What a week!!

There must be an upside somewhere, but I haven\’t found it yet!

On Monday we went to my Bank, to apply for a credit card…Yes… I know that Colombia is tough on all money transactions in a bid to stamp out money laundering, but there are limits!

The Advisor, went off with a copy of my account balance to confer with the Manager, and on her return, with a face set in stone, she proceeded to give me a hard time:

Q. why do you want a credit card? 
R. for online payments, emergencies and holidays

Q. you have managed for 6 months, why now?
R. I have been using my UK card, and then only because you would not give me one.

Q. OK, but we will need confirmation of the source of your income
R. You already have it, I couldn\’t open an account without it

Q. Different Department, without it no card!
R. OK I will come back tomorrow

Q. How many Cards do you want, you can have a Visa, Mastercard, and American Express (Turns out they get commission for every card issued)
R. I only want one!!!!!

I was then told that when I returned not to wait in the queue, but go straight to her booth… yes, so she didn\’t miss out on the commission.

So on Tuesday, I went back armed with copies of my ID, a letter from the Police saying I was receiving a pension for life, a letter from the Company acting for the Police confirming they were paying my pension, 3 months UK Bank extracts showing my pension deposited each month, and three months account statements with the Company I use to transfer my pension to Colombia… Oh! and a donkey to carry it all! Even then, I was not sure I would be accepted.

However the woman was different again, all smiles, thinking of her commission ( call me cynical if you want!) she waded through all the papers, gave me an application form to fill in, four pages long, so to save time, Marcela filled it in for me.

I was then asked how much credit I wanted, here I took a deep breath, I don\’t use it for much, then only smallish payments, but Colombians usually have a limit of 1,500,000 COP (£515) to start with, which for me would be a waste of time, so tongue in cheek I asked for 10,000,000COP (£3455).

You could then have knocked me down with a feather, because she said the system was granting me 29,000,000 COP (£10000). No thanks, I might be tempted to go on a spending spree, so my self imposed limit was accepted, on the understanding I could increase it at any time! Now I just wait for the call to collect the card.

Talk about going from one extreme to the other, does this now mean, all my future Banking requests will be easy… Not a hope…Different Department!! 

Later that day we went back to the Optician\’s as they had called to say my glasses were in, after struggling to find them, I was asked to try them out, they were fine for reading, and the computer, but when I went out of the shop to try distance viewing, they didn\’t appear to help much, compared with my old glasses. The Optician tried to fob me off, by saying varifocals are a compromise, and they would not be as good. Anyway she asked me to try them before taking any further action.

Well, driving I must be as good as all the other Colombian Drivers, because I can\’t see a damn thing, if a Policeman steps out in front of me, he is going to be a pancake. Anyway I have persevered for two days, by which time, I couldn\’t read, see the computer screen, or drive, it was one big blur, and a headache to go with it. So I have given up, and we are going to have to return, and either get it sorted or try for a refund, and try somewhere else.

Quite when we will get back to the Optician I am not sure, Marcela has had to go into the City this afternoon for a meeting, and tomorrow, we have got to take the car, and find somewhere who will, change it back into a car, from a mobile swimming pool! 

I think that the windscreen seal has gone, and every time we have a storm, the passenger side fills with water, from the front to the back, if something is not done soon, the floor will rot, then we will have problems!! 

Every morning when the sun is cracking the flags, I go and open the windows, and it starts to dry out, but by late afternoon, it is chucking it down, and it fills up again. It is a shame, as we hope to change it in a couple of months, the other option would be to buy a car cover, but I am hoping it will not be an expensive job.

Dieting was going well again this week, until we got on the scales this morning, and we had both gained a bit, why we have no idea, as we had continued on our regime, I think if we are not heading in the right direction again by morning, that it will be kicked out of the window, and we will be going for Pizza with extra double cheese!!

My Laptop was saved by a whisker from being chucked out of the window last night. I received an annual update notification, for my Virus checker, VIPRE, I have a three year paid subscription, which runs out in March, so I ran the update, and it was rejected, I tried agin, same result, but different message, so I contacted Tech Support, and spent two sessions, first about an hour the second, longer, trying different things to resolve it, but no joy, finally I was asked to use some software to totally remove a couple of suspect programs I used, this meant a reboot, and loss of contact with the Techy, so I said if that didn\’t work, I would ring back today. It didn\’t work…….!!! 

Having had the night to think about it, I decided it was more trouble than it was worth, and I would revert to an old friend AVG, now that is installed,  we will have to see how that goes.

If I can think of anything positive about the week, I will add an update, or another post. In the mean time…Keep smiling!