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Jim Bondoux

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Everything posted by Jim Bondoux

  1. Milagros Sanchez Pinzon is a wonderful resource on local history, but I think she misspelled the builder's name - he was Roy W. Hebard, who was an engineer and a partner in a construction outfit that was tasked with some of the Canal's excavation work. I am unsure that he was from New York, but since the railroad was financed by bonds underwritten by JP Morgan and National City Bank (precursor to today's Citibank) his name is often associated with New York. Project people involved with the Canal were released upon its completion, and a number of them gravitated to Chiriqui. The only access to Boquete was on foot or horseback, although Mr. & Mrs. Carl Curtis (he was master carpenter with the Canal, she was a nurse at the Canal's hospital) drove a Model T Ford up to Boquete in 1915. The railroad opened up Boquete as well described by Milagros. The train trip was a spectacular adventure, as the rails crossed the rivers on elevated trestle bridges and the landscape views of Baru, etc. were very much out of the ordinary. But the train, with a twice-daily round trip schedule could not compete with the higher frequency and flexibility offered by buses, once the road was paved. The tracks were pulled up, mainly in 1954, although vestiges of the right-of-way can be found. Looks like the stone cladding of the old station is being applied up to wainscoting level, with a surrounding concrete molding.
  2. The original building was a wood structure, subsequently replaced with the current cement building. The undated picture I have looks to be taken shortly after the new construction, and I can't identify any stone facing. The word "authentic" has multiple connotations...
  3. It seems that Panama City's International Airp[ort has been without electrical power since 6AM today, Monday Sept. 18. According to the flight tracker website, all departures are shown as "delayed" status. They seem to be getting some arrivals.
  4. I believe the restaurant association's decision to hide the salt shakers to be a simple ego trip, intended to generate favorable PR by positioning them as good guys intent on preserving their patrons' health. Salt is a critical physical need - the ancient Romans paid their legionnaires partly in salt, thus the origin of the word "salary" - and ingesting too little is just as risky to well-being as ingesting too much. Further, not every organism is the same, so your optimum intake will be different from mine. The Wikipedia page on the "Health Effects of Salt" lists the standards decreed by various government agencies, and they are all different! There can be no general rule that works for everyone. I find the poster of "consecuencias del exceso de sal" both funny and sad. Finally, perhaps many restaurant chefs take it as implied criticism when patrons decide to enhance the flavor of their offerings with salt....
  5. I am delighted that my phonetic approach to spelling Panamanian stucco created such a learning experience. I am also amused to read of the planned move of municipal services to the slaughterhouse property. Seems appropriate in a way - the site may continue to be dedicated to sausage-making... Is CL a great site, or what?
  6. A small team of workers are chipping away at the facade of the Municipio building. Looks like they are preparing to apply bit of fresh repallo. I hope they choose a better color than the garish green they chose in Dolega (or maybe Pintecasa offered a super discount...).
  7. Well, I purposely didn't mention the gender of the said high energy new director, but it is not the same as that of the Minister who is Dr. Miguel Mayo....
  8. This should come under the heading of "bochinche" and I won't mention my source, but I was told that the Ministry of Public Health was blessed with a new director about three months ago, and that this person went on a power trip, checking all the various sub-administrations and ordering a rigorous enforcement of all the laws and regulations on the books. One of the consequences was the shutdown of imports of cosmetics. It seems that samples were taken from a number of shipments of cosmetics and sent to labs, to verify that the actual ingredients correspond to the labeling. The uproar and blowback from the freight forwarders has resulted in a lifting of the embargo. There will likely be more scrutiny, restrictions, and delays in getting cosmetics imported than has been the case in the past, but nothing particularly onerous. New procedures and announcements will be forthcoming, but everyone is in face-saving mode, so it may take a while longer to clear up the situation.
  9. The discussion seems to have deviated from the Flu vaccine issue. Smallpox, typhoid, etc. (and rabies!) vaccines are mostly only given once, with the occasional booster after a period of years. Flu vaccines are given annually, and there are no studies that I have been able to find that examine the effects over time on the individual from repeated vaccinations. There is evidence that people with flu shots still get the flu - the Center for Disease Control says as much on their website. There is no sure way in advance of knowing which flu strain will be circulating in a particular year, so the vaccine dispensed in any season may be totally ineffective (probably more likely than not, given the number of known virus strains). There is something called the National Vaccination Injury Compensation Program in the US (data available on the website of Health Resources and Services Administration of Dept of Health and Human Services). Through December 2015 there were about 2,200 claims made concerning flu vaccines, and nearly 1,900 resulting in awards. Something called Guillain-Barre syndrome seems to be a major culprit. Flu shots are far from 100% effective, and far from 100% risk-free. So choosing to avoid the flu vaccination is a perfectly reasonable individual decision.
