Thursday, May 11, 2017

I slept well last night, getting up once, finally waking up at 6:15 and getting up at 7:30.

The morning thus far is mostly cloudy.

At 9am I did another speed test and measured 2.91Mbps download and 1.67Mbps upload.  Sigh!

I watched the first hour or so of the Today show and left the apt at 10:15.  As soon as I walked outside I caught a Metro bus.  On the metro, coming out of the Industriales station the engineer slammed on the brakes.  Luckily, we weren’t going very fast so it just had everyone grabbing for a handhold.

I got off at the Estadio station and walked to the chess league office.  I told the secretary, who doesn’t speak any English, that I would like to sign up for next week’s chess tournament.  She looked up something on her computer and then wrote something in her cell phone and showed me the translation – “The tournament has been postponed to an indefinite date”.  Great!  And I’ve been practicing on Chess Magnet School for the past 2 weeks.

I walked to The Town barber shop where I got my bi-monthly haircut.  Afterwards I asked the barber “how much” as I handed him 12,000 pesos.  I think he said 18,000 but he took the money and otherwise didn’t say anything.

I walked back to the metro station and another short block to El Viejo y El Pancake.  I ordered a BLT, which came with potato chips, a Pepsi and a salad.

While waiting for my food I heard a young lady talking to Alexi, the owner, in the kitchen.  The subject was something about renting apartments.  Since Alex is looking for an apartment I asked if she’s a renter or rentee.  She said she’s renting an apartment and I heard a lot of swearing and complaining from her.  When she left I asked Alexi about hiring someone to assist a gringo with Spanish and getting things.  She said Alex should check out GringoPaisa, Medellin Expats and Expats in Colombia on Facebook.  Something about English students that might be able to help with translation.  Also, she thought 40,000 - 50,000 was outrageously expensive.  She recommended 20,000 per hour or a MAXIMUM of 30,000 per hour.  My lunch cost me 14,000 pesos (about $5).

I took the metro to Poblado station where I exited, walked under Calle 10 and into Monterrey mall.  Alex had given me the business card for a store called Jhonny Presiga V.  He told me to ask a guard how to get there as it’s up some strange stairway.  I went up to the 2^nd floor and went up one staircase where I found a gym.  Back downstairs I finally asked a guard. He sent me down to the first floor to another guard who took me to a corner of the mall I didn’t even know existed.  He took me upstairs and I was in an obvious workshop with mother boards and other parts lying around.  Alex told me to ask for Danelle as he speaks English and should be able to help me fix my iPad.  I found him but he didn’t speak English and he couldn’t help me with my iPad.  A young man there made a phone call and got a location and a young lady guided me to another part of the mall to a store named Cábala - local 163.  This man didn’t speak English either but I showed him the problem I’m having with my iPad – where it just returns to the home screen.  He looked at a couple things then recommended I reset it to the factory settings but he didn’t charge me anything.  I asked where I could buy a mouse pad and he sent me next door to Office Computo – local 164.  I bought an ergonomic mouse pad there for 10,000 pesos.  I asked the lady where I could buy a cell phone and she sent be back to Cábala.  I bought a Samsung Galaxy J5 for 500,000 pesos plus another 5,000 pesos for the Claro Sim card.  Terry, Welcome to the 21st century!  It comes with a 1 year warranty.  He said I need to recharge it the first time for 8 hours and 2 hours thereafter.  He told me I have to go to the Claro office in Premium Plaza mall to register my new phone.

I walked back to the metro station and took it to Envigado.  On the bridge I bought a kilo (2.2#) of strawberries for 12,000 pesos (about $4.25).

Entering the apartment building I found the Une bill which still states I’m getting 5Mbps wifi.

Resetting my iPad to the factory settings only took 5 minutes but completely reloading my content from the cloud took another 2 ½ hours.  Afterwards, while still slow due to the slow wifi speed, it at least it is now working correctly.

At 6pm I did another speed test and got 1.46Mbps download and 1.07Mbps upload.

I completed a few lessons on Rosetta Stone.

T-shirt of the day: I intend to live forever.  So far, so good.