Thursday, October 8, 2020

 Last night I went to bed at 11pm, got up once at 2:15, took maybe an hour to fall back asleep, finally waking at 6:15 and getting up at 6:45.

Last night I didn’t play on Chess.com.

My back is feeling much better this morning.

We got a call from Alba this morning that Alex died early this morning. Someone sent me a photo late last night of him in a hospital bed. I asked if he has Covid but I didn’t get an anwer. Alba says something about a surgery. I know he had some health problems but I didn’t know it was that bad. Teresa talked to her and told me he had stomach pains and they determined he had internal bleeding. I understand they were looking for next of kin for permission to operate. I don’t know if he had surgery or passed before the surgery. He was 69 years old.

The following is his entry in Wikipedia:

Alexander Besher (born in China in 1951) is an author of fiction and non-fiction. In addition to novels, screenplays and teleplays, he is a journalist, consulting futurist on Pacific Rim affairs (for the San Francisco-based Global Business Network, the corporate future scenarios think-tank) former editor of Chicago Review and co-founder of The Chicago Review Press (1973–present).

Alexander Besher's formative years were in Japan where he grew up and lived for twenty years, graduating from Canadian Academy High School in Kobe and Sophia University in Tokyo.^{[citation needed]}

Besher was contributing editor of InfoWorld. He wrote the internationally syndicated weekly column "Pacific Rim", covering business trends, technology, and cultural trends for a period of six years for The San Francisco Chronicle. This led to his authoring and editing the compendium The Pacific Rim Almanac.^[1]

Novels[edit]

Rim Trilogy: science fiction, set in Japan in the 2020s and 2030s (HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster)

o   Rim, Philip K. Dick Award nominee^[2]

o   Mir

o   Chi

Kabbalah noir genre: literary supernatural action adventure exorcism tales in the style of Hasidic fables.

o   The Clinging, novel and screenplay, set in contemporary San Francisco

o   The Night of the Golem, semi-sequel set in Nazi Berlin

o   The Unchosen, semi-sequel set in 1939/40 Shanghai

 

Transmedia[edit]

·        The Manga Man (2008)

 

Later I’m going to try to figure out how to update his entry in Wikipedia to include the date of his passing.

I left the apt at 8:30 and arrived at Torre Medica 25 minutes early for my 9:20 appointment. I was taken at 9:45. I saw the Urologist for about 15 minutes. First thing I did was check my weight – 82.2 kilos (180#). That’s a gain of only 5 pounds. I guess what happened is I’ve lost muscle weight and gained fat weight – all in my stomach. He took an echogram (or whatever its called) of my prostate and reported that it hasn’t gotten any larger so that’s good news. I gave him my latest PSA reading of 6.57. It’s high but he wants to wait until my next PSA test in 6 months. I had him write me an order for HDL, LDL, Total Cholesterol and Trigycerides in addition to the PSA. It cost me 200mil for the appointment – the typical amount for specialists here. I took a taxi back to the apt and returned before 10:30.

Teresa informed me that Alex did not have Covid-19 and that we would be going to a memorial for him this afternoon. I understood he died in Clinica de Bolivariana (sp?) in Medellin about 2am this morning.

I cancelled my 2:30-4:30 chess lesson as I believed we would be leaving sometime in the afternoon.

Alba finally contacted us at 5:30. She said he refused to take his heart medication for the past 3 days and he hadn’t slept for the past 2 days. He also had high blood pressure which is why Alba initially declined to give the doctors the okay for surgery. Finally, she relented but it appears he died on the operating table of an (aortic?) stomach embolism. He is going to be cremated and there won’t be a memorial (or whatever they call it here). Later Teresa informed me he didn’t want to be cremated so I don’t know what’s going on.

 

I watched the Chicago Bears beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 20-19 on Thursday Night Football.

 

In an editorial titled "Dying in a Leadership Vacuum," the editors of The New England Journal of Medicine blasted President Donald Trump (although not by name) for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Here's the key bit:

"Anyone else who recklessly squandered lives and money in this way would be suffering legal consequences. Our leaders have largely claimed immunity for their actions. But this election gives us the power to render judgment. Reasonable people will certainly disagree about the many political positions taken by candidates. But truth is neither liberal nor conservative. When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs."

 

Mitch McConnell: “"I actually haven't been to the White House since August 6, because my impression was their approach to how to handle this was different than mine and what I insisted that we do in the Senate, which is to wear a mask and practice social distancing.”

 

The person in charge of the White House security office contracted a severe case of the coronavirus last month and has been hospitalized ever since.

 

The US has 7,526,661 ð 7,579,513 ð 7,623,808 coronavirus cases with 210,600 ð 211,600+ ð 212,400+ deaths.

Per Medellin Guru, as of this afternoon Colombia has a total of 869,808 ð 877,683 ð 886,179 cases with 27,331 deaths.  Medellin has 70,372 ð 70,962 ð 71,902 cases, an increase of 940 from October 7^th to 8^th. Envigado has a total of 4,447 cases, an increase of 111 from October 7^th to 8^th.

 

Joke of the day

A very successful businessman went to visit his new son-in-law.

He said to him, "I love my daughter, and now I welcome you into the family. To show you how much we care for you, I'm making you a 50-50 partner in my business. All you have to do is go to the factory every day and learn how everything works."

The son-in-law said, "That's very kind of you but I hate factories. I can't stand the noise."

"Oh, I see," said the father-in-law. "In that case, you can work in the office and take charge of some of the operations there."

"That's very kind of you but I hate office work too," said the son-on-law. "I can’t stand being stuck behind a desk in an office all day, every day."

"Wait a minute," said the father-in-law who was getting a little annoyed now. "I just made you half-owner of a huge money-making organization, but you don't like factories and you won't work in an office. What am I going to do with you?"

"That's easy," said the young man. "Buy me out."