Medellín, Tuesday-Thursday

Tue 1820 Quickly bash out a bit before I go out.

Didn't sleep super well, not really sure why, just possibly it's the cold (though I kind of feel it's turned the corner).

School OKish except for fucking wanky controversial-ish topics of discussion when I'm just trying to learn a fucking language here but anyway.

Came back to hotel via El Colmado for lunch, had usual. Did homework for school and went back to school at 4 (had been told 4 but actually 4:30) for a meditation class. Bit out of my usual orbit but it's free. I'm not feeling super chatty given my perhaps-unjustified paranoia around today's class themes but was interested to note everyone else just sitting round fiddling with their phones anyway.

Meditation class was surprisingly half-decent. I felt a bit silly but tried not to worry about it. Lasted about an hour, last half hour we were just lying down with some kind of water sound playing, eyes closed and the instructor chap scooting round making noises with drums, grains-in-container-sliding-about etc instruments all round us. My mind was wandering all over place re class themes so I don't think this was particularly successful qua meditation *but* it was semi-fruitful and I did feel unexpectedly relaxed when I got back to hotel (about 1745) and there was also an interestingly 3D quality about these sounds scooting about the room unseen (I *think* he was varying the height he made them from).

So have had a shower and will head out to Dimeli for LE soon. I will prob be first there but that's fine.

(Using "qua" above just came out totally naturally; in hindsight it's perhaps a bit pretentious but since I don't frequently use it and a quick poke on dictionary.com suggests I am using it correctly I will let it stand.)

Wed 0138 Just got home. Not a bad night. Not pissed really but need to get to bed. Got Uber home, can't stop chuckling at fact the driver shouted me to return back after I got across the road (he stopped outside wrong hotel but not far away) to tell me off for slamming the car door - this is absolutely stereotypical Uber driver behaviour here and I honestly didn't do anything super forceful, and it's not like I'm not used to travelling in smallish European-y sized cars (this was a mid-sized Renault saloon too, not a typical Colombian taxi size). But as I say, it's coolish and funny because it is so stereotypical (maybe I'm drunker than I thought) but I need to get to bed.

0154 Bed. Need to sleep but watching/listening to Aguita Amarilla on YT which was playing when we got to BBC bar (Stef asked barman what it was and he was v helpful) and maybe I am drunker than I thought but I am chuckling as I listen to it/read lyrics on screen.

Wed 1548 At hotel, have been doing homework for maybe last 90 mins. I had considered going over to museo casa la memoria this afternoon but I wanted to do homework first as I plan to go to language exchange at Onda's tonight so couldn't do homework tonight, and it's a bit tight for time (plus I need to shower) given it shuts at 6.

Last night LE at Dimeli OK, ended up going on with some people to Bogota Brewing Company bar (we walked; maybe 10 mins), one of them being an Englishwoman Stef who is freelance writer for travel guides. Anyway, I ended up staying late-ish at BBC (some people left a bit earlier) and that brings us up to what I already wrote yday.

Dreaded getting up mainly due to having to go over the wankily "political" homework, did feel a bit tired and hungover but not too bad. Class was OK, I tried to be quietly attentive to the language and ignore the predictably wanky views of the other students, and once that was out of the way it was relatively good. Fruit tasting during the break was interesting, particularly liked the mangosteens.

So that pretty much catches this blog entry up with real time.

2325 Back from LE. Quite a decent night, was going to leave in time to get Metro back but was having a good chat so stayed and got an Uber back, driver nice oldish chap (had worked as administrator for farms around Colombia) and I remembered not to slam the door. Had 5 beers, not super restrained but hardly excessive. Might listen to a bit of music and eat a bit of aging fruit before going to bed.

Someone recommended Beat app for transport to me tonight so might sign up for that now, I downloaded it during LE to see I could get it - the person who recommended me told me about the liability issue with Uber so it's not just me making this up.

That reminds me a couple of Colombians tonight told me that even though the brands are the same, the cars sold here are lower quality and thus the door slamming concern of Uber drivers. I report this as I was told it without judging at this point.

2346 Just watched Aguita Amarilla on YT again, looked at comments and though for some reason I can't copy and paste the original did laugh at a comment saying what they forgot to say was the aguita amarilla was used to make beer. :-)

Thu 0010 Signed up with Beat, so will try them next time I need a cab. Uber seems to work well but the liability thing is a bit iffy. No response yet from ET to my complaints re Friday.

2208 Didn't post this last night so guess will continue here. Prob be brief.

School was OK, came back via El Colmado and did homework and then went to lang exch at school at 6. Bit of a fuckup which wasn't entirely my fault meant I ended up sitting out of the way of the LE until about 645, during which time I was able to read some scary shit about coronavirus and pseudo-voluntary self isolation even with no symptoms to slow the spread but I am unable to find any really solid advice re Colombia so I guess I will just comply with local advice. I get the feeling we're behind the curve here, the government has imposed bans on gatherings of more than 500 people yday IIRC etc, this may or may not be enough but in the absence of local advice that I really should just lock myself away in my hotel room for the good of everyone even if not for my own good I will just carry on I think.

