Welcome to Colombia! Coffee Time LIVE Q&A 28 Nov 2021

Just have a cup of coffee, then I'll go. I'll be in town tomorrow. Okay, enough of that. Sorry I'm late. At the last moment YouTube froze up on me. I had to reboot my computer and go through a bunch of things and set things up again. So welcome back to the channel Grand Columbia and welcome to Coffee Time Live every Sunday at 11 a.m. Weather's nice, overcast, the usual, maybe 70-72 degrees and I got a whole bunch of things to talk about today. Yes, on Thursday I did do a live and a handful of you regulars showed up and it was it was kind of cool. It was no announcement, spur of the moment, but let's see what do we got here. Okay, got a bunch of things. I got some messages this morning. One about earthquakes because there was a big one in Peru, I guess, 7.4. And they're saying, you know, do we feel it here? No, that's quite a ways away. Be kind of like New York to California sort of distance. So no, we didn't feel it. And then somebody said something about they were looking at an earthquake page, the U.S. Geographic Society page, and they noticed that there's a lot of little earthquakes in Colombia and what's going on with that. And I just have to point out that there's always been. And while you're at it, go look at Oklahoma, for example. Oklahoma has something like 200 earthquakes a day. You just don't really notice them because they're all the three, two, three, four magnitude. And what we have here in Colombia, for the most part, it's the same. You get these in much of the world, including all over the United States, doesn't mean we got tons of earthquakes going on. We do have them hit once in a while. But you have them hit in California, you have them hit other places. So put it in perspective. Okay. Rob, thank you for passing that message on. Thank you for the early morning contribution. I really appreciate it. And I take it you got to go. So I missed you. Sorry about that. And Carlos, good morning from West Palm, Florida. How was your Thanksgiving day, turkey? No turkey. Honestly, it was just another day I kept to myself. Did a little bit of work. Oh my God. I have to run. Hold on. I'm coming right back. Sorry about that. I don't know exactly what's going on. Somebody's phone's ringing. I think somebody's coming to the door. Usually this is a quiet time. Mike, audio, video, good. Thank you. I really do appreciate that. Phil, good morning. Buenos dias from Tampa. Missing Armenia. Rob, you didn't run better off that way. Mark, morning from Houston. Keith, buenos dias from Armenia. Okay. I think I'm going to be interrupted in about a minute. Okay. What do we got here? I had a bunch of stuff here. Oh, social security page. There's been a change. And if you go to sign up on your social security page, if you haven't been signed up before now, when you go to sign up, it won't feel like a change to you because you've never signed up. But they're really dialing in. You have to have a U.S. phone number. Somebody said you have to have a U.S. driver's license. That's actually, I mean, there's a lot of people who don't drive, but you have to have like a U.S. passport or U.S. ID, like a sheriff's ID or a state ID or something else. In other words, they're making damn sure that it's you signing up for it. Now, that's not a big deal if you're in the United States, but it can be problematic if you never signed up for it and now you're here in Columbia or wherever and you need to get your social security printout in order to get a visa. Well, now it can become problematic because there's a good chance you don't have a U.S. phone number. And that seems to be the key to a lot of things. The banking issues that I dealt with recently, there's a lot of things that are now requiring you have a U.S. phone number. So we'll go into that in some detail at another time, but just be aware if you are coming down here, make sure that you're signed up on the social security page before you come down here. Once you're signed up on it, it's no big deal. But if you're down here and you're trying to sign up on it, it's going to be problematic. Now, you can call the social security office from down here and have them email you a copy of your page, but they're going to require you to jump through some hoops for ID. But I want to point that out because it's like most people sign up for it when they go on their retirement, but there are some people that didn't. And so that can be a problem. Just be aware before you go anywhere outside of the United States, just make sure that you have all these things covered. Okay. Mortgages. I was asked about how do the mortgages work in Columbia? So I don't want to spend a lot of time on this because it doesn't really apply much to us, but let me just kind of run through it. First of all, in some cases, if you're a permanent resident, you can get a mortgage in some cases. Getting a visa, like a retirement visa, is not permanent resident. So be aware of that. You can apply for permanent