House with a view

Bill Brunner's son Adam has been managing my house in my absence. When I left I had pakced a few dozen boxes that I was not prepared to ship back to the States, so Adam put them in storage at his house. Adam's house was built by his grandfather and a german engineer in the 1960's. It's on the road to El Valle, high up on a ridge looking out over the Pacific. It was not lived in for many years and it's a mess, but Adam has been gradually fixing it up. Here are some photos of the house and the view:

Los Nances bed and breakfast in El Valle

Heading up to Los Nances bed and breakfast, I was not sure what to expect as Adam had told me the place was undergoing renovation. I imagined a small, dusty room with furniture covered in plastic.

In fact it was a lovely, large room with attractive wooden furniture, a mini kitchen and a great view. The top photo in this post is the view from my room, through the screen.

Los Nances used to offer four spacious and comfortable rooms for rent. When it reopens, it will offer eight rooms outside the main house, plus a few suites downstairs. They are also building a large deck that will offer a spectacular view of the valley. Although they are not open for business, Bill has been kind enough to let me stay in one of the rooms. They have fed me breakfast and dinner, and I have been able to use their wireless internet network.

Getting a ride to El Valle; Los Nances Bed and Breakfast

I subscribe to the El Valle Yahoo group, and I noticed in a recent posting that Jackie Johnson, a Zonian who lives in El Valle, was going to be in Panama City on Friday. I emailed her and asked if I could get a ride back to El Valle with her Friday afternoon, and she agreed. I was so happy that I did not have to take a taxi to Albrook mall in order to take the noisy, crowded bus to El Valle, lugging my suitcases with me. Jackie told me she was getting her car fixed and she'd pick me up outside the hotel at 3pm.

I checked out of the hotel Friday at 3pm and waited for Jackie. Time went by. I listened to my iPod: first a Spanish lesson, then an episode of Talk of the Nation from National Public Radio. More time went by. I don't have a mobile phone and could not call her. But I was not worried or agitated. I know how things are in Panama. It could be that her car was not ready when they promised it, or she was stuck in traffic. Jackie showed up around 4:30 and as I suspected, she had had a difficult day. We got on the road, and we talked along the way. I've spoken to Jackie more than once in the past but never in depth. So I got to know her for the first time. Like me, she has had a difficult year, but hers was a matter of fate while mine was more of my own doing. Anyway, we found a lot to talk about.

I was going to be staying in Los Nances, high on a hillside above El Valle, but Jackie didn't want to drive that steep road up to the inn, so we called Adam Brunner and he met us in the center of town, in front of the Supermercado Yin. Adam picked me up, I had dinner at Los Nances, and settled into a very comfortable room for the night.

A lawyer, a chef, printing photos, and a good laptop repair shop in Panama City

I got an early start the next day and went directly to the offices of Berliza Arosemena, Abogada (Attorney). Berliza has been my lawyer for four years now and I recommend her services to anyone who needs a capable, competent, agressive attorney. Her website is http://www.MyPanamaLawyer.com. Tell her Wael referred you.

Berliza got married recently and just had a baby, and she looked good. Her skin was glowing and she seemed generally more content and easygoing than I remembered. She showed me a photo of the baby and she (the baby) looks exactly like the mother. I conducted some business with Berliza and gave her the gift Laura had sent for her, some nice clothing for the baby. Berliza filled me in on the latest gossip regarding expats that both she and I know. It was a good visit.

I walked up the street just a few dozen meters to La Novena, a gourmet vegetarian restaurant run by Chef Arturo. I used to eat at La Novena often but had not been there in a long time. Arturo was in the kitchen busily preparing the special of the day, a yucca pie. He looked up and saw me and said, "Have mercy!" Later his trainee chef - a tall, painfully thin woman who needs to sample more of her own cheesecake - took over, and Arturo sat with me to talk. "What are your intentions?" he asked me in his clearly enunciated, oddly accented English. I filled him in on some of the changes in my personal life and he was shocked. "Life changes," he said. "That is the only constant."

I mentioned that the Hotel Marparaiso has wireless internet. What I did not mention is that after the first night in Panama, my laptop stopped charging, and the battery life dwindled steadily until the computer shut down. I should have known better. I lived in this country for three years. You simply do not plug expensive electronics into an unprotected wall socket here, unless you want to end up with a very pricey paperweight. The electrical current in Panama is not steady. It sometimes cuts out for milliseconds and then comes back with a surge. It will quickly fry almost anything you plug in, from a floor fan to a refrigerator. To protect your electronics, plug everything into a surge protector, and in the case of computers I recommend a heavy-duty surge protecter and UPS device (uninterruptible power supply) that will kick in automatically if the power fails for even a microsecond.

I got lucky. I wanted to print some photos of Salma to share with friends here. I have a CD with 100 photos on it. I took it to the MultiMax store on Via Brasil near MultiPlaza. I hoped that I could also find a laptop battery there. They didn't carry laptop batteries, but they have a Kodak machine that prints photos from a CD or USB drive. You put the CD in the machine, and your photos come up on a touch screen. You select the photos and quantity that you want, and the machine gives you a receipt. Then you come back a few days later to get your photos. It only cost me $10 to print 100 photos! I couldn't believe it. Other people tell me they've seen these machines in the States, but I doubt they printing for 10 cents a photo.

