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Written by Matt Landau
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Saturday, March 29 2008 |
"Spanish is easy" Rose told me as I struggled to find the
word for shut up in the dictionary.
We were driving to dinner and the subject had come up for the second time that
week. "Sure it's easy Rose, compared to say, Euskera or Sanskrit or HTML. It's
easy compared to those" I explained. "But at the same time, it's kind of like
chess. You can learn the basics in a day or two, but you need quite a few years
to get really good."
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Written by Pascale Schwander
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Sunday, March 23 2008 |
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.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, March 23 2008 )
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Written by Matt Landau
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Sunday, March 09 2008 |
Thanks to an undiagnosed case of attention deficit disorder,
I was never able to sit through movies unless they offered a bathroom break
somewhere in the middle. On the rare occasion that I'd be dragged in to see a
film, I preferred to use the time-barring an exceptional screenplay-to nap in
chairs that were at least more comfortable than the ones at school.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, March 09 2008 )
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Written by Matt Landau
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Thursday, March 06 2008 |
"Why the fuck do we need to learn this?" I remember the
class clown once asking our English teacher who had required us to memorize a
long, yet insignificant act from the famous play Othello; a lesson which I left
wanting only to change my name to Iago. I was shocked however that our teacher
even entertained the question.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, March 06 2008 )
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Written by Pascale Schwander
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Wednesday, February 27 2008 |
I used to work as a booker in a modeling agency in Europe,
so I've always been curious about the industry. A few weeks ago, while waiting
at the hairdresser for my mom, I read in a magazine that Wilhelmina, the famous
modeling agency, has a head office in Panama. What luck!
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Last Updated ( Thursday, February 28 2008 )
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Written by Matt Landau
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Wednesday, February 27 2008 |
It was early February as I was walking to my local deli to
order a tuna sandwich, no mayo of course. During this time of year, large
groups of tourists have a tendency to converge on my neighborhood of Casco
Viejo via large white busses which block the narrow roadways and take up
valuable parking space.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, February 27 2008 )
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Written by Matt Landau
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Friday, February 22 2008 |
"Don't look right now" my friend Liz whispered in my ear.
"But Steven Seagal. He just walked into the restaurant. Oh, my gosh. I just saw
his latest movie. He's so amazing. How's my hair look?" I would probably have
been more tempted to look at a team of elderly women in bikinis. "Seagull?" I
asked as I turned around, against her request. "How the heck did a seagull fly
through that revolving door?"
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Written by Matt Landau
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Tuesday, February 19 2008 |
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My childhood on the continent of North
America pales in comparison to that of my Panamanian counterparts.
It was this youth of relatively little adventure that eventually landed me on
the isthmus of Panama; my eyes wide open and my mouth gaped in envy.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, February 19 2008 )
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Written by Matt Landau
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Tuesday, January 29 2008 |
(Panama City, Panama) For the past twenty years or so, I've made it a habit to not
throw garbage out the car window. Besides being extremely convenient and even
fun at times, there was always a renegade sensation that escorted tossing a
piece of trash on the ground. Not unlike a tattoo or a skateboard, the act of
littering was a show of rebellion for young people like me. But unfortunately,
in my hometown as a child, it could also get you thrown in the bureau jail
alongside the kid who let rats loose in the public library.
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Written by Matt Landau
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Friday, January 25 2008 |
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.
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Last Updated ( Friday, February 01 2008 )
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Written by Matt Landau
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Tuesday, January 22 2008 |
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.
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Written by Matt Landau
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Thursday, November 22 2007 |
Panama City, Panama (The Panama Report) I had been thinking
long and hard about my invention of a toothbrush that you don't have to throw
away, with bristles of such resistance that they simply don't wear old, when I
realized it was November 22nd which, in the United States, is the
day that fat people gorge themselves on yams and turkeys and cranberries, all
in the name of some indians or something.
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Written by Matt Landau
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Monday, November 19 2007 |
I originally flew to Spain
based on the amusing joke that was my education, ultimately trading in my studying
habits for a white bullfighting uniform and a tepid bottle of Rioja. After my
time there, the country had burrowed its way into my heart like an aggressive
little mole, and there are certain facets of Panama which almost nostalgically bring
back those reckless days to mind.
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Last Updated ( Monday, November 19 2007 )
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Written by Matt Landau
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Tuesday, November 13 2007 |
Keenan's Spanish in Panama has improved immensely. He's gotten to a
point where carrying a decent conversation or expressing an important to-do
list is not anymore a struggle. And as luck would have it, the teachers we
have, in part, to thank for this upturn are not real people but rather miniature
Panama voices.
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Written by Matt Landau
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Wednesday, October 24 2007 |
Upon first finding out I was moving to Panama, many friends
and relatives, having no idea what or where exactly Panama was, took to using
exaggeration as a remedy for their bewilderment. "So do they have running water
where you're going?" one of them asked. "Will you live on, like, a dirt floor
with pigs and cows running in and out?"
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Last Updated ( Sunday, October 21 2007 )
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Written by Matt Landau
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Tuesday, October 23 2007 |
It has long been a symbol of independence and rebellion in
the US
to have tattoed a Chinese symbol on ones body. People rarely know what their
symbols actually mean, but perhaps that's part of the inherent mutiny of it
all.
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Last Updated ( Monday, October 22 2007 )
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Written by Matt Landau
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Saturday, October 13 2007 |
As Americans we are taught from a very early age to try to appreciate
other languages. I remember my brother, for example, when he was back in preschool
proudly coming home with a stack Japanese characters written out on note cards:
and here I thought kids were supposed to be focused on candy.
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Written by Matt Landau
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Saturday, October 13 2007 |
It was coincidentally the morning of my 25th birthday
in Panama
that the hands of father time appeared to be officially against me and the
inevitable happened. After an exceptional number of years without a car accident,
I finally broke the streak.
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Last Updated ( Saturday, October 13 2007 )
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Written by Matt Landau
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Wednesday, October 10 2007 |
It was my original belief that nothing fostered relaxation more
than living in the tropics. Upon packing for my first trip down, I included the
kinds of things totally unnecessary for a vacation, yet quintessential for the
laid-back mindset that I was preparing to adopt. I packed a small comfortable beanbag
chair for example, and a wind chime, and even Enya's latest album, something
about saving the trees.
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Last Updated ( Monday, October 22 2007 )
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Written by Matt Landau
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Wednesday, October 10 2007 |
There tend to be two kinds of gringos in Panama today I
have noticed. The first kind makes a valiant stab at learning the national
language (however lame it may be). And the other kind whose idea of Spanish is
fairly simple in that it merely involves adding the letter ‘O' to the end of
every English word.
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Written by Matt Landau
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Tuesday, October 09 2007 |
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.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, October 09 2007 )
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Written by Keenan Lee
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Friday, October 05 2007 |
I've spent time wedged in downtown Manhattan gridlock. I've crawled languidly
along the Pacific Coast Highway
during rush hour and sat bumper to bumper in the heavily polluted streets of Moscow. I've been idle,
curled up in a tuk-tuk at a foggy London
intersection and stopped motionless in what roughly equated to morning gondola
gridlock in Brugge. But of all my traffic experience, downtown Panama City is beginning to top the cake.
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Culture