residency after you've been here five years. I'm coming up on it, as a matter of fact. Once you have your permanent residency, then you can go through the process to get citizenship and you can have U.S. and Colombian dual citizenship here. It's allowed in both the U.S. and in Columbia. Primarily, you're supposed to be a citizen. There's a number of things that you do have to be a citizen for here in this country. Getting a mortgage is one with some exceptions. Now, there's a Colombian law that says the most that a bank can loan on a property is 70%. That's not the bank's choice. That's Colombian law. Now, some banks, depending on the situation, they might only loan, for example, 50%. You have to come up with 50% down. But if you've got a reasonable income and like that, it's probably going to be about 70%. So you've got to come up with 30%. Now, what they do here, oh, those are either, you can choose fixed or variable rate, which is kind of nice. Now, the way it's typically done here is that people will lease for a period of time. And that lease goes towards ownership. And so they'll lease their way through the 30% or whatever it is that they need. And then that will be applied to the ownership. So that's pretty good system. So that's it in a nutshell. Now, we've got here, see if I didn't lose it. All right, I think I've got it. We'll find out in a minute. Now, I don't know if you guys are into it or not. And this will apply to Columbia in a minute. But I grew up with the Beatles. They were there all through school. They broke up after I graduated, or I think when I was a senior. So they were always there, loved the Beatles, will always love the Beatles. They were part of everything about my formative years, all of it. So I'm watching the Beatles. And it reminded me of something that's come up a lot recently. I've gotten, well, I say a lot, maybe five messages. How is it you're watching live football? You're in Columbia. How are you watching live football? I've mentioned it before, and that's how I watch live football. But for my TV, movies, series, whatever, most things I actually watch on Stremio. And I want to talk about Stremio for a minute. How did I watch the Beatles? I mean, it came out on Disney plus on Thanksgiving Day. Well, I watched it on Thanksgiving Day. I don't have Disney plus, and I didn't have to pay for it. Stremio.com. Let me see if I can make this work. Hold on here. Hey, it worked. I lost all the setups when I rebooted. So let me see. Keith, I believe you cannot leave the country more than six months with a retirement visa. There are some limitations. I honestly, I don't know off the top of my head. So if somebody asked me that the other day too, I'm not really sure. Let me get on with this Stremio thing, because I have been asked a lot about this over the course of probably about three years. I think when I first mentioned it, maybe longer. First of all, Stremio works on your phone, Apple or Android. It'll work on your desktop or laptop. Works on your TV. You can also Chrome cast it or cast it from like, I use Samsung's and you can cast to your TV. Works fine. You don't need to because you can actually put it on your TV. The languages it works with. Let's see. We'll go to download here. Stremio for Windows, Mac, Linux. A lot of TVs are Linux. Android. And the TVs that aren't Linux are probably Android. And Apple iOS. So whatever you have, you've got it. Now, one of the cool things about it is, let's say I watch something partway on my tablet here. For whatever reason, I'm watching something and I'm about halfway through and I have to put it down. And then later I'm in the house or whatever. I'm kind of winging it here, making it up as I go. And I want to watch the other half and I want to watch it on TV. So I call up Stremio on my TV and I go to what it was I was watching. The placeholder is where I left off, even though it's on a different platform because it's all the same account. And so that's pretty handy. It actually comes in handy a lot. Sometimes I'll change rooms. Maybe I'm downstairs watching it on TV and I get a little tired and I say, well, I'm going to go up in bed and watch it up in my bedroom and fall asleep to it. I come up and there it is. I didn't miss a beat. So it works really well. What do we got here? You can tie it to various, well, I don't know if you're familiar with a program called Tract. T-R-A-C-T. It monitors, it doesn't monitor. It tracks what it is you watch. Well, Stremio will work with that. So you can put it as an add-on on Stremio. And what that means is if you watch something three years ago, it'll tell you. If you're partway through a series, it keeps track of that. So if you're familiar with what that is, it integrates with it, works fine. There are some live add-ons, which I've never used. I always use Kodi for that, but pretty much everything you could want in a TV is probably going to be in Stremio. And you can watch, if there's a movie out, there's a good chance it'll be available. And