Wednesday, February 20th, 2013

Not off to a great start this morning as Dilan tells his mother he got his girlfriend Laura pregnant. 

Dilan said, via Google Translator: “please she can stay with us here while I can I will help with the expenses of the house that she was kicked out of the house and not have to go alone am responsible can be with me and will not let my research work and she also study and work you say?”

I gave him permission for Laura to stay in his room.

First thing this morning I emailed USAA from their website asking them to add my apartment number (Int 201) to my address, add my new telephone number, confirm my daily withdrawal limit, and I asked if there would be a problem if my balance should reach zero. 

I spent a good part of the morning CHATing with CitiBank.  I managed to change my telephone number online and found out if my average monthly balance falls below $1500 or hits zero, there is a $10 monthly service fee.  (That will probably happen every month because my direct deposits go into my USAA account.)  I still like having a backup account (CitiBank) just in case I should lose my USAA card.  (I can always drop CitiBank sometime in the future.)

Then I used their Message Online option to send a request for a change of address and an increase of my daily withdrawal limit.

After lunch we took a walk behind the Viva! mall and I thought Reina wanted to meet someone here.  We walked around a small outdoor mall and finally stopped for ice cream.  We each had a double dip of ice cream in a waffle cone for 7600 pesos.  After I finished mine I decided to go wash my sticky hands.  Reina was on the phone and wasn’t paying attention but on the way to the washroom a lady and her friend sitting at a table started talking to me in English.  Her English was heavily accented but she told me she had vacationed in Miami, New Orleans and New York.  Not sure if she was hitting on me or just wanted to practice her English.

Then we walked around Viva!, went into Exito and checked out the washers & dryers.   They had 2 dryer on top of washer combinations but they all work by gas.  Reina reminded me we need electricity because there is no gas outlet in our laundry room.  They had 1 large machine that works as both a washer and a dryer.  I don’t remember seeing such a thing before.  Anyway, it sells for 2,289,000 pesos or about $1272.  That should consume a lot of our budget for a month.

Back at home I had an email response from USAA already.  They changed my address and phone number, confirmed my daily withdrawal limit and told me my account would go inactive only after 40 days with a zero balance.  That shouldn’t be a problem as my social security and pensions are all deposited automatically into my USAA account.

At 7pm Reina announced we don’t have enough arepas for breakfast tomorrow so we walked a couple of blocks to a corner store and bought a couple of packages.

Regarding Sinks

Sinks in homes, instead of being mounted in a cabinet, are attached to the wall so there is very little extra space to leave things like a soap dish, toothbrush or toothpaste.  Many sinks have only a single cold water handle or the hot water is turned off.  And it seems to me the handles are backwards for turning the water on and off.  Maybe that’s because water here travels north instead of south?  Lol.