Monthly Archives: May 2010

I visited the house where I’ll be living for the next six months. It is seriously in the middle of nowhere, about a 30 minute drive from David up in the mountains. I started out from the hostel, and instead of being smart and turning around and going a couple of blocks to the Interamerican Highway I decided to go in a different direction that I had taken before when riding a bus into downtown David, figuring I could hang a left and getting onto the Interamerican. Well, it didn’t work that way. I got lost, of course, and ended up in downtown David in spite of myself. Trying to get out of there I hung a left turn into a one-way street. Since the Panamanians try to save money by not posting signs on their streets I didn’t know and naturally coming right at me was a police car.

The cops pulled up next to me and I rolled down the window and immediately played the gringo card. They said it’s a one way street and I said, “I know,” in English. I’m lost. Where is the Interamerican Highway? The sergeant who was driving started to tell me and then made motions that I should follow him. Actually I was quite a ways from the highway. When we got there he stopped and rolled down his window and I thanked him profusely and went on my way. I was lucky, because I WAS in the wrong and he COULD have been a dick about it, but he wasn’t.

The ride up into the hills was beautiful. Most of the houses were well kept and the scenery was extraordinary. Clouds hid the tops of many of the peaks and in places had dropped down into the valleys. Ascending you cross several small rivers with plenty of white water, but I’m not sure if they are used for sport though I did see some advertisements for white water rafting.

I met the people who own the house at the only restaurant in the area. A little roadside place with a half dozen outside  tables but under an extended roof so they would still be usable if it were raining. The lunch specials were a choice of chicken or beef with beans and rice and a “salad” which was actually a few strands of spaghetti with a light tomato sauce. The cost was $3 a plate.

We then went up to the house which was another three or four kilometers up the paved road and then turned off onto a small, muddy, rocky dirt road with a couple of native houses. You drive a few hundred yards through an orange grove with no clue that a house is anywhere around until you make a left turn and there it is. It’s about a year old. Three bedrooms, two baths with one of the bedrooms made into an office. The roof extends quite a way around all four sides of the house providing protection from both sun and rain and there are four hammocks in strategic places.

The views are really spectacular. Out the back and on the sides are views of the mountains and from the large windows in the office, kitchen and guest bedroom, where I will be staying, you can see the Pacific Ocean.

The owners are leaving a week from this coming Monday, the 17th. I stored two of my big bags there and will go back on the 16th to get final lists of people I need to know and wave goodbye to them the next morning. I don’t know how all this is going to work out without having a car, but the buses run on the nearby road quite often, at least during the day,  judging from the number of them I saw on my ride today. No pictures today, but they will be coming.

I was recently diagnosed as having ADOLAB…that’s Attention Deficit OHH LOOK A BUNNY!

Tag surfing this morning on the balcony of my hostel in Panama City, Panama, I ran across a commonly used expression that drives me up the wall. The author described something as being “surrounded on three sides.”  If something is “surrounded” it is enclosed on ALL sides. You can have something “bordered” on three sides but not “surrounded.” This is a common error and is perpetrated even by journalists who are paid to know the difference.

Another one that makes my back teeth scream is the misappropriate use of the word “jealous” when a person actually means “envy.”

Example: “I’m going on vacation to the French Riviera to visit all the topless beaches there” or “My father just gave me a Testosterona 360 convertible for my graduation gift.”

“Wow, dude, I’m so jealous.”

Jealousy is a feeling based on unjustified and irrational beliefs, usually in relationships with other persons. Your girl/boyfriend, wife/husband run into an old flame at a party. They seem to be having a good time together, talking and laughing while you sit on the sidelines by yourself stewing and thinking he/she is going to go home with the other person even though you know good an well it’s not going to happen. It’s your insecurity about the relationship that’s causing you to be jealous. On the other hand, envy is the painful or resentful awareness of an advantage enjoyed by another joined with a desire to possess the same advantage. Totally different, unless you’re a third party at the party watching the couple in the corner engaging in deep and lustful looks into each other’s eyes, occasionally exchanging bodily fluids and you wish it was you participating. That’s envy.

Now that I am one I’ve always been bothered by people who call those who have left their own country to take up residence in another as “expatriots.” They aren’t. Those people are EXPATRIATES, from the  Medieval Latin expatriatus, past participle of expatriare to leave one’s own country, from Latin ex- + patria native country, from feminine of patrius of a father. An expatriot would be someone who was once patriotic but no longer is. A turncoat.

Don’t even get me started on the to, too, two crowd or the there, their, they’re idiots.

When I first put a headline up here I started it as “A Couple of Misused Words” but then, of course, realized that the word “couple” means two and would then be another misused word.