Tuesday, July 16th, 2013

Last night Beatriz told me she makes 660mil ($347) a month working in the office of her aunt’s factory.  With my Social Security and pensions I make roughly 7 times what she does.  No wonder why they may think we’re rich – because, compared to them, we are.  She also mentioned some expenses she has such as rent she pays her aunt for their room(s) and college for her son and/or daughter.

I went to bed at 11pm last night, woke up at 5:30 and got up at 6am.

Today I finished my jar of Juan Valdez instant coffee.  Since I bought it on May 22^nd that means it lasted me almost 8 weeks.  For breakfast I had a bowl of cereal with my leftover milk from yesterday.

Since I’m up early I decided today is the day I’m going to try to mail my postcards downtown.  (If you remember, the cards are to: Pete my barber; Dan and Steve my auto mechanics; Ziggy, the cook & owner of the Niles Grill; and Joe at the Niles Panera Bread.)  The mailing center I’ll be trying to find is called “4/72” and its Local 9939 in “The Café” building at Calle 49 #50-21.  (Their telephone number is 251-5106.)  

I figured it would take about 30 minutes to get downtown, 30 minutes to find the office and take care of my business, and another 30 minutes to get back to the apartment.  At 7:40 I was standing on the street waiting for the Simon Bolivar bus that should take me downtown close to where I need to be.  The first bus passed me by without even slowing down so I repositioned myself a couple blocks away at a stop sign.  I was on the next bus by 7:45.  At 8am I had the awful thought I might get downtown and have to wait until at least 9am for the office to open.  Uh-Oh!  I was downtown by 8:15 and walked around a couple of blocks and eventually found the correct building just kitty corner from where I had gotten off the bus.  Lol.  I saw an elevator that goes to the 8^th floor and my office number is 9939 which doesn’t sound right.  I exited the building a different way than I had gone in, walked around the building, and went in another lower entrance and saw the “4/72” office right away.  (It seems the basement offices are all in the “9000” range.)  And they were open; the sign on the door said they open at 8am Monday-Friday and 9am on Saturday.

I asked the first lady I saw if anyone here speaks English and she said “no”.  I handed her my note in Spanish with my postcards.  My note said “Can I mail these postcards from here?  I also need postage (stamps) for them.”  She charged me 2mil ($1) for each of 4 stamps and told me they should arrive in 2-3 weeks.  I told her that’s a lot of money and she agreed.  (I don’t want her to think I’m some rich gringo!  Lol.)  I wish I had remembered to ask for a business card.  I was back in my apartment by 9:05 – ahead of my estimate.

I took a look at my finances and I have $512 remaining to last me thru the end of the month.  If food costs me 35mil a day, times 16 remaining days that’s 560mil.  $512 is equal to 972mil so I have a buffer of a little over 400mil to cover all other incidentals.  Being just a little careful, that should be enough.

The battery on my cell phone just died.  I bought it last Thursday so it lasted for 5 days.  I may have forgotten to turn it off one or two nights and if the cell phone sat in the store – it was already charged – for a while, I’m hoping after a full recharge I will only have to recharge it once a week from now on.  And we’ll see how long it takes to fully recharge the battery.

I heard some splashing so I put a chair against the far wall of the guest bedroom, looked out the window and saw Lionel using the water from the pool to rinse the surrounding walkway.

I left just before noon and met Jhon and one of his students at his office.  The student is learning to fly and needs to learn English in order to be able to fly outside of Colombia.  He says they communicate with traffic controllers in English.  Right now he is learning how to fly single engine aircraft and his English test will be in November so he is taking lessons with Jhon almost daily now for several months.  I spoke with him to give him some confidence that he will be able to communicate with a foreign speaker of English.

Jhon and I had lunch at Likkes from about 12:30 to 1:30.  He forgot to bring money with home so I paid for our meals.  We saw Laura there and she did acknowledge us on one occasion.

I was at Laureles Mall from about 2-5pm.  Andres joined me about 2:30 and we played 2 games – he won the first by pushing pawns down my throats.  I won the second even though he gained a pawn early but then we traded almost all our material into a bishop and pawn endgame.  He didn’t play correctly at that point and I got an easy win.  He might be weak in the endgame.  Time will tell.  It’s a big advantage knowing that if you trade down to very little material you have a good chance of winning the game.  I gave Andres my cell phone number and I got his.

I went down to the lower level to use the washroom and when I came back there were 3 men talking with some excitement.  There were a lot of small feathers at one of their feet and I saw him gesture that he had snapped his feet together so I guess he had “trapped” one of the small birds that are walking around looking for free food.

For dinner I had a “salad special” at Almibar the ice cream store for 9,800 ($5.16).  It was basically a large fruit salad with bananas, strawberries, melon, mango, apples, and papaya.  And 2 scoops of ice cream – chocolate chip and coconut with whipped cream and a cherry on top. 

On my way back to my apartment I noticed 3 young ladies sitting on a bench at the far end of the park laughing.  I think they may have been commenting on how I was dressed – t-shirt, shorts, and sandals.

My cell phone is now recharged so it took somewhere between 1 ½ - 7 ½ hours.  I’m sure I’ll narrow that down further in the future.