By Mike Huber
Even though I was an IT (information technology) Project Manager for 12 years, a weak point of mine happens to be IT. Yes, IT.
As an IT team leader one of my greatest strengths is not only placing others in positions where they can excel, but ensuring I do the same for myself. Living in Colombia I happened upon a new challenge. One morning my laptop refused to connect to the Wi-Fi. The laptop I had been using the past two or three years was gifted to me by a friend. This laptop had sort of “fallen off a truck,” or was “found in the alley.”
My guess is the problem I was now faced with was due to the organization it “belonged to” running an audit. I am certain the audit didn’t dig the Colombian IP address, so the laptop was terminated. I now had to purchase a new laptop here in Medellin, Colombia. Shouldn’t be a big deal, right?
Not the case, of course.
Finding a mall in Medellin wasn’t difficult. It was a huge modern three-story mall with nothing but IT and telecom stores. It was a bit overwhelming. I Googled reviews as I walked through the mall and it didn’t take long to settle on a store. I found a representative that spoke decent English to bridge the gap with my never-ending Spanish stumbling. He recommended a few basic machines. I began more research on reviews and picked out a basic laptop that would suffice (mainly for writing ExNotes pieces).
After installing Windows and basic MS apps, I returned to my apartment and noticed something was off. The keyboard was in a different format. It was a Spanish QWERTY layout. OK, not a huge deal: I could learn a new keyboard. What really confused me is they loaded the software for a standard American keyboard. This meant the keys did not match many of the symbols. I learned this on my own, but not before walking the streets of Medellin with my laptop asking locals to assist me. No one else could figure it out, either. This was becoming frustrating, but some relief that it wasn’t my incompetence that caused it.
Returning to my apartment, and after a bit more Google research, I learned to toggle the keyboard to the QWERTY format to match the keyboard, which is where it will stay. Yes, I am sure I could exchange the laptop and hunt down one with a normal keyboard, but what fun would that be?
I will be in South America for quite some time (more on that in another blog), so I thought I would just embrace the change. Also, it is now easier for me to do “¡” and “¿” symbols to impress the locals.
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