  10. Don't you love the bureaucratese? Government-sponsored internet cafes without the coffee to connect the unconnected. What's the difference between a regional infloplaza and a national one?
  11. Flu vaccines are an attempt to manipulate one's auto-immune system. This is dangerous territory, since there is no way to know all of the potential side-effects, including possibly very debilitating ones. Different humans have different responses, and one's responses also change over time. The US Center for Disease Control has published information stating that flu vaccines can be ineffective and/or counterproductive. It is also recognized that the political lobby known as "Big Pharma" is one of the more powerful such lobbies active in influencing all of the relevant organizations. There is a lot of energy in the promotion of the benefits of vaccines, not so much in informing about their risks. It is therefore reasonable to think that there may be more misinformation on the "pro" side than on the "con" side. In my view, it is not at all irresponsible to question publicly that flu vaccines are a universal, risk-free boon. Some thoughtful folks avoid them for what may be very sound reasons.
  12. I read the proposed law to be targeted at retail stores and distributors, which would therefore not impact the use of conventional trash bags for refuse collection and disposal. That will probably come along in the future. The adaptation by merchants and consumers to the new regulation will likely attract unintended consequences, and we should expect the outcomes to be funny/sad. One of the factors attracting expats to settle in Panama may be desire to escape the proliferation of rules regulating the details of daily life, such as this proposed law is designed to do. Almost all new laws cause the expansion of bureaucracies, and this one is unlikely to be an exception.
  13. The way I read the communication, I interpret to mean that imports of products not included in the "national registry of products" are prohibited. That suggests that those products that appear on the register are to be freely imported. I Googled "registro sanitario panama" and the first hit was a website listing the approval lists, by date, of various cosmetics, etc. Clicking on an individual list will produce a document itemizing approved products by name, name of manufacturer (Neutrogena, for example), country of origin, and chemical ingredients. There is also an expiry date for the registration, which seems to be 10 years from date of approval in most cases. So if one orders one of the registered products from, say, Amazon, it should be OK to ship in. I stand to be corrected.
  14. I understand and appreciate the response. There is certainly a huge number of good things toward which the government's finite treasury should be allocated that are less frivolous than some municipal live cams. It probably ought to be more of a chamber of commerce sort of thing, if such a thing were ever to exist in Boquete....
  15. It seems that the IP Cameras provided by Amigos de Boquete and mounted on the municipal building have been inoperative for at least a couple of weeks. I have found these live cameras to be well worth the occasional online visit and I am disappointed to find an error message instead of the real-time views of the plaza. I wonder if TV Chiriqui or the Mayor's office is responsible for maintaining the server at alcalde.gotdns.com, and what it would take to get it back online.
  16. We have used Magic Clean for pest control both indoors and outside perimeter of the house for the past two years - approximately one visit every four to six months. The operator for the Boquete area that we've seen the most is Castulo Ledezma (6229-4169). He has always shown up punctually, in crisp uniform with a squared-away truck and equipment. We expect to call him the next time we need insect extermination service.
  17. My hillside erosion control project has expanded, thanks to the recent record rains, and I need to build some support columns to complete the job. I am looking to rent a small cement mixer for several weeks to build the sunken columns. Grateful for any and all suggestions. bondoux@pobox.com or 6839-9421
  18. Just a couple of random thoughts - one is that this is a much bigger deal in Panama than in the US, and therefore US media coverage and US public opinion won't have much influence on the outcome. The second is that if there is a "deep state" controlling political matters in the US, it involves the CIA, the DEA, and military intelligence, all with known and unknown relationships in Panama, and that is where the fulcrum for this story may well lie.
