Milkshakes and Mulishness
Jim is still healing from his surgery and he's quite cross that he cannot get in the pool and swim. I swam once this week. Pool chemicals got to me again. Time to start tottering up the expenses to switch the pool over to salt water.
He's just not used to inactivity, and is confused over my ability to curl up in the bed and read for hours on end during the worst of rainy season, which happens to be September and October. We are right in the middle of that depressing Atlantis stage here where it's a constant deluge of rain.
I watched that same local road repairman stuff our crankcase busting deep potholes so deep you could bathe in them merrily stuffing them with dirt yesterday before it started raining again. Futility because to actually patch the road with asphalt would dispossess him of a job. Instead he just trundles around with a wheelbarrow filled with soil to tamp into the holes.
We're dealing yet again with that cultural phenomenon of Tico Time combined with a lack of unpleasant truthfulness. Ticos are wonderful people, except when it comes to time, time management and truth. We had an appointment to get our car tuned up yesterday. We drove through a veritable Biblical flood, through the pouring rain, only to discover than the mechanics shop was locked up tight. For a local holiday. For two full days. When we had an appointment. Found out today that we'll not be getting the tune up after all. The mechanic quit the job. So now it's wait for the shop to reopen after two days of holidays, and wait until they have a mechanic who can do the repair.
The Ipad repair saga drags on too. Another perfect example of Tico Time, and how things are done so differently here. Last week I took my Iphone into a shop run by a friend of ours. The friend isn't there, he's left the shop to his brother. The brother changes out the battery and it's all good, except it took twice as long and i had a hard time actually catching him in the shop to drop off the phone.
I had the bright idea to have him replace the cracked screen on my Ipad. Nothing wrong with it. It charges, it boots up, but the screen is so cracked it sometimes interferes with using it well.
We go to pick it up late last week. I noticed that the guy running the joint decided to make like a tree and leave as soon as we walked in. They had the Iphone and Ipad ready. I was annoyed that they'd temporarily misplaced my SIM card, but got it back quickly. Could not get the Ipad to come on. They said the battery was just dead, and it worked fine now.
Got it home to charge, and noticed dirt under the new screen. It would not charge, kept flipping on and off, on and off before turning into a nice heavy metallic paperweight. Talked to a stateside pal of mine that works on those things for a living. He said it sounded like they damaged the video card when replacing the screen.
I call the shop, and suddenly no one spoke English, or understood my Spanish, a whole lotta 'No comprende!' I ended up having to call and text my friend who did work there, (it's his family's shop) to try and get him to talk to them. I'm starting to get nervous with the phone run around and the shop being closed every time I drive by.
Monday morning I went in and told the guy it was dead. He said he would troubleshoot and it fixed today. Got by there at the right time. Not ready. He swears it's just a battery. It does not act like it's a dead battery, but he says he's fixing it for free. Yeah, he screwed something up replacing the screen, even if he will not admit it.
That's the flip side of the whole Pura Vida Tico Time. People will not tell you unpleasant things you don't want to hear. I believe by the skeevy way he was acting last Thursday afternoon that he knew it wasn't working, but rather than tell me he's been in avoidance 'No comprende' mode until I spoke to his brother. Ticos will openly lie to your face rather than tell you something unpleasant. I would rather have the plain unvarnished not so nice truth.
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