Visited Old San Juan, Uber Driver Got Hit

5:45 AM (of Monday, May 31st 2021)

Today is Sunday, May 30th 2021 and it was not a typical day today. My parents are here and I have to take them out places. This morning when I woke up, I don't remember much. Since my parents are here, they'll help out with the chores, by help out, I mean basically do everything. They think I'm incompetent with the chores like cleaning and other things, and because of how much they do, I think they're right. My parents have a knack for organizing and cleaning up things, and my mom wanted some typical breakfast items like bread, peanut butter, jelly, juices, pancake batter, etc. So my dad and I walk out to go to the grocery store.

While my dad and I walked, my mom would clean up the place. She asked for the broom and dustpan and I was like "I don't have a broom and dustpan" and she was like "it's outside" and so I go outside and to the side of my unit, and there's a broom and dustpan, and there's even a mop. Wtf. I never knew these things were here. So yeah I grab the broom and dustpan and give those to my mom, while my dad and I walked outside to go to the grocery store.

It was still very early in the morning, around 7 AM, and it was a good walk. We got to the grocery store at around 7:30 AM, and bought some regular items. So 85% of all the food here is imported, so everything is more expensive. A $2 to $3 Jif peanut butter 16 oz jar at Wal-Mart in the States is $4.89 here. Yes, it's $5 for a jar of peanut butter, the small size. Bread was like $8 to $9 for some brands. The cheapest white bread here is $3, so that's what we bought because I told my dad there would be better bread at Wal-Mart ($4 to $5 for whole grain brown bread). The jelly was like $3 for the cheap generic brands, like $4 to $5 for Smucker's. We got the cheap brands. And I bought some juices for $4 to $6 each. Yeah. Nothing here is cheap, but I was still able to live cheap ($3 a day) with my no fridge no freezer lifestyle back in the day.

Anyway we walked back, and it was so much easier having someone else carry a bit of the weight, instead of me just carrying everything. The walk was so much more bearable too. I remember the day that I walked back a 25 pound watermelon and a bunch of bananas on top of it. That was so freaking heavy and annoying to carry with the bananas. I carried both those fruits by hand, no bag, and there were bananas that kept falling off so I would have to stop, go back, and pick those up. It was so annoying. That was a while back though.

When we got back home, my mom was dusting up a bunch of dirt from the floor and putting it into the dustpan. I guess the vacuum cleaner wasn't able to get everything. Also she cleared up some tables and cleaned up some trash here and there. Sweet. We presented her with the food that we brought and then we all ate breakfast. I just drank some juice and ate some sourdough bread with the lentil sprouts I was sprouting. I forgot to mention, but I learned how to sprout beans, seeds, and lentils. And it's so easy.

Sprouting is really easy. Just put some seeds or beans or other legumes like lentils and chickpeas into a dry container, and then fill it up with water. After that, drain all the water and just let it sit for a few hours. Every now and then, whenever you feel like it, just add some water, and then drain the water. After a few days, it will have sprouted and "roots" will start coming out. For lentils, as soon as this happens, which is like after 1-2 days, it's completely edible. For others like chickpeas, it might take like 5-6 days and you might have to wait until it's 2 inches long before it's edible. For lentils it's edible as soon as it's soft enough, before the "roots" even come out. I know this because I tried it, I ate a bunch of it before the "roots" even started coming out, fully edible.

Anyway yeah, this is a really cheap and easy way to get more food. The lentils become about 3 times their regular size, maybe more. If I filled up a jar of lentils and fill it up 1/5th of the way unsprouted, it might go all the way up to 4/5th of the way filled after a few days of sprouting, because the lentils grow larger absorbing water and their roots growing out. I have a jar of sprouted lentils right now that is about 4/5th of the way filled right now, and I started it with like 1/5th of it filled.

Anyway, so I eat those sprouted lentils with some sourdough bread and I drank some juices. That was my breakfast. After that, we all took a shower and prepared, and we went out. Oh yeah, my parents made me take a shower today. They wouldn't have known I didn't take a shower if they didn't ask, because they were like 'Hey Megg, have you taken a shower yet?', and I was like 'no' and this is when we were literally all about to head out because the Uber was already called and was arriving in 12 minutes. So then they made me take a shower, and I took it while waiting for the Uber, after I finished we headed out.

We went to Old San Juan which is this large city here filled with old style buildings. It's like a slice of Barcelona, Spain. The buildings are all close to each other and they have that similar style, and the roads are some "fancy" gray brick and stone. There are always lots of tourists in Old San Juan, but it's funny because I speak Spanish to everyone there like I say "hola", "perdon", "gracias", etc. Simple words, to like random tourists that only speak English or whatever language they speak. They don't expect it. My parents were wearing extremely touristy looking outfits, and I don't think they even did it intentionally. But they obviously looked like tourists here, and so did I, because they made me wear some touristy looking clothing too.