if not, sometimes these cam versions show up, which are terrible. And just, you know, ignore it, wait a couple of days, it'll probably come up. Pretty much always the movies that are in the theaters at some point will show up in Stremio before they're out of the theater. Occasionally that may not be the case. And the only downside is once in a while, particularly on more obscure shows, like if I were to want to go back and watch, I don't know, MasterChef from eight years ago, it'll be there, but it may not have enough sources and those sources may not be real good. So it might cause it to buffer. So if it's not a good source, buffering can be an issue, but for most things it's not. Like I've watched The Beatles and on the days that they were released, I watched them. And I got, I think once I got buffering and it was like seconds, you know, basically it was just, I watched it on, let's see, one I watched on 1080 and the other one, what is it, 720, whatever, I think it's 720, still HD. I watched the other two on 720. When I go in, I just look to see how many sources there are and I try to choose whatever has the most sources. And that seems to work really well for me. So there's that. There's all kinds of add-ons. You can kind of choose, if you want, let's say you got a girlfriend or you're married to somebody that's, you know, really wants to watch something in Spanish, you can do add-on channels that are in Spanish or you can look for those same movies in Spanish. They also have a subtitle feature or you can change the language. I find that doesn't work with a lot of things, particularly if they're older. So that's kind of a hit and miss. Okay, so that's it for that. Last thing, last thing I want to mention, there's a couple Medellin Facebook pages. One is Medellin Expat and it's got about 14,000 people in it. And the other one is Medellin Expat Tourist, I think it's called. It's got a longer name and there's, I think, 22,000 people in that one. I've been in that one for, I don't know, probably five or six years. And recently, there's a new owner of that page and they're making some changes and they're going to charge for advertising and things like that. Well, that's all fine. But they came up with this thing that we're not going to allow you to comment on vaccines because we don't want any kind of misinformation on the page and we don't want people arguing about it. It's fine, it's a page about Columbia. So the admin posted that up and then below it, he commented something to the, I'm really paraphrasing here, but something to the effect of, well, anyway, if you don't have a vaccine, you're not going to be able to live in Columbia and it's a law that you have a vaccine and you can't violate the law. And he spewed out a bunch of things and I just made a comment that it's absolutely not true. It's not a law that you have to have a vaccine in Columbia. The vaccine passport, which he was implying, that's actually not a law, it's a decree, but that's treated like a law. But it wasn't like he was representing. He said, if you don't have a vaccine, you'll only be able to sit in your house and you can't go anywhere. And as that stands right now, it's really only for bars and big events like a concert. So it was basically, he was posting up misinformation, exactly what he was saying that wouldn't be allowed on that page. And so I told him, I said, it's not a law and if you're going to bust people for that, take your bias out of it and do the same thing and don't post up things that aren't true. You're giving people the wrong idea. And so he posted up the decree and I said, it doesn't change what I said. It's not a law and people aren't going to be locked in their house and what you're saying just isn't true. So he booted me and he blocked me. Well, the owner of the page has been communicating with me for a while and wants me in the page, wants these live videos, for example, put in the page. Well, I can't do it if I'm not in it. So she reinstated me and he turned around and booted me out again. So she messaged me, please, you know, try again. Look, you guys sort out what you got to sort out. I don't have time for this crap. I don't really care. So why am I telling you this? One, to just let you know what happened, but mostly because sometimes a lot of you guys are in that page also, and we'll communicate back and forth. We'll comment on certain things. And so if you're not seeing me, that's why. I'm not very active in Facebook anyway. So it's not a big deal, but there's that. So anyway, this is Stremio and highly recommended. It's free of charge. It's been around for a long time. Works really well. I'm kind of a fan of it. Use it all the time. Now, did I cover everything? I think so. I'd say I got the Beatles. I got mortgages. I got social security. I got earthquakes in Oklahoma. Yeah, I got everything I was going to talk about today. So if you have any Q&A, we'll get to it. Well, how about them again? I feel like I'm on a roller coaster. I'll