Tuesday, January 23, 2024

Last night I went to bed at 10pm, got up once during the night, again at 5am, finally waking/getting up just before my alarm at 6:30.

The ride sharing app Didi changed their interface. Now it’s more like InDrive where you raise the fare to encourage drivers to choose you.

Traffic was a little heavier than usual today and cost 11,500 pesos and I arrived 15 minutes late at Unicentro mall. Today we tried a new place, for us, Santa Leña. I had their 3 slices of French toast with strawberry and banana slices and 2 lattes.

Jose had some type of egg dish and a couple café con leches. Only problem with my order – it was with honey instead of maple syrup, which is a common substitution here.

I showed Jose my printout of ATM fees and he believes each bank can charge whatever currency exchange rate they want. I don’t know about that.

I showed him a printout of this year’s chess tournaments and I learned “semilleros” is “youngsters” so I can cross those off my list. That gets me down to 8 tournaments and I can probably winnow that down a little more. I asked him about time controls since we try to mimic tournament play with our 1 hour per game + 30 seconds per move. He believes the time controls have shortened maybe to 45 minutes + 30 seconds. He’s going to check and see what they use at the next tournament.

In our first game we were even when I lost on time on the 33^rd move.

In the second game I blundered on the 17^th move and, in the end, resigned on the 28^th move. ☹

I had a burger combo calle the Corral at El Corral for 26,900 pesos ($6.80).

I bought eggs and a 9V battery in Exito and had a Didi return me to the apt for 15,100 pesos, plus a 1,500 pesos tip, still less than I would pay a taxi.

I won a game against Troyclough increasing my rating 3 points to 1607.

I watched a couple more episodes of Designated Survivor.

Oh great, now the GFI in the kitchen doesn’t work. And it’s the only one on the wall. ☹ Correction: It works, its just I reset it but expected the little light to come on but never tested it by trying an appliance. Later Teresa plugged in the toaster and it’s working fine. 😊

I looked on Cine Colombia for what’s coming soon and I think Poor Things (8.4) is going to open this week.

I finished reading Julie Clark’s novel The Last Flight.

 

CRAZY SIGNS