A Day With Richard

Tuesday March 24

Richard called this morning and asked what we were doing and I said nothing. He was doing nothing so I invited him over. He came about 11.30am. The first thing he told us was that one of his Cuban workers was robbed the other day by five guys and two girls! He said this was in Quito in broad daylight with other people around. He said that the bystanders were just looking and didn’t do anything.

Tony, his worker, said that it was a gang and that they went after him because he was a foreigner. One guy got him in a choke hold behind his back and the two girls each had a box cutter and held it to his neck while he was robbed. One said, “We know you have money.” and he said he didn’t. They just got his cell phone and four dollars and some change.

This is just terrible! If a Cuban looks foreign, imagine how we Saxons look like!

Richard said that he’s going to look into buying a gun. He’s worried that he will be kidnapped – especially that he drives around in a good car (SUV). However, he’s still talking about living here on the one hand and on the other, leaving the country.

That makes me want to leave all the sooner. To be honest, a white person in a city in America will have a greater chance of being robbed with all the gangs that live there. That’s why I don’t want to live there (among other reasons). I know you could be robbed in any country, but why live in a country where your chances of being robbed are greater!

Richard brought over a computer program for me and a World Coins book.

Richard said that he would like to go to the mall to get something to eat and see a movie. So, this is what we did. When we got out of the car, I had spotted Gallo, my old contractor, driving off. He saw me. So he stopped his car – which had his 89 year-old father in it, and came over to us to talk.

We saw one good movie that was playing, called, Seven Souls. We saw that it was in English and that it starts at 3.10pm. Then we went to the Waffle House to have our lunch. We talked quite a bit after we ate, as we had plenty of time to kill.

Then we went to the movie theater to buy our tickets. Richard saw that there was something playing called Old People. He asked about that and they said, “No, that’s a discount for old people.” We got a laugh out of that!

For $1 more we got to go to the VIP lounge. It’s well worth the extra money. However, not all movie play in the VIP, plus if you go there during the weekend it cost $5 more. We saw the film Seven Souls, and it was really good. Richard remembered after he bought the tickets that he saw it last week as he had downloaded it off the Internet!

Then Richard drove us home. He couldn’t stop as he wanted to get home before the traffic got too bad and before it got dark.

When I was reading the book that Richard downloaded for me about world coins, I decided to look at the coins of Ecuador.

First, let me explain that the book is over 2,200 pages and they have 50,000 pictures of coins. I didn’t ask him to download the book but since he knew that I had a coin shop he thought that I would be interested in it, which I am. This book starts with dates from 1901 and ends with 2000.

I searched for Ecuador and saw that some of their coins were made in England, the USA, Mexico and some other places. It was funny that some of the coins were made in Birmingham, England and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Birmingham is the largest city near where Jayne used to live, and Philadelphia is where I was born. I mentioned to Jayne about where the coins were made, then we thought about Prince Charles being here in Ecuador earlier in this month.

The excuse that Prince Charles gave was that it was the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin. This is also his first trip to South America. Now we knew when he arrived that it was political and/or business why he was here but the news story was just a cover.

Putting two and two together, we thought that since the President of Ecuador said in a private meeting that he plans to go off the dollar after elections in April and make their own currency. Jayne and I think that it could be that President Carres and Prince Charles talked about England making the coins (and possibly the money) for Ecuador!

Time will tell if this is what happens.