That's not the really lucky part. Walking back up the street from MultiPlaza, I tried to catch a taxi but could not. It's always difficult on that stretch of Via Brasil. As I approached the Idaan building I saw a small show called simply, "Computadoras." I went in and saw that they specialied in laptop sales and repairs. The young man told me he could not help me without seeing my computer.

I finally caught a taxi back to the hotel. The driver was talkative, praised my Spanish, and told me that he wants to retire and travel the world. I told him that I want to go to Africa, and he warned me that the tigers there would find me to be a fat and juicy morsel. I know some North Americans would find this offensive, but Panamanians are very open with these kinds of comments and I laughed.

Grabbed my computer out of my hotel room, and caught a taxi right back to the computer shop. Traffic was horrendous and it took forever. The driver had his wife in the front seat and his young daughter (perhaps seven years old) in the back, next to me. She had apparently just gotten out of school and was wearing her uniform and trying to sleep on the seat. The driver was listening to evangelical music and when a particular song came on, the girl sat up excitedly and began to sing along. I didn't get all the words, but some of it was,

El es todo,
poderoso,

El es grande,
Invincible...

So the lucky part is that the fellow at the computer shop found me a battery. It's not exactly the right model and charges more slowly than my old one, but it works. And I bought a surge protector this time.

Like I said, it's called Computadoras, has pictures of laptops on the front, and is just down the street from Idaan.

Panama City Hotel Reviews: Hotel Marparaiso

Henry gave me a ride to ScotiaBank, where I keep a checking account. By the way, I recommend ScotiaBank for personal checking or savings accounts. It's not perfect, but I've never experienced any real problems, the fees are reasonable, and I've never heard of ScotiaBank perpetrating the kind of customer service horror stories associated with many other banks in Panama.

After that Henry was kind enough to chauffer me around Calidonia looking for a cheap hotel. By the way, Henry and Nora run Paradise Services, an expat services and real estate company. They are great people and you simply could not find someone better to help you get settled and find property in Panama. Their website is http://www.PanamaRetire.net

Back to the subject of hotels in Panama: three years ago I used to stay at the Las Vegas (in the heart of El Cangrejo) for $35 per night, but good mid-range hotel rooms have become extremely scarce in Panama due to both increased tourism and lack of new hotel construction. Prices have more doubled at the Las Vegas and it's always booked far in advance.

We drove around until Henry spotted the Marparaiso, which he had heard good things about, so we stopped and I rented a room for $40. The room was not luxurious by any means, but adequate. A bed, chair, a few small tables, a wardrobe, cable TV, and lukewarm water in the shower. I was very happy to find that they have a free internet network for guests. Oh, and check out time is 3pm! My room also had a hole in the wall that seemed to lead to a crawl space, but that's Panama. Unfinished construction and odd flaws are normal. The only real problem was a weak air conditioner that did nothing to moderate the furnace-like heat on one of the hottest days that Panama City has had lately.

I was so exhausted that it hardly mattered. I stripped naked and slept in a light sheen of sweat all afternoon long. Later I got up and showered, and went out to eat. Not feeling like spending the hour and a half that it takes to dine out in Panama, I got a Subway sandwich to go, Went to El Rey supermarket for a soda and chocolate bar, and to Farmacia Arrocha where I bought a strong desk fan. Caught a cab back to the hotel for $1.50.

The next day I asked to change rooms. All the guide books say that you should ask to see a few different rooms first, and I suppose that's good advice. The second room was far better than the first, for the same price. Better furniture, a functioning air conditioner, and a better view.

Summary: I recommend the Marparaiso for the price, but ask to see a few rooms first, and make sure the air conditioner works well. Be aware that the neighborhood is not safe for walking around at night. If you go out at night, take a taxi.

Engine engine number nine: when the train of life derails

1

I sometimes recite to Salma a "choosing" rhyme that I learned as a kid:

Engine engine number nine

going down Chicago line.

If the train goes off the track

Do you want your money back?

Then if the person says, "Yes", for example, you would count out y-e-s-spells-yes-and-you-are-not-it. Of course like all choosing rhymes, if you are adept you can manipulate it to bring about the desired outcome.

I wonder about the origin of this rhyme. Was there a real accident in Chicago involving an engine number nine? Anyway, each time I recite it I get to thinking about it in a deeper sense. Because at some point, every train goes off the track of life, and you never get your money back, nor any compensation at all, except maybe the karmic variety. As the Quran says, "Whoever does an atom's weight of good shall see it, and whoever does an atom's weight of evil shall see it." So yes, everything is counted and weighed.

Nevertheless, in the short run all you get is a pile of tangled metal.