  19. As usual, "it all depends". Yes, there are laws and regulations, and then there are bureaucracies. Everyone's mileage varies, depending on the phase of the moon and other unknown factors. What was true last week turns out to be less true this week. For what it's worth, here is my experience: I dropped Medicare part D (pharmaceuticals) when I move to Panama. I have one prescription drug that I continue to use, but the pharmacies in Boquete and David sell it to me without prescription. With the jubilado discount, I certainly pay less for the drug than the Medicare premiums and co-pay would cost me in the USA. I have been ordering and receiving supplements from the US for years, no problem. It recently has become a bit more sticky, and things that look like cosmetics (i.e. lotions and topical creams) get held up in customs until you send in a letter saying the product is for personal use and won't be resold. An agency that goes by the acronym AUPSA (Panama's FDA, basically) now also has to pass on supplements, and wants to see the details of invoices. I am presently waiting on two small shipments that are sitting at Tocumen. Depending on whether you use Mailboxes Etc., Airbox, eShop, or Servitechnics, the experience also varies. One issue I wrestle with is the order quantity. Place a big order so that the shipment hassle happens with less frequency but take the chance that it attracts unfavorable attention, or go for small, frequent orders and put up with the customs.AUPSA rigamarole more frequently, or perhaps avoid it entirely... who knows... I am given to understand that if you are VA qualified, there are special pharmacies that you can access in David.
  20. Precisely. The success of bars has a lot to do with the personality of their bartenders, who need to be "people" people. You can teach almost anyone how to pour the relatively small range of orders likely to hit most bars, but you can't really teach someone to have a customer-friendly personality. The US restaurant chain Outback Steakhouse explicitly hires staff based on personality, as do a couple of Sales Managers of big software companies I know of. Creating a bartender's certificate may be the first step toward eventually restricting entry into the trade, comparable to the barber's diploma in the US, for instance.
  21. On my way to David today I stopped to take a couple of snapshots, which are attached. The main structure is now well above ground, and a big part of the parking lot seems to have been poured. It is thick concrete able to take a beating and survive the rains, so probably a good investment. The plans show at least four entrances to the parking lot from the David-Boquete highway. The first entrance coming from Boquete may offer a convenient way to access the PanAmerican highway eastbound. My latest read is that they were unable to convince the powers to move the bus terminal from downtown, so I am guessing that there will be some arrangements for shuttles and jitneys to drop off and pick up shoppers.
  22. Casa de Jamon is building a carport/parking shelter in front of their door - the rainy season is on its way. They are fully stocked, just closed on Mondays. As to Casa de Cerdo, the owner told me that the relatively low turnover of the Boquete store tended to degrade the quality of the product, since it had to remain in inventory and lose its freshness. He has a tenant for the small building by his front door to his David store, who will be putting in a small coffee shop.
  23. Good thought, Bud - and I agree. The math suggests the jubilado discount doesn't amount to very much either way in Claudia's event, so why not offer it? As far as I could tell, she was sold out, this being one of less than a dozen similar events she's done in the past two/three years. She could have set the price at $37, given the discount as I figured it, and have still sold out with the same financial result (I saw a few faces that would have surprised me to qualify for the jubulado discount). Once she opens as a regular restaurant, which I believe is her intention, perhaps her approach will change. The math is very different for a single-plate meal somewhere around town, say a burger at $10 with a $1 iced tea. Then the jubilado discount becomes $2.50, a big chunk of the margin on the meal. It's my impression that the Boquete establishments that resist granting the discount are all expat-owned, and suffer negative PR as a result.
  24. Just for fun, here is my analysis of the jubilado/pensionado discount that would apply to Claudia's brunch: $35 cost includes the tax, so the pretax cost becomes $32.70, allowing for the 7% tax. Of that amount, Claudia probably figures $2.00 for the guided tour of the rainforest park, which is what she has charged in at least one previous occasion. That entertainment fee is worth a 50% jubilado discount, so that's $1.00 off the price. Joyful described the buffet brunch offering which included a champagne drink (doesn't qualify for the discount), a whole bunch of appetizers (which don't qualify for the discount) and a massive dessert table (dessert doesn't qualify for the discount). So we are left with the "plato fuerte", the big ham - I'll give it an arbitrary $5.00 price tag, which attracts a discount of $1.25. Taking the $1.00 park discount and the $1.25 ham discount against the $32.70 raw price gives you a $30.45 bill, to which you add the 7% tax ($2.13) for an all-in cost of $32.58. Your estimates might differ, but we're talking a difference measured in centavos.
  25. I don't believe that Craig ever left Seasons. It has been reported to me that he had a death in the family, and had to suddenly return to the USA for a short trip. His scheduled return was delayed several days due to his inability to get an airline seat to David - it was the height of Carnaval - and that he didn't communicate the delay, leading to the speculation that he had "left" the restaurant. Whatever. He has been at the restaurant for the past ten days.
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