outside my house. it was an aston martin vanquish. brand new (2026), the base price of this car costs more than the price of my house - $433k). however this particular model from 2014-2016 sells for just $80-100k. still a lot of money, but not buy-a-house money.

after a shower, i went to star market to get more cabbage on sale. i then came back and made gyudon for dinner.

that combination of onion slices reduced in homemade teriyaki sauce reminds me so much of japanese cuisine. the recipe is so easy to make, i'm surprise i don't make it more often.

after dinner i played cyberpunk. i stopped right before the mission to rescue so mi from maxtec.

a bit of drama this morning as i couldn't remember if i took my pills last night. oh the joys of getting old! (although i've been on high blood pressure medication since my 20's). i have a nightly routine, where i put my single daytime medication out on the table after i take my other pills to remind me to take it in the morning. but i didn't see the bottle this morning, which would indicate i didn't take my medication last night. i could've taken them all this morning, but i didn't want to accidentally double dose if i made a mistake, and drop my blood pressure too much. i even took a few blood pressure measurements, but didn't see any drastically higher pressure, so i decided not to take any pills.

i left for a market basket run this morning at 10am but got stuck chatting with my neighbors victor and susan and didn't actually leave about a half hour later. victor invited me to a poetry/lecture on easter sunday in his backyard. susan told us the pillsbury house down the street that was sold last year will be demolished by the new owners.

it was cold this morning, below freezing. i had to wear a hat and gloves to stay comfortable. most of the stuff i got from market basket was for the cafe. only thing for m was a brick of frozen lasagna, some altoids, and a package of blood oranges.

i returned to the house to pick up some frozen dumplings before heading to the cafe. after dropping off the supplies, i went down to the basement to take all the remaining bulbs and then drove the car to belmont to do some yard work.

i first took down the screen netting from the grapevines. they were sort of successful in that it made it harder for critters to get to the grapes, but it also prevented us from getting to the grapes as well, to the point where we didn't even bother harvesting them this past season. they were also a pain to put up so we left them in the grapes throughout the winter. i was taking them down now to allow us to prune the grapevines. i did a bit of pruning myself, but stopped because i had other things to do.

my original plan was to pot some hyacinth bulbs so they could be displayed at the cafe once they started blooming. but i've sort of grown bored with bulb forcing, especially since some bulbs grew moldy during the winter storage in the garage, and of the bulbs i did try to grow in forcing vases, not all of them were successful. i decided the best thing to do would be to plant them in the garden instead. besides hyacinth bulbs, i also had a package of scilla bulbs and fritillary bulbs. those bulbs were not in very good shape, and think they mostly all dried up. nevertheless, i was going to plant them anyway, with the hopes that maybe a few might still be viable. trying to find a place to plant them, i ended up digging up the plot that used to be our garlic chive bed - southwestern corner of the backyard - underneath the hawthorn tree. the soil had already thawed, just a thin crust of icy dirt that i broke apart with a spade. i sprinkled the scilla and fritillary bulbs then buried them. of the hyacinths, i planted them underneath the grapevine, taking the best bulbs. those that were left over i planted them with the scilla and fritillary.

i did some basic cleanup, managed to fill two garden refuse bins. i raked our shady eastern perennial bed, as well as the shady western perennial bed with the wild gingers. i chased two large rabbits out of the backyard and uncovered an empty rabbit nest in the large raspberry pot. it's still very early in the season, but already things are growing. i forgot i'd planted some snowdrops, those poked out from underneath the grapevines. they must be doing well because there seemed to be more of them, so they're propagating. i planted some scillas a season or two ago, and they're also starting to come up. the daffodils i divided up a few years ago are emerging. at this rate i may need to divide them up again.

using the platform ladder, i did a bit of maple tree pruning. just removed a few suckers, nothing too major. i'll need my father's help to tackle some of the more challenging branches. sap dripped out from the fresh cuts, enough so that it felt like it was raining standing underneath the tree.

i left around 2:30pm, returned the car to the cafe. we tried one of the bottled makgeolli. it continues to produce gas, so much so that the cap was bulging, but the bottle was intact otherwise. it took forever to vent. because it had a few more days to ferment, the alcohol content is probably even greater than what it was before. it's essentially milky jiuniang soda with an unknown amount of alcohol.

