Winds of change

Life is indeed fantastic! When you totally least expect, voila a big surprise knocks on your door. That is exactly what Joel and I are living at the moment, right here in Luanda... oh My God Almighty, please hold my heart beating steady, because I truly have the feeling it will "destrambelhar" at any minute (for those who don't understand Portuguese, a poor translation would be, "beat fast, then slow, then normal and immediately fast again and back to very slow and so on".

Joel was invited by an European Steel Trading company to be based in Panama City, overlooking the Latin America market. Although he was enjoying being back in the production side of steel, he is very happy to go back to trading.

When I first heard that the job offer was to be based in Panama, I was a bit scared on what concerns life in a totally unknown (to us) Country, Panama. However, after some days researching about life, facilities, housing and comfort in Panama, we were VERY well impressed. Such a big positive surprise, not to mention the loveliness of the Panamanian people, living round the corner from one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Canal and the easiness of going from beaches on the Pacific to the Caribbean ones in a matter of 2 hours! Our eyes will surely be in terrestrial heaven! Amen amen!

Last Friday was a major day on this new transition (as if we had already finished transitioning from HK to Angola) to Panama. We had to order a stop on our containers that arrived in Namibia on Friday and were due to be re-loaded on a ship here to Angola. For those of you reading here and whose business is not into Ports, you might not know that the port of Luanda has nothing less than a congestion of in average one freaking month to unload and or to load. That means that if our containers did get on that ship to Luanda, they would have to wait for about four weeks to be unloaded here, clear customs, after paying import tax paid, sit and wait somewhere (oops, not so good) and weeks later, clear customs again and be re-loaded onto a ship, eventually reaching Panama City.

Our moving company in HK was not succeeding in getting this stop done... so we had to speak to darling friends in Dubai, R & S T and ask them a big help. He, R, works for a big shipping company and voila, with a Midas touch from the Boss, life was good again and our containers are now in Walvis Bay, Namibia, awaiting for re-routing. Time zone does not help in these circumstances as well as local culture. Friday is the day off in Muslim Countries and Dubai is such a place (of course, it had to be this way, hey?) but dearest R realized our desperate situation and acted as if it were not his day off! Oh man, not enough words in any language to thank you!

I have already started the paper work for Carlota and the good news is that she will be able to enjoy home quarantine in Panama City, big relief!