We were awakened at 7am by sledge hammers breaking up more
of the sidewalk. I think they’ll be gone
from this area in a week or so.
Another overcast morning and it feels cooler than
usual. I hope we don’t get rain for the
chess simultaneous exhibition.
I thought we were going to Caldas today to check on the
status of the dining room chairs we were having fixed but Teresa talked to
someone and I understand we’re going tomorrow.
On television I saw that the truck strikers have dumped out
food, burned tires and even their trucks – I think in retaliation for not
getting a salary increase.
I got to the park just before 2pm. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary
except there were sideless tents set up on the closed street and in the park
selling arts and crafts.
One of the other 4 guys challenged me to a match and I won a
close game against him. My best guess
now was that we would be playing a round robin with each other. I watched another match with 2 of the other
guys and after it finished I expected one of them would challenge me, but
no. I ran into Chuck, back from his trip
to Armenia. Another player talked to me and with Chuck’s
help I finally learned that at 4pm there would be 2 international masters that
would be having a simultaneous and I would be one of the 50 playing against
him. (I also learned that today is
Envigado’s 241st anniversary.)
We walked over towards the restaurant/bar area and I saw a roped off
section and they were setting up tables.
They started calling off names so I asked Chuck to listen for my name
while I went back to the apt to get a pen and paper to record it. At the apt I explained to Teresa what was
going on and I took a pen and my Chess Player’s Scorebook that I started back
in 2014.
When I returned Chuck told me they had called my name twice
already. I showed them my cedula and
waited about 15 minutes for them to set up a makeshift table (actually an
instrument trunk) for me.
My opponent was a young man named Juan Guerrero Sierra who spoke
very good English. Over time I learned
that he lives in Envigado and played in a chess tournament last December in Las Vegas.
There was a band set up playing too loud (at least for me)
music.
I managed to last 45 moves against Juan but I was down a
bishop by the 24th move.
Still it was an interesting experience.
When I got back to the apt I asked Teresa if she wanted to
go to the park so see what was going on and get something to eat. She opted out and I made waffles for us for
dinner.
I did some googling and finally found Juan – his rating is
2279 (compared to my estimated 1700) and he’s been an International Master
since 2009. He’s ranked #5,851 in the
world, #629 in the Americas,
and #34 in Colombia. It also turned out that the tournament he
played in Las Vegas
was December of 2014.
It started raining soon after I returned to the apt and it
was still raining when went to bed at 11pm.
The latest Medellin Living newspaper had the following articles:
Medellin Wins Prestigious Prize for
Outstanding Achievement Towards Sustainable Living, Medellin Begins Cracking down on sex tourism, 2 foreigners arrested, and Bryan Cranston takes on the Medellin Cartel in new
film. For some reason it no longer allows
me to copy articles to my blog so if anyone is interested you should go to
MedellinLiving.com to subscribe. It is
free!
T-shirt of the day: Talk is cheap.
Terry, if the ML newspaper won't allow you to copy articles any longer, will it still let you copy the URLs to the articles? That way you could mention the name of the article and add the link in your posts for interested parties.
ReplyDeleteBTW, the film with Cranston that you mentioned today was partly shot here in Tampa, FL and they had a great big to-do and special opening night with red carpet and everything last week with the première in our historic Tampa Theater!
(I stayed away from it all due to expected large crowds.)
Cheers!
Since you showed enough interest to request it, I'll try copying the URLs next time.
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