my mother packed me another bento for lunch. when i got home i ran some errands first. i delivered some catalogs and magazine that were accidentally sent to me months ago. i went to gail's house on sacramento street to drop off my community garden fee ($15). i paid a second visit to market basket because i forgot to get bean sprouts this morning. when i returned, i went to star market to get some cabbage on sale (to make a fresh batch of my annual sauerkraut) and more corned beef. when i came home for good, i didn't eat my bento until 4:30pm. that ended up being my dinner.

starting at 5pm i played cyberpunk for the next 4-1/2 hours. i played the mission to rescue so mi. that involved impersonating the cassel twins by hijacking their car and remotely driving it to a secure location. what i didn't expect was for reed and alex to just murder the twins. aurore cassel was my favorite character! we then met kurt hansen at the stadium. so mi ended up betraying us and getting possessed by an evil AI. she went on a killing spree, murdering everyone in the stadium (no more herold lowe arms dealer and his iconic weapons), before getting captured by maxtac.

i started feeling hungry again around 10pm, so i heated up some pizza rolls. like an idiot, i grabbed the tray with my tongs but them promptly dropped everything onto the kitchen floor. i picked everything up, cleaned up the carpet the best i could, then ate the pizza rolls cautiously, making sure i wasn't eating anything gross off of the floor.

i made sure to take my medication this time around.

if yesterday felt like a wednesday, then today felt like a thursday. i was completely confused as to what day it was. temperature was in the 40's this morning, but my weather station said it was 60 degrees. turns out my outdoor sensor got blown away by the strong winds, left in pieces in the backyard. i wore my thermal underwear since it's one of those weird days where the highest temperature is in the morning before it drops by evening.

my parents went to trader joe's before coming to the cafe. i was expecting this so wasn't surprised when they came in late. i brought up two more forced hyacinth bulbs from the basement. they're taking forever to sprout, i'm just going to mass plant them in potted soil. my father and i dumped the bag of raised bed soil into the garlic chive garden. my parents cut up some salmon steaks and marinated them in teriyaki sauce. i cooked some boba pearls before making a new batch of tea eggs. my father made some handcut noodles which we ate with zhajiang sauce for breakfast.

it wasn't busy today because it's spring break for harvard university. things looked downright bleak. we were saved in the final hour when several large orders came in. we ended up making slightly more than last tuesday, and made more than our daily average.

reliable fencing actually contacted me yesterday but i didn't see their e-mail until today. they offered a time to meet for next friday between 11-1pm. that's actually the busiest time of the day so i won't be able to get away. i called them back to reschedule to 10-11am that friday. i now have 3 appointments for 3 fencing contractors. hopefully by next friday we'll figure who we want to go with and finally get our fence replaced.

my mother pan-fried some firm tofu for lunch, served with some paocai and a dash of hot sauce. i roasted a batch of charsiu pork in the afternoon. we marinated some more charsiu with a large piece of pork butt we got from costco.

i went home with a bento. when i got back, i cleaned up my weather station sensor and pieced it back together. fortunately it still worked, the red led flashing. i went outside and hug it back on my backyard deck.

after a shower i ate dinner. after dinner it was more cyberpunk. i stopped around 10pm when the game crashed on me.

i took off my mi fitness band last night when i moisturized after showering. i slept in the guest bedroom, slept well. with nothing planned for today - not even going to belmont - i didn't get out of bed until 10am. it was supposed to rain all day today, but when i looked out the window, there was just a light drizzle at best. at one point the sky turned bright despite still being overcast. in the afternoon there'd be a few hours of relief, and i thought about going for a run, but decided against it because i didn't want to get splashed by puddles.

my 2nd aunt's new serta 78" copenhagen sofa was arriving today. i kept track of the fedex package for her. the latest update said it'd be delivered between 2-4pm. my 2nd aunt was supposed to wait at home for the delivery, but from google maps i could see she went out to the medford senior center for her activities. i sent her a screen capture to let her know, not sure if she'd even see it.

i warmed up some pizza rolls for lunch. afterwards i did some research on local fence contractors, to replace the old fence in belmont. i came up with 3 companies for now: reliable (various offices across massachusetts), mcdonough fences (medford), and ideal fence (watertown). i went with reliable first, they're the biggest company so probably one of the most expensive. i used their online form, filled out some information, and waited for them to send me a quote. next i called mcdonough fences. the woman i spoke with was able to schedule a person to come out to do an estimate for this friday late morning. finally i called ideal fence. the woman i spoke with took my info, and then 2 hours later somebody called me back. we scheduled an estimate for next wednesday morning. i got weird feeling about ideal fence: one of the first things the contractor said to me was why not a plastic fence they're cheaper.