be here. How are you? Is it raining in Armenia? Not yet. Probably rain this afternoon. I'll be there at the end of December. Okay. We'll see you then. Do you need to use a VPN with Stremio? No, you don't. I gave up using VPNs way back in Ecuador early on because you pay for a subscription for a VPN and then it doesn't work. And then you go get another VPN, you have to pay something there. And after a while, it doesn't work. So I just give up on them. But Stremio, you don't have to worry about it. It's an open source. And they get past the issue, the legality issues, because they have advertising, although you may never run into it. It's weird how it works. It's only on certain platforms. And it's only in certain ways. And it's not during what you're watching. But the way that they do that makes it an advertising, therefore paid platform, as far as the users go. So we don't really have to deal with it. We don't have to pay for anything. But they take whatever royalties they get from that. And they throw it in this pool that exists now that goes out to people and they say, well, we're paying for even if it's like a nickel a month. So that's how they get around it. So it's actually you're watching it legally. We're going to come to Armenia until we read that you needed a vaccine passport to go to restaurants, etc. Not right now, in the future is a possible, possibly it's not in the decree. It's really for large crowds. I don't know when they actually go to institute this, I think you're saying could be in December. I expect it to be kind of problematic because I don't think people are really going to tolerate it. Honestly. And you see all around the country, I don't know if you see, but if you go on YouTube, you'll find like 30 second cuts or 45 second cuts of countries all around the world showing protests over vaccine mandates or passports. Hundreds of thousands of people in countries all over the place. One day I just kind of started looking and I must have looked at 15, 20 different countries with these unbelievably massive crowds protesting it. People here like to protest anyway. I mean, it's like a thing. It's a social thing. More than most places. I think that might be kind of problematic. But as of right now, it's for bars and concerts, large events. We're going to come to Armenia, but okay, gotcha. Can I get all my American channels using Stremio? American, English, Russian, Spanish, Columbian, whatever you want. Whatever exists for the most part is available. Can you reveal which Kodi add-on you use to watch NFL games? I have never used Kodi, but I'd like to give it a try. I don't remember the name of it offhand. If you send me an email when I'm done with the video, I'll go look and I'll tell you. All you do is you go to the internet and you type in live sport or live NFL add-ons for Kodi, and it'll come up. You'll see a whole bunch of them like the top five or the top 10 list or whatever. Pick the best one and load that one in. That's how I've done it. If it starts to act up, sometimes down the road, for whatever reason, maybe they're not updating that particular one enough, then I just go back and I look. I probably change every year, year and a half to a different one. Anonymous. Contribution. Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. I like that this thing is coming up like that stream element, so I can't miss them. When you walk down the street in Armenia, what percentage of people are not wearing masks? Pretty much everybody has a mask, but almost everybody wears it down on their chin or down on their neck these days. For a long time, they were really firm on thinking that they did some good, and I think it's worn off. Now it's to the point where pretty much everybody knows that it's just play acting. I say that sincerely. I'm not saying that from a biased standpoint. I've talked to a lot of people, including some nurses, one doctor, and to them, this mask thing in Colombia is a farce. However, people are pretty diligent about following laws, but they're also pretty fierce on protesting. Right now, I think the way they look at it is they wore the mask for a while, and now they figure, as long as I have it and it's within reach, that's good enough, and that's what they're doing. So they're wearing it, but they're not really. I think the only people that wear them somewhat religiously are taxi drivers, and I think they have to, but I don't know. Looks like airfares to the USA have gone up $100 in the last couple months. I don't know. I don't really follow that. Robert, he flies here often. He could probably tell you. I don't know. I think if you buy it on this end, you might find the reverse because the peso exchange is really favorable to us right now. It got up to 407 yesterday. It was 4,007. Yesterday, it was 4,003, but yeah, I don't know on that. Maybe while we're on here, somebody can look up an airfare and see. I think it used to be from Fort Lauderdale to Armenia. Somebody told me it was like $300 to $400. Good morning