I’ve always liked the idea of arbitrary testing, whether its for athletes using drugs or, in this case, for my small fleet of maids who, while being extremely good, have a tendency to sometimes do a half-ass job.
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- Los Cuatro Tulipanes offers cool apartment rentals in the historic district of Casco Viejo.
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- Panama Equity is the country's most researched real estate firm, specializing in Trump Panama
People
I’m not sure if it was always this way, but for as long as I can remember, whenever my car breaks down in Panama I meet a hilarious taxi driver who becomes, if not a lifelong friend, then certainly a close acquaintance. It was scorching hot out yesterday when I entered one of those extremely small cabs in the banking district driven by a guy named Jorge.
Forty minutes into my haircut at Gege’s Salon in Casco Viejo, and I wondered how I had survived all these years without having a manicure. It may have helped, I believe, that there were no less than three gangsters also in the salon having work done on their braids. When my haircut was finished, Gege herself offered a discount manicure and how could I refuse? When she was through, I showed one of the gangsters my hands and he said they looked “excellent.”
Without a speckle of a doubt, that which bothers foreigners in Panama most of all the ludicrously unusual characteristics and nuances of life in someone else's country, is the seemingly innate inability of Panamanians to do anything, from attending business meetings to serving a simple hamburger, on time. Give a local a paycheck and you can expect it to be spent, with cat-like reflexes, before the weekend's end but if it's doing anything else promptly you're concerned about, consider yourself victim to The Panamanian Paradox.
One month after I arrived in Panama, I decided to take the easy way out and gave up on Spanish lessons taught by a Venezuelan guy named Pep. I had studied Spanish throughout high school and college but soon realized that real world application is totally different. When I lived in Spain, people spoke super clearly so when in public, I imagined my life surrounded by lots of professors. Professors that didn't assign any homework. Panamanians though speak incredibly fast and slur their words together, so understanding them is a little like understanding Lil Wayne. My go-to word when I first arrived in Panama was lento which means slow, as in "when you speak, could you slow the fuck down." But what for? It's not as if I understood things the second time around anyway.
"In my country," I tell them, trying hard not to sound like an imposing tourist, "if you commit a bad crime, and they are going to put you into the...into the chair for the death, they give to you one last meal of anything you can choose in the whole world. The price is not important and you can pick your favorite thing to eat before...before you go up above our heads to live with god."
My early years saw a young Matt obsessed with the modern day equivalent to Discovery Channel; this publicly broadcasted station in central New Jersey which I liked because it regularly televised groups of indigenous women in the jungle without their shirts on.
“Talking to strangers is bad†my parents used to say, “because there are predators out there and they might try to nab you.†I found myself often drawing up on sketch pads what these so-called predators might look like and then trying, at all costs, to stay away from anything that fit the part. People in wheelchairs and people with skin diseases were automatically out and strangers for me were purely associated with bad things like kidnapping and bank robberies and poisoned Pez candy.
Dearest Panama,
At first I was fearful it was to be a short affair, one fueled by physical attraction and the cockeyed passion of a jilted lover on the rebound. ‘Tis true I was scorned by another (her name: Costa Rica). But years on, I find myself still frighteningly bound by your grip, unable to even ponder another. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways:
They're pretty fantastic, if you ask me. Maybe they're not as beautiful as the legendary lovelies of Colombia, Venezuela or even Argentina...but they're darn cute. Panama is an incredibly diverse culture, and the wide variety of ethnicities and mixed ancestries makes for some very interesting looking women. If you like women...and what man doesn't, you'll like Panama.
I sat at Hotel El Panama in the open-air lobby under the frawns of a droopy palm tree and looked hopelessly at my watch. When you're waiting alone for someone in a public place, it is easy to look like a loser and I was getting just that vibe from a gaggle of American tourists gathered beside me who, as a group, eyed me with pity as if to say, “At least we have each other.â€




