Shopping - Friday

03/11/23 – Friday

Shopping

I went to bed around midnight and got up at 7:30, a remarkably long time for me to sleep. It’s another beautiful, sunny day and I’m feeling better, but still a bit lightheaded; my balance is off. I’m hoping it’s a temporary thing that will go away when I get used to the altitude. 

Martha came at 9:30 as planned and we took off for the mall. Our mission is to get a printer and office supplies, some kitchen appliances, and groceries. Our secondary mission is to get a Méxican e-sim for my new personal iPhone so I will have a local number.

We got to the mall at about 10:00 and our first stop was Office Depot. I looked at printers there and found one that I liked, but Martha suggested that we walk a few stores down and check out a store named Coppel, which is a small department store with a limited selection, but it is Méxican. I found the same printer there for about the same price, but they didn’t have the ink, so we went back to Office Depot for that and some printer paper. 

As we walked down the mall, we saw the Telcel store, which is the largest mobile service provider in México. This turned into an adventure in itself, due to my foreign status. They required several personal references, of which I had none, but Martha provided a couple of her friends names. The fact that I had no land line was another speed bump. After dealing with the first person for about 45 minutes, she said she had enough info and we could wait; it would be about and hour.

Instead of sitting for an hour, we hit a Penney’s-like department store called Liverpool. They had the digital version of my old Cuisinart Griddler, so I bought that and a rice cooker and we dropped them back at the car. We had a nice lunch of tacos Don Pastor in the food court and they were absolutely delicious.

We got back to the Telcel store and the girl sent us to the cashier to pay for the service. This turned into another problem, once again due to my immigration status and the fact that I was using a foreign credit card. One half hour later and we were back to the first girl, who set up my phone. I finally had my Méxican phone number on my iPhone, and it only took about 3 hours.

 We stopped at an ATM, and I was able to withdraw cash with my new Charles Schwab debit card without a problem. Then we went for groceries, and that went about as you might expect. A few things I wanted weren’t available but that wasn’t a surprise. I got enough to last me several days.

We got back to my place and Martha was just about out of time. She set up my account with the Instituto Nacional de Migración, or the INMex, but wasn’t able to complete the FFM. She told me that it probably just took time to process the account and that I should try it later.

 After she left, I set up the printer but it took a lot of trial and error, which seems to be the norm for me with printers these days. I finally got it connected to Wi-fi, and it will now print from my laptop and both of my iPhones as well as my iPad.

 By then, I was way tired, so I had a couple of peanut butter sandwiches made with a baguette, read a little and went to bed at midnight.