my 2nd aunt called me during my fence contractor hunt. she said the sofa had already arrived - 1:45pm. the delivery guy just left it in the foyer of her building, she and my uncle managed to push the box all the way up to their apartment. since it currently wasn't raining, i managed to bike down to her place around 2pm to assemble the couch. temperature outside was 60 degrees and humid. i wore a hooded jacket but it was totally unnecessary.

when i got there, they had already took the cushions off the old couch and stood it up on one end, ready for disposal. not sure how the two of them will get it downstairs. maybe there's a maintenance person in the building who can help them.

it's amazing how compact they can fold up a couch these days. the serta arrived in a nearly rectangular box, weighing about 100 lbs. the couch essentially arrived in two halves that had to be joined together, along with the couch ends. this is at least the 4th couch i've assembled, 3 times for my 2nd aunt, 1 time for my sister's godmother. they're also designed that no additional tools are needed, just snap onto place and then lock accordingly.

the cushions were vacuumed sealed, came in these flat plastic bags. once they were cut open, they expanded immediately like magic. the cushions have coiled springs, but compared to the old cushions, these were softer. the old cushions themselves still look to be in good shape, so they must have coiled springs inside as well. just the fabric needs replacing, piling up. honestly, they could've kept their old sofa, it just needed new couch covers.

the couch had no wobble, but it had 6 feet instead of 4, and the middle 2 feet seemed a bit higher, making the couch rotate slightly. i fixed it by putting some cardboard shims underneath the other legs. it seems like a nice couch, the question is how long will this one last before they need to replace it again (seems like every 3 years).

i took the feet off the old couch. they were wooden and seemed to be in good shape, a shame to just throw them out, though not sure what i'd do with them myself. i left by 3pm. riding back home, it suddenly started pouring rain. i tried to pull up my hood but the wind kept blowing it off. i got home with soaked pants.

staying home on monday threw me for a loop. i kept thinking my parents were working at the cafe and though about maybe getting some supplies for them or going by the cafe to see if they needed help.

with most of the things i scheduled for today finished, it was finally time to play some cyberpunk. i only have 3 missions left on my job list, one of them being meet hanako at embers, which is a finish i don't plan on doing because it ends the game. another one was wait for reed to call. there was nothing left to do but wait around and steal the occasional car for el capitan.

for dinner i had some more dill dumplings. i also finished my bottle of makgeolli. i had the bright idea of shaking it to mix up the sediment on the bottom, but that was a mistake because the bottle got so fizzy i couldn't open it until a bit later. i ate while watching the suns-celtics game. suns are not a good team, i don't even know who they have besides devin booker that's good. they're currently 7th in the western conference, which means they'll have to compete in the play-in before they can advance. anyway, a celtics win seemed inevitable, boston won 112-120. after tonight the celtics just have 14 games left in the regular season.

back in cyberpunk, reed finally called. i went to alex's underground headquarter to hear about the plan before calling it a night.

my parents came to pick me up around 9am this morning for an everett-boston supply run. we were going today to spare ourselves from having to do it tomorrow during the all-day rainstorm. it was also a rare north-south of boston run, we typically only do one since they're in opposite directions.

first stop was the everett costco to get some eggs and also potting soil. the parking lot this sunday morning was more packed than usual, but could just be because we usually come on a monday. people were already leaving the warehouse with their purchases.

there was something like 18 pallets of miracle-gro soil, mostly for raised beds, but some for potting. we grabbed one bag of raised bed (for our garlic chive garden) and two bags of potting soil. as for eggs, the price continue to drop: 5 dozen eggs now cost $7.99, which is a little over 13¢ an egg. back during 2024-2025 when an avian flu outbreak destroyed significant amount of american egg-laying chickens, eggs were 28¢ and higher. that kind of trauma lingers, so even now i still think about hoarding eggs in case something happens to the supply chain again. for some reason the costco stacks were very well organized today. maybe new manager? even the pile of empty boxes were neatly organized.

next came a 25 minute drive via I-93 south to south boston. it was easy getting onto the highway, just took the onramp by assembly square. feels like a march tradition, but we always seem to be going to south boston to foodpak during the st.patrick's day parade. we already saw groups of young people all decked out in green around union square, taking the subway into the city. fortunately we were on the other side of I-93, the side that wasn't getting the parade.

foodpak/baifu wasn't very crowded. we filled our u-boat utility cart with supplies, including bags of rice and a case of taiwanese noodles. we also got a case of boba pearls. while my parents were paying, i returned to the car to reorganize the stuff we bought from costco so they wouldn't get crushed from all the things we were buying from foodpak.