from Astoria. Next time we'll be listening from Columbia. Awesome. We're moving to retire Monday. Nice. Make sure you sign up for the Social Security before you leave, and start looking for, and you people are there. I haven't been there in like seven years. Somebody please see what you can find out about getting a SIM with a US number that you don't have to pay any kind of outrageous amount for. I understand that there's some SIMs that you don't even have to pay the monthly fee unless you actually use it, and then you're charged the monthly fee, and then you're not charged the next month. If anybody knows about any of these plans, because I think in the future, what's probably going to be necessary is to have a SIM like that. Now, a lot of phones down here have dual SIM, and so that's probably a way to go, although it's easy enough to change them out. As a matter of fact, once I know what works for that, I'll probably ask somebody that's coming down here to pick one up for me and bring it down to me, because I've been having a lot of problems recently over this particular issue, and having a lot of difficulty with workarounds, so I've got to do something myself. Then once I am able to do that, I'll lay out the specifics. How do they feel about the vaccine? Something like 60-some percent of the country is vaccinated. How do they feel about it? Well, I don't know if I can really answer that very well, because I've only talked to maybe 20, 30 people about it. I honestly don't know a single person that I've talked to about it that actually has gotten a vaccine. However, I've yet to find anybody. No, I take that back. There's one person who thinks that they're filled with poison, but everybody else doesn't really have an issue with it. They're younger and don't feel it's an issue, and they don't see any reason to have to go get it. But when you've got 60-some percent of the country that's got it, I think most people are probably going to get it. Is PCR test needed to fly into Columbia from the U.S.? No, they don't require any here, but when you go back, it's not the PCR. You need the antigen test, and you need it the same day, or I think it's 24 hours. But for example, here in Armenia, there's a place you can go, get the test, and then go to the airport. And so Medellin don't have the same thing. I think Medellin, somebody said they do it right in the airport. Spirit from Fort Lauderdale, about $300, not including bags, probably $400 total, which may be a little more than last year. I had a U.S. SIM card where there's no monthly charge. Problem was when I talked, where there are no calls for 90 days, they deactivated it. Yeah, so that won't work. Oh, hi, Dan, how you doing? Yeah, it's got to be something that they don't deactivate because you're not using it. I mean, I guess you could go in and use it, but then they're forcing you to pay the monthly charge. Google phone number doesn't work. Google phone numbers will not work. That's a V-O-I-P number. It does not work for things like bank verification and the social security verification. Yes, it works if you're just going to use it for a phone call. It works for a lot of low level things. But when it comes to an actual bank verification, it's not permitted. It's illegal for them to accept that. There's actually laws or regulations about that. And social security is the same way. And a lot of things are tightening up like social security. September 18th is when they changed their regulation to up the ante on the improving yourself out. And that's going to be next year, it'll probably be everywhere for everything. It's not going to, you know, once the government starts doing something, they don't ever back off from it, it expands. So Google, what is it, the one I got, MagicJack, all of those things do not work for the verification purposes. And I know that is a fact. It's not speculation. I know it is a fact. Maybe look into T-Mobile. Well, I heard it wasn't T-Mobile wasn't any of the main ones. But I've heard that there's a company that does exactly what I just described. But I don't know the name of it. Emil, good morning, Emil. How you doing? Forgot to let you know the apartment is available the full month of December. Awesome. I thought it was used just in case. Isn't Chad coming down? I don't know. I'm not following it. But I appreciate that. I will let people know we've got an apartment, a gorgeous two bedroom in a great location for a great price. Don't know if you remember me, but I came and visited you about two years ago, went to lunch across the street from your old apartment. Loved Armenia. Well, I'm only CMPR. So I don't know. If I saw you, I'd probably remember you. But I kind of suck when it comes to names anyway. So even if your full name was there, I'd probably not get it. But I am finding that it seems that this year I've been dealing with so many people, it does start to get confusing. So I have to use my Google Calendar, because that's on my phone, it's on my desktop, it's on