Last night was interesting. Barney arrived at our
hostel at like 8:30 PM and we then were heading for the Champra (with two of
our friends from work and the chick from Managua). We walked for a while and
ended up outside the Koama disco bar (one street closer to the hostel than the
Champra) and asked how much the cover was (20 Cordobas). We then seemed to wait
an incredibly long period of time for Barney’s chick friend to show up, but
eventually she did. She was probably about 5’ 4” with long dark hair and a
lighter blue dress on. She also had a bit of makeup on. She mentioned her name,
but I’ve already forgotten it (I’m horrible with names). Anyways we met her and
then walked to the waterfront pier place and sat and talked while the two other
dudes from work went back to Barney’s hostel to grab some cash for the entrance
and maybe a drink or two. Again this seemed to be quite a long time, but I
enjoyed talking to the woman who works at SILAIS and who also knows Canales
(the dude who shot down that American Pilot back in the Sandinista Revolution
(with a rocket (like a boss)). Anyways she’s also from here is San Carlos and
has to go to Managua for work a bit. She also doesn’t smoke (which I think is
awesome considering how bad the bar was for smoke (the reason why I am noting
all these random facts is that this is all I could ask about (as my
conversational Spanish is getting better))). We eventually went inside the bar
for the Karaoke night they were having there and it was like walking into a
Malboro ad. It was so smoky and loud that it was hard to breathe or talk.
Basically it was like trying to lean in and talk to the chick while the music
was blaring and drunk people were singing karaoke. I saw two white chicks that
entered the bar before we had and I eventually made my way over to talk with
them as Dan danced with this one chick. They were pretty nice (one was a
brunette named Lelou and the other was a blonde, whose name I partially heard
through the roar of the music and cries of people being rowdy, but have now
forgotten). Anyways after talking to them for a while we eventually got to
dance with them a bit (doing some shuffling and whatnot) before leaving. The
story behind the two girls was that they are from Holland and are here in
Nicaragua to help out the doctors (as they are both finishing up their medical
school in Holland). Anyways they were amiable and it was enjoyable to talk to
them a bit (in good English too!). We shared a taxi to near their homestay and
then took the same taxi back to our hostel and called it a night at like 11:30
PM (staying up a bit later to chill and for me to hack out my lungs from the
awful smoke (it was so bad that my moustache started smelling like the smoke
and I had to take a shower and at one point even a walk around the block to check
out the Champra (when I was at the Koama))).
Actually 7/5/13 now I promise. Today was an
interesting morning in that I was pretty solidly asleep until about 6:20 AM and
then woke up every 5 or 10 minutes until I eventually drug myself from bed to
the shower. Breakfast was good: consisting of an omelet and B&R and toast
with jelly and a banana milk smoothie (all of which were quite tasty as today
was probably the first day I started feeling close to 100% and dang was I hungry!).
After heading to work, we did the typical wait for Gato and then we just went
out and found him guarding the doors to the back part of the hospital and OR.
Anyways we got the keys and unlocked the door to the shop to basically drop our
gear in the shop and then check the tools we had bought yesterday (the drill brush)
and install the switch in the lamp. I cut the cord and installed the slide
switch into the emergency area’s lamp that only would turn on when plugged in
because the cord didn’t have a switch. Unfortunately the switch was made for
only a 2 wire cable (but the lamp had a 3 wire cable (ground pin)) so I had to
gently squeeze the ground cable in next to the neutral wire and close the
switch back up again and then Dan taped the outside of the switch where the
insulation was (as the insulation didn’t fit inside the switch).
