Santafe de Antioquia
Coding, heat, humidity and extensions
The villa in Santafe de Antioquia was nice. It had a pool and 4 bedrooms, so we each had a roommate. It also had a mango tree, so I had more than my share of mangoes.
Embodia's Telerehab solution was in high demand, and feature requests were constantly coming in. I was spending most of my day coding and releasing updates. At first, I tried to work outside, but it was too hot and humid, and my computer fan would go crazy. After that, I was spending most of my days in my room, which was one of the few rooms that had an AC.
The others didn't have much to do, so they mostly hung out by the pool during the day. There was a lot of drinking and other substance usages.
For food, we (maximum of 2 people at once) were allowed to go into town to do the shopping only twice a week. The town was about an hour walk, so the stuff would get delivered by car. However, the others could call to order drugs, which would get delivered in less than 30 minutes. I found that funny and very stereotypical.
While I did not have much in common with the others, it was still an enjoyable time. We would all have dinner together which I always liked.
I am sure I came off as antisocial to them as I was always in my room working, but when the Embodia workload was low at night, I would hang out with them. I taught them Kaboom, and given that I was always sober and they weren't, it was always an easy win for me :).
We were supposed to stay at the villa for 2 weeks, however the lockdown was extended. So we extended another 2 weeks. After that, the lockdown was extended indefinitely, and when we were trying to extend our stay, the owner started asking for more money.
While the villa was nice, it also had its issues; it was too hot, and for me the internet was unbearably slow. Each deploy was taking ages, and given that I was deploying multiple times per day, it was becoming restrictive.
So we decided to go to another villa in Venecia, which was owned by the uncle of one of the people in the group.
We applied for a transport permit, and made our way to Venecia on April 13.