everything. When people are going to come here and go, you know, I have to go to the airport to meet them and things like that, because it starts to get confusing after a while. Location of the apartment. I'm lost. Location of the apartment. I'm not following that. I've lost my job at the hospital because I don't want to get vaccinated. Our plan was to spend at least six months a year in Armenia or Manizales. But it's a nice plan. Sorry about, you know, losing your job. But, you know, if you're retirement age, go for it. I don't know what to say about it. I mean, I haven't. But if I had to, I wouldn't be afraid to go do it. The only thing is, the more that they do official studies, the more you realize that they're kind of pointless. Because your natural antibodies last much longer. And, you know, they're going to need endless boosters. Because, you know, people get their shot and two months later, they, you know, they can get COVID. And, you know, it wears off in three to six months. So it's, it doesn't even seem very practical. I mean, is everybody supposed to go get a booster every six months for the rest of their life? Over? Okay. You know, and I'm not hating on the vaccine. I'm just saying it just doesn't seem to make sense anymore. To me. Meals apartment location. Oh, it's right next to Parque Fundadores. It's on the corner where Bolivar Commercial Central is almost on the corner. It's right up the hill for me. I'm now depressed because even Columbia seems to be practicing medical apartheid. Is Columbia practicing? Should we just head to Mexico? It's gonna happen in Mexico too. But I don't know what to tell you. Right now things are pretty, pretty fine. But who knows? Who knows? We have any other questions? How we doing? We got we got a little time if you need it. I slept with a fan. And I don't know why it's it. I, I bumped it and moved it. So it was kind of on me directly. And I just it's no big deal. I don't want to get up. And so you know, I realized that when I laid down, so I laid down, went to sleep, woke up this morning, I got a sore throat. And it's not even it's not even warm. I mean, it's at night, it's probably 65 degrees. Right now, it's probably 7072 degrees. I don't know, I just leave it on forget about it. Last call for questions. Any local beer recommendations? I love beer. I like the BB. What is it? Yeah, the BBC Bogota Brewing Company makes a nice wheat beer. It's pretty good. It's kind of like a blue moon. I like that. I drink a couple beers a month. And honestly, what I usually drink is a gila, which is like Colombian Budweiser. And it's funny because in the US I didn't really drink Budweiser I drink. I drink wheat beers mostly. But or an ale or a stout once in a while. But I will say that Columbia's got some good beers. I've tried a bunch of different beers. I'm not a fan of the IPAs. I kind of hate them. That real strong hoppy thing. I don't like it. But they've got some if you like IPAs, they've got a lot of actually really good IPAs here. So I guess it depends on your on your taste. Victor, that was kind of fascinating what you emailed me and you told me about this project that you're working on. And I'm honestly interested in that. And it was kind of fascinating. And maybe maybe when you get an answer resolution, I can come and you know, talk to you about it and do a video. It sounds sounds pretty awesome. John, I ordered steak last week. They didn't ship to Armenia. Hope I got a refund. Go Patriots. Yeah, you know, I'm glad you mentioned that. I had ordered something. And the exact same thing happened to me. And they've been they were messaging me and told me when they put it in for the for the refund and all that. So they've been real good about that. Apparently, something happened where they they were doing that, but they're not doing it now. And I didn't have I stayed pretty busy. And you know, maybe it slipped my mind. I just I didn't look. There's there's several that do that. They were ones that were pretty good about it. And now they're just not doing it. One person I I talked to said, Well, no, we've never done that. Then his boss or maybe the owner said, Yeah, we used to do that. But we're not doing that now. So I don't know what the issue is. So sorry about that. The mail order stake that I talked about, and showed the web page, that particular company is no longer sending outside of Medellin. So I'll have to look. I know that there's some others, but I just I got I got such a long list of things to do. It's just just didn't up there. But yeah, I apologize for that. All right, we got anything else? Can you hear it? Kind of a cool little song. I can't hear it. But I see the bars going up and down. So I think you can hear it. Last call. Last call for questions. Okay, all right, we're gonna end it here. So I want to thank you for tuning in the contributions that I got today. I thank you. I greatly appreciate it. And hope you all had a good Christmas and survive Black Friday. And it's tomorrow but Go Bills!