Thursday, September 4th, 2014

Last night I sent Teresa the name and phone number of the man who delivered my plants back on March 17^th for 60mil.  The plan is to have the plants moved to her finca first, and then when he can see the few things I have left to move and where Teresa’s finca is we can get a quote for the rest of my things.

I went to bed at 11pm, got up once at 4am, woke up at 6:30 and got up at 6:45.

I had breakfast at Los Mejores and then had a small bottle of water for 1mil at the corner store while I waited for Beatriz.  At exactly 8:15 the attractive young lady walked by on her way to work.  I left about 8:30 and then noticed I had received a text message from Beatriz at 7:40am that she can’t make it today, but she’ll be available tomorrow.  I should have remembered that the usual days she seems to be available are only Tuesday and Friday mornings.  I stopped at the orange juice stand but apparently she ran out of oranges because she was packing up to leave.

I went to Viva CC and studied until it was time for my Spanish class.  I talked to Jhon about his buying my refrigerator and we agreed I would pay for next week’s classes and then the next 2 weeks would be “gratis” in exchange for the refrigerator.

After class I noted on my iPad that my Chicago Bears have an NFL Power Ranking between 10 and 15 depending on which site you check.  I also noticed that the season opens tonight at 7:30 with the Green Bay Packers at the Seattle Seahawks so I decided to go to Sport Wings tonight to watch at least the 1^st half and root against the Packers.

I had a small bowl of cereal and then took a bus to Monterrey CC.  I was looking for the longest HDMI cable I could find.  The first 2 stores only had the typical 5 meter lengths for 18 mil and 45mil.  The 3^rd store I tried a young man sent me over to Omega store where I found a woman who spoke English who told me they have lengths of 100’, 75’, 50’, etc.  I got their business card (local 358) so I can come back after I’ve had a chance to measure the distance from where my chess chess table will be to the TV in Teresa’s finca.  (I think 25’ will do it but its better to wait and be sure.)

I took another bus to Home Center where I looked for a number of things I should be able to find easily in the US.  I found: Tesa brand packing tape for 15mil, glow-in-the-dark reflective tape and signs for 10mil, a Stanley staple gun for 65mil, and a #0 Phillips screwdriver for 8mil.  I didn’t find: Lava soap or ¼ Watt nightlights.  Other things I didn’t find at HC but I had seen previously at Exito: 3-1 electric taps, individual “super” glues, caulk and caulk guns.  On my way out there were 3 people at the Direct TV booth but none of them understood English so I couldn’t ask about an NFL package.

I walked over to Jumbo and bought a pair of emory boards to replace the one Teresa mooched off me last weekend.  After a long wait in line to pay for them I felt a little weak from hunger.  I should have had more to eat at lunch.  I stopped at a Café there and had a piece of apple cake and a vanilla latte.  While watching their TV I saw an advertisement for tonight’s NFL game that should be on ESPN3.  I’m sure everyone knows that soccer is king here in Colombia but there is another sport which appears to be quite popular – cycling.  I have seen a number of races on television here – this time it was on ESPN+.  I stopped at their pharmacy to look for another pill container but no luck.

Back at my apartment I posted the following question to ExpatExchange.com:

I have a laptop computer and a Netflix account which allows me to watch movies with Spanish subtitles.  My idea is to buy an HDMI cable so we can see American movies on my girlfriend’s television (it’s a 2 year old large screen TV).  I will be able to hear the movie in its original English and she will be able to see the Spanish subtitles.

My question is with the HDMI cable will we lose the ability to see subtitles?

I am concerned because I found the following quote on Wikipedia.

“The HDMI standard was not designed to pass closed caption data (for example, subtitles) to the television for decoding.^[57] As such, any closed caption stream must be decoded and included as an image in the video stream(s) prior to transmission over an HDMI cable to be viewed on the DTV. This limits the caption style (even for digital captions) to only that decoded at the source prior to HDMI transmission. This also prevents closed captions when transmission over HDMI is required for upconversion. For example, a DVD player that sends an upscaled 720p/1080i format via HDMI to an HDTV has no way to pass Closed Captioning data so that the HDTV can decode it, as there is no line 21 VBI in that format.”

This kind of reminds me of my struggles to learn Spanish.  I might understand all the words in a sentence but not the meaning. 

I would appreciate advice from anyone who has accomplished, or failed, with this.

The first response I got was “mine works just fine. you should get everything that is on your screen.”

That's real good news!

I will be having dinner at Sport Wings.

T-shirt of the day: Princess of the court.