Last night I went to bed at 10:45, fell asleep quickly (with
the bedroom fan on), woke briefly about 5am, woke up at 6am and got up at 6:30.
The audio on my laptop is working again. Among new US movie releases I would like to
see Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
(6.6). Locally, I would like to see Rapid and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
(7.0) but it’s only playing at 9:40pm (in English) and that’s just too late for
me.
I watched the first 20 minutes of the Today show and left for the gym.
I completed all my exercises in a little less than 90 minutes. Amazing how the sets go faster when I don’t
have a cellphone to look at. Lol.
I was back at the apt by 11:10 and Teresa left 10 minutes
later. She is going to the finca to open
the gate so the muchacho (Julian?) can start cutting back the jungle. I believe it is a 3 day job and she will
probably have to return on Wednesday or Thursday to check his work, pay him,
and relock the gate.
I cooled down, took a shower, put on shorts and a light t-shirt
and left the apt about 11:45. I walked
down the hill to Avenida Las Vegas and was surprised I had to wait at least 10
minutes to catch a bus. I got off at
Monterrey mall and found Cabala (local
163) at the far end of the mall.
According to my blog this is where I bought my Samsung Galaxy J5
cellphone 2 ½ years ago for 500,000 pesos.
A young lady working there took me a couple stores away and handed me
off to another young man named Steven who spoke pretty good English. He took me upstairs to Doctor Movil Play (local 201) where he showed me a Samsung Galaxy
A10 for 434,700 pesos. The phone looked
nice but I didn’t care for the protective cases he showed me. I asked Steven about a new Sim card and he
explained that I should go to Claro and 1st ask them to transfer my
cellphone number (my old Sim card 2 with the plan) to a new SIM card which will
be my Sim card 1 (and only). Second, I
should register my new cellphone. He
took me to another store (Mac store?) on the 2nd level where I paid
for it. They didn’t have the Anker
portable charger (Power Core 20100 or 10000) I was looking for but if this
battery is that much better than the old one maybe I won’t need it.
I walked back to the metro station where I caught a metro
bus up to Parque Poblado. By this time
it was about 1:30 and I was getting hungry so I walked the 3 blocks to
restaurant Aguacate where I had their
menu of the day for 13,500 pesos under a nice outside umbrella table.
I went to Envios
Market and found the shop completely empty with a sign on the door. It said they moved upstairs in the same mall
to local 217. I went upstairs and a
janitor helped me find it. I was given
another Capital One credit card offer and a letter from BSI Financial. I hope this is a temporary location because
it’s cramped without any A/C.
I stopped at a nearby copy center where I printed my
daughter’s flight itinerary.
I walked to Clinica
Medellin where I withdrew a large number of 20s.
Back down the hill to Avenida Poblado I waited 5 minutes for
a bus and finally said “forget this”. A
taxi pulled up and I took it. The good
news is he had the A/C on. The bad news
is I was sitting in the back but he aimed the louvers toward me and cracked it
up a bit. Traffic was crawling and we
finally learned the reason – workers trimming trees had a lane closed
down. I got off at Premium Plaza mall
and I tipped the driver 2,000 pesos for the A/C.
I went upstairs to the Claro
office and at the number machine I didn’t know what option to choose. A security guard took pity on me and guided
me to Andres who spoke very good English.
(He said he spent a year and a half in New York.) After confirming my identity (online
questions like which of these banks do I have an account with in Colombia
Outside I stopped at a couple kiosks and finally found a
protective case I liked for 30mil and a protective screen for another 30mil at
a store named Dika.
Outside I was soon on an Envigado bus and it crawled for 40
minutes to Office Depot halfway up
the Gold Mile. (Strangely while still in
the original box in a bag on my lap I felt the cellphone vibrate every 5
seconds.) Inside I bought a ½” 3-ring
binder (8,650) and a paper punch (33,500).
Back outside I mistakenly got on a Sabaneta bus and got the last seat
right in front of the turnstyle. Because
of my height there was only 4” between my knee and the bar holding up the
turnstyle that everyone had to pass between.
Even when the bus appeared to be full more people pushed their way
on. When we entered Envigado I was
wondering if I was going to be able to exit the front of the bus when a young
may sitting next to me got up and headed to the exit and I followed him. By the time we squeezed to the back of the
bus I saw Burger King outside the
windows and pressed the button and miraculously got off at the bus stop right
where I wanted to. I was back at the apt
by 6:05.
I took a shower, changed into jeans and left a note for
Teresa and she arrived just as I was about to leave. She told me she killed 3 bats in the loft
area by hitting them with something I didn’t understand. Apparently a window was left open which now
is closed so she won’t have that problema again. We discussed dinner and finally decided that
I could continue with my original plan to go to Parva for coffee and she would stay and make fish for herself.
At Parva I had a
large café con leche and postre de arequipe.
My cellphone said it was in Safe Mode, whatever that means, and it said
it was updating apps but it seemed to take forever and it kept shutting down. I did manage to figure out how to connect to
their wifi and a waitress gave me their password. I stayed about an hour and left with a pastel
de guayaba for Teresa.
(Per google the A10 phone was launched in March of this
year. It has 32GB of internal memory
(expandable to 512GB) and 2GB of RAM. It
includes a 13MP main camera and 5MP front camera. One summary said “best camera quality, good
battery life”.
I googled Safe Mode and turned it off and it finally loaded
the default apps.
I received an email from Envios
Market that was supposedly sent today at 12:57 pm informing me that I have
a package waiting for pickup. That would
have been before I arrived there today about 1:30 but Gustavo didn’t give me
any package. Not sure if that was a
mistake or not. At least now I know the
name of the mall is Multicentro Aliadas.
12,419 steps today.
Joke of the day
A young woman was
preparing for her wedding.
She asked her mother to
go out and buy a nice long black negligee and carefully place it in her
suitcase so it would not wrinkle.
Well, Mom forgot until
the last minute, so she dashed out and could only find a short pink
nightie. She bought it and threw it into the suitcase.
After the
wedding the bride and groom enter their hotel room. The groom was a little
self-conscious so he asked his new bride to change in the bathroom and promise
not to peek while he got ready for bed.
While she was in
the bathroom, the bride opened her suitcase and saw the negligee her mother had
thrown in there. She exclaimed, "Oh no! It's short, pink, and
wrinkled!"
The groom cried out, "I told
you not to peek!"
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