Urgh

Being here since July, you kind of forget about many of the dangers here. That's not to say that this is a dangerous place, I feel perfectly safe here. However there are dangers all the same. Take my little friend here.

Shameless Promotion Time

There are few things here that I have to keep me entertained. Television which I took for granted back home is non existent. With bandwidth as limited as it is, I can only really invest in one TV show, and I've picked a great one.

The show I picked is the CW's Arrow, which airs on CTV in Canada (which is the version my torrents are from). Arrow is an adaptation of DC's Green Arrow comic series, and I never really followed Green Arrow before but I was curious. I always believed that the Green Arrow was just a clone of Batman with a Robin Hood motif, and it turns out he is! But you know what, I'm OK with that because the way he relates to other people is different from the ice king Bruce Wayne.

Time

I can't believe that it's 2013. Yes January is almost over, however it seems like time has moved so quickly. For the first time ever, it's hit me like a truck that it is now 2013. Where have all the years gone? When I look at something created in say, 2005, I think that was fairly recent. However when I think about it, that was eight years ago! Eight years, that is 36% of my life. What a sad realization.

Panama Overall

So with all of the highlights about Panama done, what do I think about the country itself?

1. The country is a source of contradictions. When we we left the airport and headed for the hotel, our taxi driver drove like a race car driver, and the police did nothing about it. The speed limit was clearly marked, but people seemed to treat it more like a suggestion than a rule. The layout of the city itself is a contradiction. As you drive through the downtown, you will see amazing sky scrappers worthy of New York or London, however if you look closer you'll notice that all of these buildings are surrounded by slums. A real tale of two cities.

There and Back Again

On Saturday morning, we woke up early once again to go on our voyage through the 99 year old Panama Canal.

Our voyage was on the 43 year old Pacific Queen, an old passenger ship which was previously used in Scandinavia (Some the compartments has Swedish writing), before being bought by the tour company a few years ago. For a 43 year old, the PQ was not a bad ship at all, the furniture is a little dated, but it was comfortable to ride on.

The cruise itself is eight hours long, going from Panama City on the Pacific Coast, to Colon on the Atlantic Coast. After arriving in Colon, the tour company sent us back to Panama City on a fleet of fancy buses similar to the Diversified buses (without seat belts) back home.

Sorry

I need to go to bed early tonight, but I will soon have a piece on the highlight of my trip, a voyage though the Panama Canal to the Atlantic Ocean and back.

The Pearls

So I hear that one of the most popular attractions in Panama are the Pearl Islands. So against my better judgement, we bought passage to the Island on Contadora and set out.

We woke up at 5:30 in the morning, and made our way to the pier for 7:00. At exactly 7:00 (I checked), a guy brought out a table and slowly began the check in process for the journey. (I think the staff came at the same time as us...) After an hour of this, we boarded the catamaran and sailed for Contadora.

Along the way we were joined by an old woman from Oregon at our table who now lives on the island. To be honest, I felt like she talked too much for me, but overall she was very pleasant. She told us quite a bit about the place, and her life on the island.

When we arrived, it turned out that the island has no dock, and we had to transfer to smaller boats similar to the launchas we use in the Rio. It was no big deal for me since I'm now used to boats, however I can imagine it would be very difficult for the elderly or physically handicapped.

Condo

I'll just leave these here.

Executive Class

For the first time in my life, I flew on first class when going to Panama. After flying like that, it saddens me to think that after the return trip, I probably won't fly like that again for a very long time.

On the plane I wasn't called sir or you, I was always referred to as Mr. Ingram. How often does your flight attendant refer to you by name? Never happened before for me.

You know how on the plane they give you that stupid bag of nuts that nobody can open? Well, you don't get a bag nuts, no. You get mixed nuts in a real porcelain plate. I also don't really like assorted nuts that much, however these had the perfect amount of salt. Not too salty, but salty enough for flavor.

There's also no plastic plates, cups, or cutlery. My coke came in a real glass, my lunch (which was awesome for airplane food) came on a real plate and tray, and my cutlery was good stainless steel. Who would even think that such a thing would be allowed on a post 9/11 plane?

