Day 278 of 1827: Kiwi Brunch

I haven’t had a Kiwi breakfast in forever. Plus, I’ve got a ton of errands I need to take care of at Costanera Center today.

Hey, isn’t there a Café Melba at the mall?

Squish!

And so this morning I met up with a friend at Café Melba at Costanera Center.

Well, actually, she was stuck in traffic, so I got some reading done on my phone while I waited for her.

Then we met up.

It’s the little details that make this blog so goshdarn captivating, you know.

Speaking of little details, I discovered much to my dismay that this Café Melba has a more limited menu than its counterpart on Don Carlos. No french toast, and no Melbaccino!

*sigh* Life is so unfair.

At this point, I had two options: I could try to find healthier alternatives on the menu, or look for something just as sugary and syrupy as what I was originally intending to order.

I opted for the latter.

Pancakes with blueberries, and an iced coffee… now that’s what I call a Kiwi ~~breakfast~~ brunch!

Hm. It just doesn’t have the same *oomph* as “gringo breakfast”. But, a promise is a promise.

The conversation with my friend went really well. She’s been upping her freelance game lately, and she’s looking for product design work to boost her portfolio. I might have just the project for her.

After brunch, my friend had to go, and I had business at the mall.

First stop: Paris. I have some more cards to send out, and I need a more reliable supplier than a secondhand bookshop. As it happens, there is a papelería on the ground floor at Paris, and the girl who works there is extremely friendly and knowledgable.

She remembered me from my last visit, and we had a conversation (in Spanish!) for a few minutes. Unfortunately, all of the cards for sale there were either extremely girly or über-professional. Neither category fits my personality particularly well, so that was a bust.

However, she wasn’t satisfied leaving things at that, so she recommended a librería at the mall that I should check out, and she even wrote down how to find the Paris at Parque Arauco (another mall nearby) in case I still couldn’t find what I needed.

Just goes to show you: You can find awesome customer service in Chile if you know where to look (:

I checked out the librería that she suggested, but the only cards that they had were 1960’s-esque novelty cards. Yeah, that ain’t happening.

Looks like I’ll be making a trek to Parque Arauco then. I also hear there’s a Megasalud with a bilingual doctor there that I can visit to get checked out for my skydiving course, so maybe I can kill two stones with one bird (that’s how Chuck Norris does it).

Well, I’m 1-for-2 on today’s errand run (I’m counting having brunch with my friend so that I don’t get discouraged). What’s next on my list?

Ah, I need to replace the mug that I broke the other day. Let’s check out Easy and see what they’ve got.

How to describe Easy? Well, imagine a cross between Home Depot and Bed Bath and Beyond. You can pick up all kinds of hardware, tools, appliances and gardening supplies there… but there’s also a huge selection of towels, dishes and other housewares. Pretty cool.

They also have mugs, including one that looks almost identical to the one I need to replace. Mission accomplished!

At checkout, I gave the cashier my RUT to see if my Nectar (loyalty points) account works at all Cencosud stores. Sure enough, I got my 2 points for today’s mug purchase!

That is a little weird to someone who used to live in the US. In stores up there, you register your phone number instead of your national ID number. But it’s just one more thing to get used to when you live in a different country, I guess.

Two down, one to go. Time for grocery shopping at my friendly neighborhood Jumbo.

That one was fairly routine; I’ll spare you all the details. Suffice to say, it was a success.

Hey, today turned out to be a rather productive day; I got almost all of my to-do items accomplished. I still have to go find some cards; looks like a trip to Parque Arauco is in my near future after all.