I had a pretty bad night, taking a long time to get to sleep
(probably mainly because of my cold) and waking several times during the night,
finally waking/getting up at 8am.
I decided to skip the gym today. I watched 30 minutes of the Today show and left the apt at
9:45. On my way to the bus stop I asked
the Citibank guard if the ATM was working and was told no. I quickly caught a bus to Medellin. From the bus I noticed quite a few people in
Colombian team jerseys. A young man in
one sat right across the aisle from me so I asked if Colombia is playing
today. I was told yes and I asked what
time and was told 4pm. Today is a mostly
sunny day so the weather was feeling pretty warm.
At MBE I picked up my 2 packages which turned out to be 2 small
red umbrellas (free) from Shedrain. I did
have to pay an extra 20,400 pesos (about $7) in delivery charges for them. I also paid 44,800 pesos for my box rental
for April. I asked if Victoria was
there. Another young woman named
Nobraska (sic) came and in very good English informed me that Victoria’s in a meeting. I was told that she does speak English
also. Now they tell me.
As I walked up Avenida Las Vegas I noticed there is now a
Starbucks in the Plaza One Business Center.
I stopped at Citibank and took out some much needed cash. In Starbucks I was pleasantly surprised to
find it air conditioned. Standing in line
ahead of me was a young lady in a short skirt just above her knees and very
nice slim legs. She also had a pretty
face. She was obviously with the man in
front of her. I don’t want to give
everyone the idea that all ladies her are beautiful but there are quite a few –
especially in this area of town.
I paid 7,700 pesos for a small vanilla latte and when the
girl brought it to the counter she showed me the heart made on top before she
put the top on. The place wasn’t crowded
and I settled down on a nice couch to read my Nook. I noticed the cup my small drink was in was
labeled as 300ml. I rechecked the price
board (what do you call it, marquee?) and saw that it’s advertized as being
354ml. What happened to the other
54ml? Hasn’t Starbucks gotten in trouble
for things like this back in the States?
I walked back across the street and up to Oviedo where I bought a package of French toast
bagels for 7,900. I was looking forward
to sesame but I guess they were out today.
Back outside a Sabaneta bus had just pulled up, a woman
jumped off, no one immediately got on so it pulled away. I had to wait about 10 minutes for the next
one but I was still back at the apt by noon.
I received an email from Jose Cruz with 2 links. In his words:
I am sending you 2 links related to chess. The first one
is for the chess league where we play; it gives you all the information about
the present event or the next one and also in the 'calendario' at upper right,
a list of all future events. As you may see there, there seem to be 2 tourneys coming
up in April and one in May.
The other link is for chess results for all chess events
in the world...amazing. I am sending you the link for Colombia directly. Here
you can find the results for our event round by round. And see also your
opponent for tonight's game. Enjoy it...
Omg, in one of them it stated that the final match is
tonight not tomorrow night. I double
checked with Jose who confirmed that.
My performance rating in this tournament thus far is 1649. My opponent tonight has a rating of 1658 so how
I do tonight will increase or decrease that number. At least, since I have the white pieces, I
should be able to play my favorite opening tonight.
I asked Laura to switch her black umbrella for the new red
one but she told me she wants to keep the black one – she tells me it’s more classy
and goes with whatever she’s wearing.
Sigh! The only reason I ordered another
red one is because that’s what she told me she wanted.
Teresa came back from the gym at 2:15. She accepted one of the red umbrellas and I
put the other one away.
At 2pm I heard some thunder in the distance and dark clouds
rolled in.
I took a little nap from 3:15 to 4:15. At 4:45 I finally turned on the TV and Colombia was beating Ecuador at halftime 2-0.
We had a little storm come through between 3 and 4:15 so I
didn’t leave the apt until 4:45, walked downtown to catch a taxi and was at the
chess league by 5:30, an hour early.
I talked to Jose Cruz and he talked to someone and reported
that the only way we get a FIDE rating is by playing in tournaments identified
as IRT – which I guess means something like Internationally Rated
Tournament. The upcoming IRT tournaments
are a Holy Week Pre-Game tournament (whatever that means) April 12-16 and an
under 2000 tournament April 12-16 April 27 to May 1st. Then there’s a Pre-Game open tournament for
Seniors May 17th to 21st.
Maybe I’ll enter that one. Now I
know that they have some kind of tournament going on almost al the time.
My opponent, Hernan de Jesus Correa, rated 1658, and I started
our game on time. I was able to play my
opening but he quickly managed to brake open the center. (I’ll have to analyze that to see what I
could have done differently.) He soon
had his queen, bishop and 2 rooks aiming at the pawn in front of my queen which
was protected by my queen, king, and 2 rooks.
That didn’t give me much space to maneuver. I held on and in the endgame he had a passed
pawn, bishop and king against my bishop and king. But the bishops were of opposite color so as
soon as he tried moving his pawn I would take it and it would be his king and
bishop against my king and that’s not sufficient material to checkmate. So we ended up playing a 2-hour, 62-move
draw. My performance rating for this
tournament ended up being 1650.
I walked to the bus stop and quickly caught a taxi back to
the apt. I learned that Colombia won
2-0.
I just relaxed with some mindless TV for the rest of the
evening.
T-shirt of the day: If you met my family, you would
understand.