Finally the seats speak for themselves. They're a nice size, and there's plenty of leg room. The guy across the aisle from me was even putting his feet up. If even just once, you must fly first class on airplane.

West Side is Best Side

The eastern side of Guatemala is all jungle and plantations. I was expecting the western half to be pretty much the same, however I was presently surprised to find out that this was not the case.

Western Guatemala is a fairly arid and forested region. In fact you cut the area right out of Guatemala and place it into Canada without anyone noticing. The climate is also about ten degrees cooler, imagine Edmonton during May, however May never ends. I can't deny that I really liked being in the west, it was the first time since leaving Canada that I felt at home.

Journey to the South

Tomorrow I will be embarking on another journey to the south. I will have been in this country for 180 days and by law I am required to leave for 72 hours. So with that in mind I am going to make good of my original promise and go to Panama.

What will I see there? Who knows? But it's bound to be interesting.

Planned Obsolesence

There's an old saying in Chicago. Once is coincidence, twice is happenstance, and third time is enemy action. Well, it's now enemy action.

A few months ago, my dad's laptop had his battery quit on him. His battery icon has a red X over it, and whenever you hover over it, there's a message telling him to replace his battery. Damn, that's a shame, but he must have just gotten a bad battery.

A short while later, my mom had the same issue. Uh oh, that's not good, but it can't happen to me. Right?

Well fast forward to today and now my battery has given out. What's wrong with these computers? It can't just be bad luck at this point. Three laptop batteries (all the same model) going out at the same time. It can only mean that these batteries were designed to give out shortly after the warranty period had expired. If that is indeed the case, that's just plain evil. What happened to making a good product which lasts the test of time? Wait, don't answer I already know what happened.

$

Rain Hard With a Vengeance

Simon says, rain harder than ever before.

We are in the dry season, and it's raining like crazy here. Last night we had to get up in the middle of the night because Nemo was taking in too much water. That's not to mention all of the drains getting blocked from all the wood shavings on Anarchy. What I would do for the rain to end and for work to resume.

Post Box

Those maniacs have finally done it. They went into town and purchased their own private post box. You guys know what that means! Time to send me some physical mail! You do remember what that is, yes? I don't care what you write, just write something and ship it off to me. Do not include anything other than paper, because customs guys down here can be a real pain.

Baking Soda

Ever since coming here, my mom has been going around looking for some baking soda, to no avail. Well, we have found it now, and in the most unusual place. Rather than being found inside a regular grocery store, baking soda can only be found in pharmacies. Strange isn't it? Why would something like this be found in a pharmacy of all places? Talk about a mystery wrapped in an enigma and encased in a riddle. What other hidden oddities are there here?

School System

In Canada we are very lucky to have a school system which takes care of most of our needs. Outside of buying our own supplies, the cost of going to school is relatively low. Down here, things aren't quite as simple.

Once reaching grade 6, students are required to pay $1 a day to go to class. That doesn't sound like a lot of time, however when a semester is roughly 150 days, it becomes an incredible expense here. For many families, once grade 6 comes, their children are taken out of school and enter the working world. Imagine going to work as an eleven year old.

Sad stuff indeed.

100x

When New Years finally arrived, the townsfolk put on a show like no other before it. Like everywhere else in the world, the river was full of fireworks, however even more people were into it compared to Christmas.

From about seven at night, people began to fire off fireworks with small time intervals in between launches. This wan't the real show, but people just wanted to fire them off anyway. There was some pretty good ones, they had a nice gold one which really sparkled brilliantly. Alongside that was the standard fireworks we all know.

When midnight finally approached, the river lit up like never before. There was a light rain shower, so the cloud cover made the fireworks seem even brighter, as the light reflected off of the clouds. Every single marina (except ours) was firing their own fireworks alongside the two towns. One marina near the castle had the best fireworks by far. They had all sorts of amazing shapes and colours, some types I had never even seen before. Another marina has rather basic fireworks, but because they were next door to us they seemed really amazing up close. This amazing show went on for about 20 minutes before they ran out. My one complaint is that there was no real "show stopper". The display kind of just ended.

The President also stepped up his game a tiny bit. They were better than Christmas, but still under par compared to the others...