We ate at the restaurant called Barrachino, the birthplace of the Pina Colada. Yes this is the restaurant where the Pina Colada was invented, and it's a pretty famous place. We ate there, ordered four Pina Coladas total, and whatever vegan items they had in their menu, and the total was around $84. It was so expensive. Also I tipped $8, so the total was around $92. Omg. It is an expensive restaurant though. We also didn't finish our entire meal, we all only finished about half of what we were served, including me, and I eat a lot, so we had it taken out, it will go in the mini-fridge later.

After that we went to Wal-Mart and my parents bought whatever they think I needed. I just let them have free reign and they bought so many freaking miscellaneous items like a pillow, a pillow case, two foldable chairs, a large round container for doing laundry by hand, a large flat container for rinsing, a bunch of fruits, some soap, shampoo, q-tips, a big soap/shampoo rack for the shower, so many things. A lot of things. I can't even recall them all, just a bunch of random stuff. The total was like $230.

After that we went home, and I think it's because I tip a lot, but my Uber prices are extremely high. We needed an Uber XL and the price was like $42 for me to order one. I told my parents we should wait a few minutes for the prices to drop, because it does after a while. My mom said "whatever just use my phone and we'll order an Uber." So I refreshed my Uber and it went to $58 for an Uber XL. My mom opened up her Uber app, and it was $29 for the same thing, to go to the same place. That's double the price. WTF!! I'm done tipping. The highest I tipped was $24, and I tip on average probably like $5 to $10. I'm freaking DONE tipping on Uber. No more.

My theory is that the Uber algorithm realized I was a "big spender" and so they just gave me these higher prices all the time. Well screw that. I'm never tipping again, and I'm going to try avoiding using Uber forever now.

Anyway so we get an Uber for $29 using my mom's phone, and I have no idea what happened. It's either my Uber driver hit this other driver, or they hit us. I actually do not recall it that well even though I had first-hand view of the experience. We were driving on an unmarked road, no lane stripes anywhere, and it was like a 4 lane large freaking unmarked road, very very wide. I was looking to the right side, and I was sitting on the right, this elderly woman in a sedan was driving really close to us, and I even shouted "Oh no" a few seconds before we hit them or they hit us. I don't know. I was watching it, all I know is that we hit each other.

Anyway there was this whole ordeal that lasted like 1-2 hours with us driving to the police station and filing that report. The guy said there was not that many police and they don't have enough resources to come to the scene of the accident, so we had to drive there. That's weird, but okay. So we drove there and on the way we saw some high school students celebrating their graduation. There was a few miles long of cars and people honking and cheering and people with half their bodies out of their car window. Like there would be a sedan driving, and 3 people would have their entire upper bodies out of the window and cheering and clapping and whatever. It was like that for every car and vehicle driving down the road. Everyone was wearing a blue shirt, signifying their high school, that's what the Uber driver told us anyway.

And they were just driving down the road slowly, honking, lots of people cheering and making noise. It was a cool sight to see as we went down to the police station, congrats to them on graduating and here's to their next stage in life.

We waited at the police station for like an hour or more, the Uber driver already cancelled our ride and told us we didn't have to pay anything. So we just sat in the car waiting, talking. We would all step out of the SUV eventually to take a look at the damage, which was a very long scratch to the side of their vehicle. The other car some scratches too. Both cars had very minimal damage to be honest, no dents or anything, just scratches.

Eventually we drove home. I don't know if our driver noticed, but he does go out of lane and leans more to the right a lot. I did notice that on our drive back. We would be stopped at a stop light for example, and he would be over the line and stepping into the lane to the right. Does he not notice that? I was like, hmm, yeah.... I don't know who's fault it was, because the other driver was an elderly woman, who looked like she was 90, so she could have also been driving not that well too. It's a battle of he said she said. I was a witness, but I have no idea what happened.

Anyway when we got dropped off, my parents tried to give him $40 but he kept refusing, he wouldn't open his hand to accept the money and just said it was fine, no problem, and just drove off. So that's how we got a "free" Uber ride, at the cost of 1-2 hours of time. But we did experience some cool things like the high school celebration and going down to the police station. I forgot to mention this, but our driver brought me down as a witness, so I actually got to walk over to where the police station was instead of just sitting in the car outside. I was still outside the entire time, but got to enter the police station property. I saw a bunch of police cars like those tough looking Ford muscle cars with the big ramming metal thing in front, it looked so tough, I was intimidated.

The police were wearing bullet proof vests, wearing sun glasses, and they looked really tough and scary.

Anyway when we got home, we just finished unpacking. At least my parents did. My parents bought most of that stuff, I mean I paid for it but they bought it, so it's up to them to do whatever with it. So my dad did the laundry and set up the microwave. I just lied down on the floor and watched some videos. I ate some food too. After that I went to sleep before everyone else, at around a bit before 10 PM. We took over 16000 steps today according to my Fitbit.

Anyway that was my day today.