Now that most important things have been done and or arranged, it's time to start taking care of the "type B" to do list, which deals with things such as pin adapters for the electrical items coming in the containers, dog hotels, hair dressers, helpers (not quite understanding myself here. How come this was not top priority for that Saturday night when we arrived??) dermatologists, small home appliances and so forth. Like Alice says, going shopping for “all these exciting things”.
HK is a 220 voltage place and so is Angola, therefore we packed all our electrical things to go to Angola. However, Panama is 110 voltage (thank goodness, some of our things are double voltage) which means we have a whole bunch of things that are floating somewhere in the Atlantic on their way to Panama that will be totally useless for us once they get here. Joel and I were doing some space calculation the other day and came to the realization that we’ll need a biggish storage room for a short (so I hope) period, while we find a new destination to it all. That part of this move, I'm not looking forward to. Let's see how it'll flow.
The flat we got (in American English, it reads "the condo we got") comes with all the big appliances, so last Saturday we went shopping for all small appliances... so cool, it's like getting married all over again (oops, may be I better not go down that lane... have been there too many times already, LOL!). We came back loaded up with 110 voltage stuff, cool and fun. Also, as Joel is opening their office here in Panama, we went to Office Depot for office items. All good!
Yesterday I gave myself sometime off from this "moving/ get established mode" and left Carlota with Joel, got myself decently dressed and off I went for a calm and investigative stroll at one of the shopping malls nearby. You see, I am not at a point of doing cultural stuff yet. Can a brick layer spend 6 hours building and go straight from there to perform a surgery (please ignore the skills involved here in my example)? Probably not, because his hand would be very rough for such delicate thing as a surgery, right? So, that is how I feel at the moment… anything too cultural will not go in properly, as my head is at 500 k/h. I need to settle in completely before I start doing museums and ruins.
Anyway, going back to yesterday, as I was strolling along the mall, I walked by a cafe and heard 4 ladies, about my age, chatting in Portuguese. So I got all excited and addressed them in a hope they could give me more tips about living in Panama.... but my plan did not work... they were tourists!!
Got to go and take my gorgeous youngest princess for a walk… actually, before I go, let me once again say what a wonderful positive surprise this move to Panama has been, with no room for playing “Pollyanna” here. Of course it is not a perfect place, not at all perfect, but it seems that things that go wrong, go wrong smoothly or go wrong softly… for all we know, we could define Panama City as being a delicious mix of third world, with first world topped with a wonderful heavy dosage of Latinism. The other day, on my afternoon walk with Princess Carlota, out of the blue, I hear this “hola, que tal”? Of course it couldn’t be with me, I know nobody here, so I ignored and continued walking. The voice was back again and this time more emphatic. Then, I noticed I was the only person around, so decided to look for the voice and what do I find? A lady sitting on her chaise-longue on the 1st floor balcony together with her small dog. She waved hello as if we were old friends and obviously both dogs barked hello at each other and us, the ladies, were just so proud of our four legged mates! Oh, I tell you, life here has all the ingredients for a good life, except for the void of the absence of you, dear friends & family.
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