Anyway, tho it was a bit awkward at first LE was OK. I proposed going on to LFdC, as it turned out four people came away with me but Andrés had to go home early as he wasn't feeling well and after we (I didn't eat) went for a hot dog first and then LFdC was too noisy (everywhere was, maybe cos it's Thursday) and we went up to the square north of Estadio metro and then one of us didn't like it there cos it was too cold and two of them drifted off I ended up walking down to Dimeli with the one remaining woman, but they had their movie night on so we couldn't talk in there, and we ended up at a small cafe down past a church and were chatting there and I was feeling v awkward as staff were cleaning up but I didn't want to be seeming to try to make excuse to go home. All OK really but bit odd. Beer was 2.5k, I made it 4k and this seems to cause a minor stir, but I said it was the tip and they accepted it. I don't know if this looked ultra flash but apart from the fact I'm now sure I could have made it 3k as have been lead to believe a 500 tip would be so small as to be kind of insulting, I felt quite guilty about being there so late. Meh, I don't fucking know.

Woman I met at Onda's first night WhatsApped me, her flight back to Munich (direct from Medellin) has been cancelled. This is mildly scary shit but ultimately nothing I can do. (It's actually this "*should* I be minimising my exposure to other people for their sake as much as mine?" business which is kind of disturbing, as I *could* do that, but it's not at all clear if I should or not as the advice I am seeing is UK/US oriented.) I still have about (slightly over I think) 5 weeks before I fly home and who knows where we'll be in Colombia, Spain (I fly back via Madrid) and UK by that point. I have travel insurance and I guess if I'm prevented from returning when planned neither the travel insurance nor the Colombian authorities can kick up a stink about exceeding the 90 day period they both allow.

The French women in class did actually have some kind of message (I overheard this, I think - which is odd, as surely they'd have been speaking French? but anyway) about calling asap re some flight (one of their parents are coming out to visit them, they aren't going back to France) too. Fuck knows. AFAICT - and it is mostly irrelevant - right now there aren't any restrictions on flights Colombia-Spain and Spain-UK in the homeward bound direction at least.

Maybe I should be panicking and trying to get on a flight back to the UK ASAP but that might well be an out of the frying pan into the fire decision. I managed to feel mildly panicky while solo reading that shit (from semi-reputable sources) in the school "waiting" for LE to start, but since I got talking to people tonight felt OK.

Oh, one of the women from the mini-abortive-non-pub-crawl tonight did invite me to join them/some of her other friends at Dancefree on Saturday night. I was flattered and said so but declined on true and already waffled about grounds related to my dislike of and inability to dance. It *wasn't* a factor in declining (which I felt a bit bad about anyway) but while I am probably going to continue to go out on the LE circuit, at least this is typical in less busy places than I might guess DF is.

While I doubt it will happen, I should be honest and observe that it has crossed my mind that maybe, just maybe, I'll manage to jump over the peak coronavirus shit by being in Colombia while some sort of critical period is passed back in the UK and then return before it goes critical here. I have no idea if that's even feasible, but writing it since thought occurred. Did see something saying mortality for under 40s was about 0.2% and I'd hope it doesn't soar too rapidly for people a bit over 40. I am still mainly worried about the possible effect on my parents but really it's probably fine. The stuff I read earlier did seem semi-authoritative but I think it was also heavily playing up the scare story angle in order to motivate people to voluntary reduce their social contact to slow the spread/"flatten the curve".

It has occurred to me that all this shit probably makes it highly inadvisable to go off on long trips within Colombia (eg deciding to go down to Cali), and may even (given it would mean being on public-ish transport for long-ish period) argue against trips to nearby-ish places. For that matter maybe I should prefer Uber or similar over metro even during day, I don't know, I don't want to go paranoid. Fuck knows. As I said before, I think it doesn't help the advice I'm reading is US/UK-ish and I think Colombia is a bit behind in terms of number of cases etc so far.

I did feel a bit tired when getting up for class today so I may move towards bed shortly; am not really tired right now but prob could sleep.

Did I mention I met a hip-hop peformer (Jason) from New York at bar at start of LE at Onda's last night? He said he was on a tour performing in Colombia but it looked like the coronavirus ban on large gatherings might mean his next concert was cancelled.

2257 Right, moving slowlyish towards bed. Read a little more re CV and saw some advice to not read too much news as its counterproductive; I already knew this of course. I think:

- there's no point doing stuff (eg reading news) which makes me more prone to worry and doesn't have any other useful effect.

- I do wonder if I should be isolating myself on "social distancing" grounds. I think *in the absence of any local requests to do this* (I would not necessarily wait for it to be forced on me by forced closures of bars etc) I will continue mostly as normal, but perhaps (I guess it's not a binary thing) try to reduce my exposure to large groups (and thus their exposure to me), in reality except for the school where I'm in a classroom with 5ish other people for four hours, most of the time I am not close to other people very long - the times and places I am eating the restaurants are usually pretty quiet. I guess the language exchange scene is close exposure too though.

- I will keep washing my hands relatively often and try to keep them away from my face.

- While it would doubtless be pretty sucky to be ill and/or self-quarantining for up to 14 days in a hotel room (and presumably living off takeaways delivered to the hotel; if I were at home I'd make sure I had enough rice etc for 14 days and could cook for myself as normal, and if I were too ill to cook I'd probably be too ill to eat, but that isn't an option here) it would almost certainly be no more than that - pretty sucky. Not horrific or life altering or anything. Just maybe this should push me towards getting an airbnb apartment with a freezer and buying in a modest stock of rice and frozen veg or what have you, but TBH that's probably not really necessary.

- Similarly, while getting caught up in various snarl-ups re getting home (cancelled flights, being ill or self-quarantining when I am due to fly home, insurance or visa issues) would be sucky, these are not in themselves huge life-threatening problems - a few months down the line they'd just be mildly interesting/tedious stories.

 

- I can't control what happens with eg parents health, but they're back in the UK and will probably be OK anyway.

- I personally will probably survive if I do get it, and in any case that is again something I can't control so should try to avoid worrying about.