Wednesday, January 17, 2024

Last night I went to bed at 10pm, woke up at 5am, couldn’t fall back asleep, finally getting up at 5:30.

Another interesting day in paradise!

I completed my workout in Smartfit from 8am to 9am. I stopped in the Pasteur pharmacy where I bought a small box of man pads. The pharmacist helped decipher the word “punctually” from Dr. Uriba’s prescription. It turned out not to be anything important.  By 9:30 I was sitting in Los Porteños enjoying a latte.

Troyclough and I agreed to a draw dropping my rating 3 points to 1593. (Computer analysis showed I had a checkmate in 4 moves. ☹)

I left at 11:15 and returned to the apt.

At 12:16 I texted Teresa I was on my way to the mall. I noticed the corner construction now has 2-way traffic on the side street north of the mall.

My iPod is working normally again. Usually it dies after 3-4 songs, now it worked back and forth to Sao Paolo mall on Sunday and today to Viva Envigado.

I recycled a plastic bottle then printed a few things in Auros:

·     2 screen prints of my chess databases I hope to consolidate into 1 (unfortunately I don’t think it’s going to garner me additional space on my hard drive).

·     A screen print of the receipt of our (my brother and I) hotel (Mariscal Robledo) in Santafe de Antioquia for February 12^th-13^th.

·     A screen print of my old notes on ATMs and the fees they charge. I haven’t updated it in years so it’s time to figure out anew which is the least expensive.

At the Servibanca ATM I withdrew 2,000,000 pesos but the ATM fee was 22,500 pesos.

I went upstairs to pay for our Claro cellphone plans. The girl went to the safe but only came back with 1mil coins. For change for the first Claro bill she gave me a 20mil peso note and 7 1mil coins. I could see the smallest bill in her drawer was a 10mil note so I gave her almost exact change for the 2^nd bill. I then gave her the 7 1mil coins back plus a 2mil note and another 1mil in change and she gave me the 10mil note. She motioned asking if I had any 2mil notes and I gave her all I had and my 10mil note and she gave me a 20mil note and we were both happy.

At 12:30 I texted Teresa I was in the mall waiting for her to go for lunch.

I went into Cine Colombia and exchanged my silver Cine Colombia card for a platinum one. Besides the card itself, bonuses include a free popcorn with every visit, 2 courtesy tickets, a combo of popcorn, hotdog and soda, 35% discount off movies and 20% discount off all concession combos, preferred lines, and online purchases without paying a surcharge.

I went down to Urbania and had a latte while waiting for Teresa to call me for lunch.

At 1:15 I texted her asking if we’re going for lunch soon.

She left me a voice mail that she’s still getting her nails done and I shouldn’t wait for her for lunch.

I paid for my latte and went upstairs to Only Roast Beef where I ordered their small BBQ roast beef sandwich with fries and a Coke. As usual they gave me the beeper (or whatever it’s called) and I headed to the restroom. Just outside the entrance I saw what was obviously vomit on the floor. Outside the women’s restroom I encountered several cleaning ladies so I said, “alguien vomitar afuera” and pointed to the entrance. One of the cleaning ladies responded in broken English with, “I don’t speak English”. I didn’t know my Spanish was that bad. Luckily, a lady behind me told the lady in better Spanish than mine what the problem was.

I finished my sandwich and went to the Exito Wow office and found this sign on the number taking machine.

While I was trying to figure out what it said a Colombian girl came up to help and pressed the right buttons to get my turn number. I then understood why the sign didn’t say “afuera servicio”, it was working just not printing tickets.

I only had a 5-minute wait but it took the agent at least 10 minutes to track everything and then I had to sign 2 pages in 3 different spots. I was a little surprised I didn’t have to give them my fingerprint. I got the cash and stuffed it in my tech bag.

I went into Cine Colombia and texted Teresa I was only waiting for her because she said she wanted to buy something.

I noticed ads for upcoming movies including The Zone of Interest (8.0) and Poor Things (8.4).

Teresa called and asked me to meet her and MT in 30 minutes at Percimon. They had yogurt ice cream with the fixings and I had a palito – frozen yogurt ice cream bar.

When we left we walked to the south end of the mall where we were surprised to see stores outside Exito, Mimo’s, Dogger, McDonald’s desserts, small bakeries, etc, like before the IKEA construction started but now in a more modern space.

We walked across the street to MT’s apartment where Teresa picked up some of her things and we returned to the apt by taxi.

 

CRAZY SIGNS