from there we went to ming's market via washington street. i haven't been there since c-mart closed, kind of dreading it, afraid to see how much busier it'd get now that they're the last remaining large-size asian supermarket in chinatown. empty c-mart was just down the street, a shining beacon of gentrification. i find it ironic that the mayor of boston michelle wu is taiwanese-american yet the city itself continues to lose quality asian supermarkets. it's a quality of life issue, particular for asian people, now that they have limited shopping options.

driving up to the store we could see something happening outside. apparently traditional lion dancers were performing and heading inside the crowded supermarket. once we parked and went inside, i made a beeline to the lion dancers. most chinese people simply ignored them and went about their shopping business like nothing was happening. they know that lion dancers are a scam to get businesses to donate money. i just wanted to see the spectacle. they went through the store, by the butcher department, then finally went out.

the crowd at ming's market wasn't too bad. it's usually pretty crowded anyway, probably no more so than normal. our strategy was for my father to stand with the shopping part in some inconspicuous area while my mother and i waded through the crowd of people in the produce aisles, grabbing what we needed.

we finally left ming's market around 11:20am. judging by the time, we might be done with our supply run and back in belmont by noontime. we unloaded supplies once we got to the cafe. sure enough, we were at my parents' place by noontime. first thing i did was to go outside and refill the bird feeder.

for lunch my father made some silver ear mushroom soup with pork floss wrapped in scallion pancakes. he also made fried eggs in a ketchup slurry (i prefer my fry eggs traditional style, with some salt and pepper).

i applied some rain-x water repellent and anti-fog on the car windshield. water repellent takes 3 coats (applied in overlapping circles) with a 4th wipe with some sprayed on water to buff it to a clear streak-free shine. the anti-fog goes on the inside of the windshield, and it only requires a single coat, followed by a dry wipe for streak cleaning.

since i won't be in belmont tomorrow due to the rain, i had to water the grow room plants today. this was the third soil drench with gnatrol powder, and hopefully the final treatment. i haven't noticed any new gnats on the yellow sticky traps, although i did see one or two gnats still flying around inside the grow room. i still used 3 tsp of powder for 5 gallons of water because i only have a small amount of fungus gnats. a lot of our orchids got damaged in the fall when i didn't bring them in soon enough and they got cold injuries on the leaves. one orchid in particular lost all its leaves. one would usually throw it out, but the roots still seemed intact, and was otherwise healthy. i've noticed it started to produce some new buds, hopefully they're leaves. orchids grow slow, especially since i don't fertilize them during the winter, but maybe i should for this particular specimen, just to give it a boost in making new growth.

my aunt made a surprise appearance in the afternoon. she called my father, said she was right outside. she brought a box of tokyo banana cakes she found at h-mart. i've never heard of them before. she tried the makgeolli and said it was very good and asked me to make more. matthew hadn't tried it yet.

my sister showed up with esmei briefly in the late afternoon. it was already pretty late but she still planned on taking esmei into the forest for a walk. esmei seemed bored once she realized she wasn't getting anymore treats, and laid down in the living room to watch my father cook in the kitchen, before my sister finally took her away.

for dinner my father heated up some braised oxtail in a tomato wine sauce we bought from costco, along with a pork & daikon seaweed soup with barley, plus a mustard green stirfry. afterwards he gave me a ride back to cambridge. i brought back a bag of potting soil so i can start my seedlings.

i was planning on taking a shower, but the oscars was tonight, and they changed the time so now it started at 7pm, so i turned on the television to watch. i didn't see any of the nominated movies this year. a few months back i watched about 20 minutes of sinners but didn't think it was that good so stopped. hamnet looks interesting, but for some reason it feels like a tearjerker drama, not ready to watch that. conan o'brien hosted for the second consecutive time. with so much buzz for sinners i thought it'd win for best picture, but paul thomas anderson and one battle after another won for not only best picture but also best director. i wonder if this will get quentin tarantino to make more films, since he sees paul thomas anderson as his only directorial equal and rival. michael b. jordan won for best actor and jessie buckley for best actress.

i woke up at 9am this morning and decided there was enough time for me to take a quick trip to haymarket before going to work. this was something i toyed about yesterday, but figured it'd be too cold this morning. but i saw the temperature was 44 degrees and the sun was out, which inspired me to give it a try.