Look at the work of art
I then called
my dad (the man who is the Wikipedia of construction projects and general doin’
work) and talked to him about the grinder wheel we needed (we had a wire brush
disc, but needed a wire brush cup for the grinder). Dan and I then chilled with
Barney for like an hour doing literally nothing except waiting (for no reason
other than Barney had to wait to talk to someone), but the room had AC and we
were just talking about last night a bit and learning how to use an autoclave
that was working in the room (Barney had set it up). Lunch was pretty standard
and was the same as yesterday (beef, B&R, plantains and this weird fruit
drank). We learned from Barney that he is paying the folks $60 a week for 8
people to eat 3 meals a day there for the work week (which equates to 50 cents
a meal), so we didn’t feel too bad that he was paying for our lunches. Anyways
after that Dan and I headed off to exchange the parts at the store and also
pick up a better plug for another lamp that had come to us from the emergency
area with a bad switch (the switch would get stuck behind the housing as the
design for the lamp was awful with only 1 screw mount (-.- //bad designs from
the factory)). Anyways the store was actually pretty good as they usually don’t
accept returns I don’t think, but they took back the wire brush wheel and let
us have a refund for the wire brush cup (and we also bought the required plug).
Back at the hospital Dan tried out the grinding cup while I worked on the plug
for the lamp. The wires for this lamp only had 2 wires and no ground, so they
were really too small for the massive 3 prong plug, but whatever (the strain
relief was adequate). The cup worked really well and was grinding away the
surface rust on the IV stand quite well (Dan and I traded places at one point
just to share in the mutual fun of grinding massive amounts of rust off that
shiznit). After that I returned the lamp and the people seemed pleased with the
light quality and the new switch. I also was given a balance to work on. This
balance was futzed up at the base (and was missing two screws on the front that
went into a plate which held the hanging weights perpendicular to the weighing
platform). Anyways I hauled that out of there and looked for some screws for
the front (as we have like 5 balances in the junk yard I expected to be able to
grab two off of one and put them in and fix the unit pretty easily). Dan and I
looked at all the balances we could find with no luck (I also tried to open a
surgical lamp to check if there were bulbs in it (which I doubted) and managed
to touch the stinging nettle growing beneath it, so joy for that one). I then
checked this other balance randomly placed in with these water tanks (and it
luckily had 4 of the required screws, so I grabbed two and went back to replace
them). Meanwhile Dan was hard at work on grinding away on the IV stand’s base. I
thought I could just pop in the screws and tighten them and give back the
balance, but it turned out the plate inside to catch the screws was bent from
someone probably leaning on the balance. So I had to take apart the hanging
weights part (two bolts with small pins to be pulled out of them holding the
hanging part to the base (and then just unhooking the weighing plate)). After
that I had to re-bend the plates and put the scale back together. And then put
back on the ruler I had removed because it was annoying as heck to try and
tighten the screws.
Not so great for holding the stand upright...
After that I returned to the emergency place and returned
their balance (and calibrated it a bit for their room (which may or may not
have been level)) and the boss guy it seemed was surprised and happy with how
quickly we’d fixed the balance. After that I went around and tightened all the
loose door handles I could find (on the glass doors of the hospital (only about
3 handles in total)) and it was like 5:30 PM so Dan and I left. Dan also
finished grinding the IV stand and painted it with the blue spray paint and it
looks really good!
Before painting the stand
It’s been a chill day after leaving around 5:50 PM. Dinner
was good (something like a quesadilla, B&R, avocado and tomato and fried
ham slices). I also had to fix the host family’s browsers again because the
young daughter must have downloaded something that had a browser hijacker in
the installation process (and changed the homepage for the browsers to
something stupid). After dealing with the qvo6 mess on the first day I had to
just change the shortcut properties and tell the dad how to do this for the
future (hopefully he doesn’t have to do it again). Might go out dancing later
at the Champra as apparently it’s more electronic music there (and slightly
cheaper drinks inside too). Also we heard an advertisement for a Costa Rican DJ
coming to the Koama restaurant on Saturday night for a party with an 80 Cordoba
cover (so not going) but his name is DJ Nacho and he’ll be serving up some Salsa
(see what I did there?). Anyways Killing Floor has the summer update (free map
and character and new mode (SO STOKED!)) so I will write some more later
(tomorrow)! Keep on keepin’ on! Peace! (also random note that the news here
shows actual dead people (just straight up corpses on TV (with the gore and everything
and no restricts on that O.o)
Saw this as I was walking around tightening door handles (those small white boxes are bio-hazard boxes (syringes etc) (O.o) )
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