Monday, February 7, 2022

Last night I went to bed at 10pm, fell asleep quickly, got up once at 3am, woke up at 7am, did my Kegel exercises, and got up.

Well, Laura got back to Boston safely. Her 2:11am text said, “I just landed in Boston” followed immediately by “Seems too cold”.

Teresa called Dr. Gomez’ office and my 6-hour surgery is scheduled for 1pm, Monday, February 21. I need to stop taking aspirin, Omega 3 and Gingko Biloba from this point on and I need to pay the doctor by depositing 8,000,000 pesos in his account by this Friday.

I left the apt about 10am and stopped at Pasteur pharmacy where I bought a pack of 10 TENA Dia (MPs) for 21,450. I was a little surprised to see Parva open as I thought they were closed on Mondays. I noticed Brit at an outside table talking with another man. I went inside for coffee and started reviewing games in my New in Chess magazine.

First some background: Samuel Sevian was the first American to achieve the title of Grandmaster at the age of 13 years, 10 months, and 27 days. I saw him play in the Continental Championship in Medellin in June of 2017. He tied for 1st place with strong GMs Wesley So and Fabiano Caruana in the US Championship.

 

It’s also nice to see that studying chess can earn one a college scholarship.

 

At one point Brit came inside and left his cellphone to recharge. Later they both moved inside and I chatted with Brit longer than I ever have before.

About 11:30 I returned to the apt.

I tried using Remitly to send myself cash but the Economy option only works with Colombia banks.

I tried using World Remit to send myself 8 million pesos but it responded, “Sorry, this receive amount is too high, please enter an amount lower than 4,400,000.01”.

Again, Teresa got her dates mixed up and I have until Friday, the 18^th to get my payment to Dr. Gomez. I asked her to confirm through the secretary that I could make 2 deposits of 4 million each.

Just before 1pm it started drizzling but it was over by 1:30.

I had lunch at Asados Rogelio and got an order to go for Teresa.

I had coffee at Maca along with a pastry. I didn’t understand what the waitress called it until she wrote down “pastel frambuesa queso crema” for me. Frambuesa sounded familiar and my translator reminded me it’s raspberry.  So, it’s a raspberry cream cheese pastry.

I figured out the solution to my money transfer problem. I’ll submit one transfer tonight and another tomorrow or whenever they allow me again and I’ll just make one withdrawal/deposit into the doctor’s account.

I see Remitly has a 24-hour limit of $2,999 but I couldn’t get it to accept my new debit card. Sigh!

Back to World Remit. At least they have my new debit card information save. All I got was buffering. Sigh. Sigh!

I’ve decided I’m going to make multiple trips to an ATM in Viva Envigado and return by taxi. Also, I’m certain I would get a better currency exchange rate that way.

 

The New York Times’ 7-day average of new daily infections and deaths has the US with 304,864 ð 298,641 ð 253,562 new cases and 2,571 ð 2,576 ð 2,600 new deaths.

Per Medellin Guru, as of yesterday, Colombia has a total of 12,567 ð 10,356 ð 9,080 new cases with 236 ð 239 ð 235 new deaths. Medellin has 622 ð 413 ð 312 new cases from February 6^th to 7^th. Envigado has 47 ð 17 ð 17 new cases from February 6^th to 7^th.