i didn't leave until 9:40am. with the ebike via cambridge street i got to haymarket in about 20 minutes. the last time i was here was exactly 5 months ago in november, when i came in search of cheap berries for my dehydrated fruit rollups. the place was buzzing with activity, helped in part by an influx of tourists here for the st.patrick's day parade (they're the ones wearing green). a lot of vendors were selling carambola and right now is orange season so there were various citrus (though no gold nuggets yet). my haul: 8 carambola ($4), 15 large mandarin oranges ($5), 2 bags of cotton candy grapes ($3), 6 sumo oranges ($5), 2 sleeves of garlic ($4), 1 fyffes gold pineapple ($2), 1 box of cherry tomatoes ($1), 2 boxes of strawberries ($2).

returning home i went down boston's cambridge street to cross the longfellow bridge. not so much earlier, but it got really windy. so much so that the wind would push the bicycle sideways, the faster i went, the stronger the push. without the ebike, i would be struggling to ride against the wind. at one point i heard what sounded like somebody honking repeatedly behind me but when i turned around i saw nothing. i went directly to the cafe, skirting by harvard square. i didn't get there until 10:45am. my mother was there, my father went to go pick up my 2nd aunt because she'd bought a bunch of stuff for us. when i rummaged through my grocery bags, i realized the box of cherry tomatoes was missing, must've popped out of my rear basket during the bumping ride. this happens fairly frequently to the point where i should secure a bungie netting over the cart to prevent things from flying out.

my father had vented out all the bottled makgeolli again, afraid of them exploding. i told him it wasn't necessary anymore since we put them in the fridge, the cold temperature greatly reducing fermentation. my father went home in the early afternoon, bringing with him a 1L bottle of makgeolli he was going to drop off at my aunt's place. we gave some makgeolli for my 2nd aunt to try, she loved it immediately.

we were busy for the first two hours today, with a smaller steady stream of customers the rest of the day. it was so busy that i ended up cooking 4 more cups of rice on top of the 6 cups my mother cooked this morning, but as soon as i did that, we hardly had anymore rice orders, more noodles. we made above our daily average, and was nearly the most profitable day this week, off by a tiny amount.

my heavy duty retractable hanging planter attachments arrived today. i got it for our cafe fern, which we take down every saturday to water, but it makes a big mess of dead fern leaves. it'd be better if we can just pull it down to water then push it back up afterwards. the hook attachment works and seems plenty strong (supposedly can hold 44 lbs) but the actual attachment points - small carabiners - aren't the right shape for our wall hook or the planter hook. i jerryrigged some keychains to hold everything in place for the time being, but we'll need to figure out a better solution.

my father showed up around closing time even though my mother told him she was going to walk home today. my 2nd aunt ended up walking home, and so did my mother. my father ended up taking home some trash and some foods. i went home with a frozen bag of dill dumplings.

when i came home i spent an hour writing the blog entry for last night. once that was finished, i played some cyberpunk until 8:30pm. i didn't realize in the black sapphire mission you can talk with lizzy wizzy after her performance and she'll gift you the crown she was wearing. i so badly wanted this crown that i ended up replaying 2 days worth of gigs just so i could redo the black sapphire mission. i didn't mind though, it's actually kind of fun trying out alternative solutions and hearing different dialogue.

i boiled 18 dumplings for dinner. i accidentally boiled a large pot of water when i only needed half.

i returned to cyberpunk and finally got the crown from lizzy wizzy. turns out it's pretty ugly and i'll probably never wear it, so it was all for naught.

i found myself dozing off again on the computer. i've been average 6 hours or less of sleep a night, it's taking a toll. i won't be able to get sleep late tonight, need to wake up early tomorrow for a supply run. this is a big one, taking us from everett (costco) to boston (foodpak, chinatown). we're doing it sunday because it's going to be rainy and windy on monday and i'll probably just stay home instead.

temperature this morning was in the 30's, with a high of lower 40's by the afternoon. my father deep fried a new batch of salt & pepper chicken this morning. we had to keep the back door open to ventilate the oil smell, so it was freezing in the kitchen until we finally finished frying.

my mother stewed some chicken soup. we added half a cup of pearl barley for texture. it turned out pretty well, good enough that it won my parents over and they were thinking up other dishes where they could add pearl barley.

your typical friday, busy around lunch time, not so much by early evening. it seemed to be making up for yesterday, when we only had a trickle of business. many of usual friday customers never showed up (old guy who always order two bentos by phone, the lady who doesn't want any pickled mustard greens with her bentos). my aunt cam around 12:30pm - had a bowl of wonton soup - but left once we started getting busy.

