Thursday, August 4th, 2016

I got up at 7am and saw that we had gotten some rain during the night.

Teresa sent me to the tienda (small store) to pick up some necessities like butter, laundry detergent, etc.

I had scrambled eggs, an arepa with butter and a cup of coffee for breakfast and still had time to right up my notes from yesterday.

I left the apt at 9am for my 10am game.  I wonder if they’ll be late starting today?  I got a seat on the train to San Antonio but then had to stand on the train to Estadio Station.

I arrived at the tournament at 9:50am.  They posted the pairings at 10:05.  I was playing the white pieces on board 86 against an 11-year old girl.  I was able to play my opening, I pushed 3 pawns towards her king while she manuevered her knights around and finally challenged my center.  I ended up losing on time but I was going to be down a rook anyway with a vulnerable king.  How sad for me!  Now I’ll probably be playing against kids until I can win a few games.  I finished by 12:30 and took 2 metros and a metro bus back to the apt arriving at 1:35.

Laura had paid the epm bill of 110,846 and the Direct TV bill of 111mil at $efecty.  I understand we have to wait for the Une bill before it can be paid.

After lunch I took a short nap and left the apt at 5pm for my 6:30 match.  A taxi should be faster, right?  Unfortunately, the traffic was very heavy (at least I didn’t feel like I was in a cattle car), the driver took Avenida 70 and misread my address by a block.  I finally got him turned around and I arrived at the chess park (my new name) at 6:35.  I quickly grabbed an empanada and cup of coffee.  The clocks had already been started but I had only lost a couple minutes.  

I was playing in the overflow section and my opponent was another young girl of 11 with a slightly lower rating.  She pushed me all over the board with her knights and bishop and I never got a chance to castle.  She finally made a few little inaccuracies allowing me to trade down some pieces giving me some breathing room.  With about a minute on my clock she started playing defensively and overlooked some things and I checkmated her with about 20 seconds left on my clock.  How sad for her!

On my way back to the apt I bought a bag of caramel corn for 1,500 pesos.

At San Antonio station I decided to skip a train and see if the next train to Envigado would come in before the next train arrived from the west line.  It did and was much less crowded and after awhile I even got a seat.

I took the metro bus up to Parque Envigado and was back at the apt by 9:30.

I went to bed at 11pm.

T-shirt of the day: The DJ saved my life.