After checking in on the Naso at the Cathedral plaza a couple of times, my friends and I eventually landed on this crazy little nook located on one of the corners of the adjacent Herrera plaza, the same one where La Casona is. I had never given it a chance for some reason or other, [...]
I bet that, like me, It’s taken a lot of you some time to be aware of the problem happening to the Naso people, at the west end of Panama in Bocas del Toro, near the border with Costa Rica. Details are scarce (in English) so I’ll give you the Cliff Notes version to put you up to speed; time is precious for these people, so any help you can provide in the matter would be greatly appreciated by them.
I never was one to put too much thought in things such as grooming. Not to sound like a clobbering neanderthal, but I always put priority to other things such as making sure I wore my shoes on the right feet and no eye goop before leaving the house. I also made sure I smelled well, but getting the right scent was never one on my checklist. My mom would kindly take care of that solely because I wouldn’t and, using her own sensibilities, directed me to a sort of search radius I could use. She would factor in things like personality, my job, the things I like to do and how I project myself. In the end, she figured that strong, outdoorsy scents would suit me best, with a touch of caramel or something. I don’t really know what I said back there, but it’s one of those things that simply makes sense to me now.
Weekends where there’s nothing to do will force you to be creative when it comes to having fun. I’ve never had a booty call in other countries where the culture is (arguably) more open-minded but in my current base of operations, things such as booty calls and one-nights stands are not as common as you would think. Panama has a reputation for being a place where you can get anything as long as you ask the right people, but like many other things that are grossly misunderstood, it doesn’t quite work that way. There are loopholes, yes, but it seems to me that no matter what shortcuts you take there will always be some degree of penance for it; not in the karmic way but in the real world. Society has to balance itself out somehow, I suppose, and something as ultimately miniscule in the worry scale as the “booty call” suffers from it in the most ridiculous of ways.
There’s not much to tell right now because I just recently became aware of this by way of my friend Antonio, but I had to post this and help spread the word: there is a man named Michael Morales and he recently took a 2-month leave of absence from his job to go out and climb Mount Everest. That is impressive in and of itself, but for our great delight he’s updating friends, family and anyone who stumbles upon his story via a blog called Panama - Everest 2009.
As an English teacher, I’ve been lucky enough to experience a first-hand insight on what it’s like for people to tackle a language other than their own from a teacher’s perspective; in my several attempts to try out other languages, the common denominator has been the lack of people to talk with, but when you’re [...]
Have you ever had the distinct pleasure of sharing physical space with a “Cholo Metal?” At first I thought the term was solely a Panamanian thing but after asking Google about it I realized it was a misconception; this rare animal can still be found throughout America (the continent, dear reader. Having the need to [...]
People love music. It’s one of the first and most important means of expression known to man. People fall in love, find a cause, discover friendships and cure their ills every day thanks to the power of song. As it is with our current societies, though, sometimes being a musician (or an artist, for that matter) must come with a degree of corporate compromise: money. Virtuosos or not, an artist has to eat, and sometimes he/she has to adapt to what’s popular at the moment. In the end, the people rule even though sometimes it would seem otherwise.
A quick tidbit more than anything; doing my daily rounds throughout the world wide web I ran into this peculiar website that, even though it revolves around Panama specifically, I think it’s a prime example of our democratic right to voice our opinion and be heard, no matter what our stance is. I don’t know [...]
Here’s a thought; In my daily commute of getting work done and my frag score up, I sink out and about into the internet. If you’re a regular here, this is no news to you. Anyway, one of my guilty pleasures is to peruse a couple of celebrity blogs… you know, those site where they [...]
Hello, boys and girls. So, it would seem that both me and the cats at Porto Diao took an improvised sabbatical of sorts during the month of January. We went out, lived, loved, got into great adventures, got drunk, got high, got depressed, got delirious, people came and went, some for good, others, for a little while, others got together forever in the sanctity of marriage, people grew apart, people came together, others still are.
In a place as hectic as Panama City, where the traffic is horrible, everyone seems like they’re a nudge away from popping a vein and getting things done may seem like a monumental task, not unlike that of Odysseus in “The Odyssey,” it seems imperative to find a place to relax. Most people go far away from the capital in search for the slices of papaya heaven spread across this beautiful, delicious apple pie most commonly referred as “Panama.”
This is the set-up: a man that’s known both online and off as Rob Rivera is lying down in bed thinking about the things people like Rob Rivera think about when they’re lying in bed (answer: chocolate) perusing the TV channels of his basic cable service. Mind you, my TV set has been busted for months.
I was with my friend Marco one late Thursday afternoon just cruising about when hunger struck, causing me to detour at the McDonald’s drive-thru around the El Dorado Shopping Center. Now, specially nowadays with the emergence of fancy, well-lit and ridiculously safe shopping malls lately, in comparison the El Dorado Shopping Center seems pretty shady, [...]
I’m taking a break from my adventures with one Niko Bellic to chime in on this whole Pepsigol Evolution commercial business. I got the link to the youtube clip below this morning (Thanks, Arturo!) and even though it first seemed as a run-of-the-mill commercial with no outstanding merit, if you stick to it towards the [...]