after 2pm, when things quieted down, was when we filtered out the makgeolli. it was still bubbling like crazy, as dissolved sweet rice grains floated up and down inside the jar. it felt warm inside the jar from all the fermentation, but we took a measurement and it was only 67 degrees about room temperature.

into a large stainless steel bowl we poured out the entire container of the makgeolli jar into a large nut milk bag (that we got a while back for making soy milk before we bought a soy milk machine that doesn't require manual filtering). i moved the bag into another bowl to wring out while my father poured the liquid into a glass swing-top bottle using a funnel.

we did a quick taste test to make sure the makgeolli hasn't gone bad. it tasted pretty good, a combination of slightly sour with sweet in a milky carbonated drink. it has a similar flavor to jiuniang (or any kind of rice wine for that matter), which isn't a surprise, since they're both made with sweet rice and share similar molds/bacteria/yeast. however we produced far more liquid with makgeolli than we normally make with jiuniang. there was also an unknown amount of alcohol because i was already feeling tipsy just after that one sip.

after passing the crucial taste test, we continued bottling up the rest. we ended up with about 5L worth of makgeolli: 2 glass wine bottles, 1L plastic bottle, and 4 16 oz. plastic bottles. my bare hands hurt a little bit from squeeze the nut milk bag: not sure if it's because of the sour flavor or because of the alcohol content.

we squeezed the nut milk bag until it was pretty much dry. out of curiosity i measured the left lees. there was about 2 lbs. worth from an initial 5 lbs. bag of sweet glutinous rice. so definitely something ate up a lot of the rice!

we poured a small cup of makgeolli for my mother. she loved it, kept going back for refills. we told her to take it easy because it has an unknown amount of alcohol, but she said she didn't taste any (mostly because the sweetness covers up the alcohol taste). she said it reminded her of the milky rice alcohol they have in rural taiwan, served in rustic bamboo containers. our makgeolli was such a success, i immediately thought about making another batch. my father found out that makgeolli tastes better when cold, whether that's refrigerated or on ice. that sweet and sour cold carbonation really hits the spot.

in the late afternoon my parents made some dill-flavored chinese dumplings. they planned on eating at the cafe after work, while i took home some leftovers (i'd get my share of frozen dumplings tomorrow).

we left the bottled makgeolli outside. my father had already noticed the plastic bottles were now solid, meaning there was a lot of trapped CO2 inside. we didn't think much of it at the time. one of the smaller 16 oz. plastic bottle couldn't stand up anymore, a defective bulge in the base my father said might've occurred when he used hot water to sanitize the inside. but a short time later i noticed the entire bottom of that bottle had bulged out. that's not a defect, the bottles were ready to burst! so we quickly vented all the bottles. it took a while, there was an insane amount of carbonation happening inside. each bottle had to be opened slowly, and quickly closed up if it looks like it might spurt out. the glass bottles were the scariest, because we couldn't tell how much pressure was building up inside. in the future, safer to go with plastic bottles. after releasing all that CO2, we finally put the bottled makgeolli into the fridge, to slow down the fermentation.

after we closed, i went home with my leftover bento and a small bottle of makgeolli. i didn't have dinner until 8:30pm.

after dinner i played some more cyberpunk. since it was saturday tomorrow and i didn't need to wake up early for work, i played until 12:30am. i played the black sapphire mission. it first involved sneaking into the building by diving underwater in a claustrophobic submerged urban environment laced with deadly mines. then i had to help reed get into the building by tracking his progression through a sniper rifle. i played that section twice because i failed the first time, alerting the guards and causing a big scene. in my second playthrough it happend again, so i figured this part was designed to fail. then there was the actual black sapphire party. it involved mingling with VIP guests: i saw mr.hands the fixer as well as maiko maeda (clouds manager, i thought i killed her but apparently she lives, though trying very hard to ignore me). i met up with songbird and discovered she's actually working in cahoots with kurt hansen, leader of dogtown and host of the party. that was followed by an amazing stage performance by fully-chromed musician lizzy wizzy. talking with reed, he figured out she was the one who crashed president myers plane into dogtown. next i played roulette with a pair of french netrunner twins, aurore and aymeric cassel. the objective wasn't to actually gamble, but to buy time to copy their personalities for a future mission. i was then confronted by kurt hansen who found out who i was and kicked both me and reed out of the party. escorted out by security, one of them got a little mouthy and started to attack us. that triggered an avalanche of more security attacks, until we finally busted out of the building.