Wednesday, March 5th, 2014

Last night I went to bed at 10:30, got up once during the night, woke up at 6am, got up at 6:30, took 1 Excedrin Migraine, and woke/got up at 7:30.  

 My wrist is much better but I’m still going to wait until next Monday to resume one of my exercises.  And because my apartment is much smaller than before, it’s just too tight a space between the light fixtures, I may decide to move down to the alcove for my jump rope exercises.

I tried using the suction cup hooks I bought yesterday but they don’t seem to work; I think they are too small to get proper suction.  The only place they appear to work is on glass – a window or mirror.

Walking down to LM it was obvious that today is Ash Wednesday but instead of a smear of ash on the forehead as in the US, here it is a pretty sign of the cross.  At El Comedor de Chava I had their breakfast of scrambled eggs, beans with rice, arepa with cheese and coffee.  Harry stopped by after his breakfast and informed me he believes he has sold his office in Guatemala and is trying to figure out how to get the money here.  He invited me to join him on Saturday evening for a trip to Parque Lleras.  It’s obvious he hasn’t been there before.  He might have a car.

I finished completing the entry of all my games from the January tournament into my scorebook and started working on the current tournament.  

Lunch was the Hamburger Combo #3 at Gordog’s.  The nice lady that works (manager? owner?) there served me.

I returned my iPad to the apartment and was at Jhon’s office by 2pm for my Spanish lesson.  He forgot to send me the 2^nd day’s notes until just before I left LM so I didn’t have a lot of time for review.  We reviewed the 1^st two lessons and then covered the question words – who, what, when, etc.  He informed me that one of the emails I forwarded to him was Une notifying me that they would be coming tomorrow – Thursday – to install my Wi-Fi so I guess I’ll be having a quick breakfast and then hanging around my apartment hoping they come early.  I had Jhon call Carlos – Juan’s friend – who lives in Aranjuez about the chess table.  He said I could take a Metroplus bus from Calle 33 to Aranjuez Park and his house is 2 blocks from there.  He gave me his email address and his home phone number so I will contact him by email after I get my Wi-Fi installed.  

Afterwards I saw Dario working on a crossword puzzle as I was passing the Viva food court windows so I stopped and chatted with him for a while.  He told me they are playing chess Thursday and Saturday afternoons in his building and that they will be having another tournament in April.

I had the fruit special with a scoop of coconut and a scoop of peanut ice cream at Almabar in LM.  I remembered to tell them no apple slices but I forgot to tell them no cheese.  It seems they put cheese on or in almost everything here.  

I caught a Laureles 191 bus after only a five minute wait and was at the Chess League office by 6pm.  I said hello again to Brenda and gave her the little piece of candy El Comedor de Chava gave me at breakfast.  As I was walking out someone came in and wished her a happy birthday so I returned and did the same.  After everyone left I asked how old she is and she said 32.  We were kind of hanging around together outside and I asked her if she’s going to a party after work today and she said, no, tomorrow.  Interestingly, she asked me to bring my translator (iPad) tomorrow.  I wonder what that’s about.

I saw an old man there with a Spanish/English dictionary who said he has been studying English for many years.  He says he sometimes spends 2 or 3 hours on it every day.

Tonight’s opponent had a rating of 1721 and I had the white pieces.  I tried to play my usual opening but he kind of held back waiting to see how I was going to deploy my pieces.  He started a minor attack on the queen side that after much difficulty I was finally able to lock up except he had a passed pawn on the queen file and he spent spent most of the game trying to advance it and I trying to stop it.  For about the last 10 moves he took a lot of time for what I thought were obvious moves and he got into time trouble.  He made a move threatening my rook and I countered with a move that threatened his queen and his room.  He made a move checking my king, basically just giving me the rook and then he resigned.  The game lasted 36 moves and I would have gladly accepted a draw, had he offered it, for the first 33 of them.  So now I have 2 wins and 4 draws for a total of 4 points out of 6.  Tonight I was on board (they call it table) #7 so I’ll probably be moving up a little for the last game tomorrow night.

I caught a taxi back to the apartment for 6mil.  The taxi driver’s love hearing my story about how my brother, who speaks Spanish fluently, visited me 2 weeks ago and gave me a hard time for not speaking Spanish better after being here for 1 year.  They almost roll with laughter.