I was at the cashiers register at the Riba Smith Supermarket in Marbella when the man behind me in line started surveying my groceries and grunting, the way a computer sounds when its processing data. I asked him “What are you thinking?” and he revealed that he had never seen frozen soybeans before. He said they were something like peas, only bigger and “more juicy.”

I was on my way to triathlon training one morning around six AM when I stopped at a red light where a man with one leg emerged in front of my car and started his routine. I am usually not one for the traffic light contestants here in Panama: the jugglers, the flame throwers, the men who promise to make your windshield dirtier than it originally was for only twenty five cents. I like to picture them all in a waiting room together auditioning for the America's Got Talent. As a general rule, these would be the men and women who comprise the majority of the show's absurdly entertaining blooper reel.

Every major city has an artsy district: a place where thin people in jeans sip coffee and chew on the stems of wire-framed glasses. While Casco Viejo is reputedly that district for Panama, the creativity and art tends to manifest itself in different sorts of unorthodox ways. Sure, the neighborhood is home to a few museums, concert venues, and thriving young artists, but the real thrill of creativity in Casco Viejo is visible on every corner, if you know where to look.

The historical timeline of Central America's newest boomtown reads like a checklist for sophisticates in search of the next cultural hotspot: a rich pirate past, a strong indigenous population, and the construction of a canal that drew connections with many nations around the world. But with tourism, real estate and overall infrastructure making headlines, the Republic of Panama's appreciation for the arts appeared to be low on the priority list.

We've seen the signs of gentrification before in places like Soho: ramshackle kitsch shops giving way to trendy restaurants and bars giving way to upper class patrons "re-defining" a once red zone neighborhood. It's a common sight in Casco Viejo today, specifically with artists beginning to occupy spaces once considered dilapidated and not fit for business. These trendsetters create amenities consumed by the bourgeoisie and act as clear gauges for the economic status of this burgeoning district.

Last week, I went to my first fashion show in Panama! I invited my mom along -- she has always liked fashion and was curious to see how Panamanians would handle that kind of event. We went early to make sure we got good seats.

It'd always humored my family for some reason to drag me along to museums. Unlike the dentist or piano teacher, their torture rationale was never based on improving health or acquiring a skill, but rather a hope that through some sort of magical osmosis, we all might get smarter just by standing before a Renoir. I imagined it like a tanning booth, but for academics. That was why people got so close to the artwork, I figured. To soak up as much of the smart rays as possible.

Panama's National Theater is like a jewel on the eye. From the outside, the building is sort of ambiguous in that it appears to house government offices just like those all around it in Casco Antiguo. But the inside is wonderful and warm, the roof deck one of the better secrets in the capital city.

What could have been a terrific evening of warm breezes, romantic streets and elegant tunes at the Casco Antiguo Music Festival, for me, turned out to be a bit of a bummer.

When most people hear Panama, they think of one thing: the country's most valuable asset and undoubtedly its greatest shortcut, the Panama Canal. But from its pirate-ridden days as a swashbuckling stronghold to today's beefy economy and real estate gold rush, Panama is a country full of charm.

Ok I'll admit it, when I go ClaroCom I not only do work and surf the web but I eaves drop! I am always on the look out for speakers of that funny little language- English. I can't help it! The other day I was on the computer watching a one of kind video of a South African Surfer getting his board ripped from under him by great white shark when I heard something interesting behind me. One of the workers at Claro com was telling this man seated at a table with a laptop that all women want in Panama is a muscular man with a nice car.