Derailment happens in many ways. You get caught up in the mundane realities of life - work, bills, debt, family - and lose sight of your dreams. Or God presents you with special opportunities and you reject them out of fear of the unknown. Or you suffer an unexpected loss. Or betrayal, that's a big one, especially if it is perpetrated by someone close to you. That's explosive on the tracks. It shakes the ground beneath your feet. So you lose faith in God, or in yourself, or in the world around you, and BOOM, engine engine number nine goes crashing off the track.

What now?

Well, you are still alive. Still breathing. Other opportunities will present themselves. God is still here, you are still here, the world in all its shambling glory is still here. If you've suffered a loss then take some time to grieve and allow yourself to function at less than full capacity for a while. Then get up, dust yourself off and, armed with the wisdom of lessons learned and losses survived, step out into the world bravely, unflinching from what may come. You will recover from your loss in time. Human beings are resilient. After all, we managed to survive saber toothed tigers, ice ages and the black plague to make it this far.

So no, I don't want my money back, thank you very much.

Retirement in El Valle? - Questions from a Reader

I received an email from a reader named Rick with some questions about life in El Valle. Here are his questions and my answers in blue:

"Hi Wael, Thanks for all the information on your website. I have a few questions regarding year-round living (i.e. retirement) in el valle de anton:

(1) What is the low temperature and the high temperature on a typical day in El Valle?"

Answer: Temperatures in El Valle are extremely comfortable. The wet season (April to December, approximately) is warm, rainy and humid; dry season (January to March) is slightly cooler, windy and dry. Heating is never needed and AC is rarely used. You will often run a fan on a warm day. If you go out in the evening, you might sometimes need a light jacket, but mostly not. I'd say the lows to highs during the day are 65 to 85, and at night 55 to 70.

The humidity of course is high. In the beginning this can be quite uncomfortable, but eventually your body adjusts and you don't feel it anymore, except maybe when it rains on a warm day. The high humidity presents many other challenges when it comes to storing and caring for food, clothing, electronic equipment, etc, but that's a different subject.

Weather in El Valle is mostly lovely and perfectly attuned to human comfort, but at times it can be dramatic. Crashing thunderstorms, heavy downpours, lightning shows... the dry season is also very windy in El Valle - I mean, at times it sounds like it will tear your roof off - and that takes some getting used to.

(2) "Are there any houses to RENT on a long-term basis, or must I buy a house if I want to live there?"

Answer: The rental market in El Valle is always tight, but there are usually a few houses available. They range from "typical" Panamanian homes with small windows, no AC and primitive kitchens, to newer, more upscale houses. Rent could be anywhere between $400 and $1500 or more, depending on the house. In fact my house will probably be available for rent in May. I saw a recent posting on the El Valle forum regarding a house for rent and you should contact Larry and Becky from the Golden Frog Inn about it.

(3) "Since the juice of the green (young) coconut seems to help my kidney problem, I'd like to know if fresh green coconuts are readily available in El Valle - or do I have to go down into the lowlands to buy them?"

Answer: Coconuts grow everywhere in El Valle. You can buy them at the mercado or climb a tree with a ladder and cut them down with a machete. "Coconut water" is also sold in all the stores.

(4) "How long is the ride (by bus or motor scooter) from El Valle to nice beaches with very clean seawater for swimming?"

Answer: It is a 45 minute drive down the mountain to nice beaches such as Santa Clara beach. The bus might take a little longer.

(5) "Are the any freshwater options (rivers, lakes, waterfalls) near El Valle that are clean enough and warm enough for bathing and swimming?"

Answer: There are streams in the hills around El Valle with natural pools (in the photo at top you see a local waterfall called Chorro El Macho). The water would be slightly on the chilly side. I have often seen locals swimming in them, but never ex-pats or tourists. If you hike up the La India Dormida trail, you'll see some natural pools. I don't see any reason why you could not swim in them. There is also the thermal hot springs in El Valle, which charges (last I checked) $1.50 for admittance. Also, a few local hotels have swimming pools and will let you swim for a nominal fee.

Thank you!

Rick

You're welcome.

Panama's Promised Land - Without Water

There's an article on the University of Miami School of Communications website about a little town called La Tierra Prometida - the promised land - about 30 minutes outside of Panama City. It sounds like it might be in the direction of Darien. It's a village of 500 people with no water. Their situation is rather desperate. People, especially children, fall ill constantly to diarrhea and fever from drinking fouled water.

Please read the article and the accompanying video. I want to know what can be done about this situation. Those of you with experience in such maters, please comment.

Here is the article in full:

La Tierra Prometida: Panama’s waterless Promised Land

By Andrew Donovan & Natalia Vanegas

LA TIERRA PROMETIDA, Panama –

Tucked away among the rolling hills of Panama’s impoverished Sector C countryside rests a small and secluded village known as La Tierra Prometida. Just a 30-minute drive from the sultry skyline of Panama’s thriving cosmopolitan capital, Panama City, La Tierra Prometida – translated means “The Promised Land” in English – represents a far different world than that of the country’s well-known capital city.

Rotting wood and rusting scrap metal adorn the small, dirt-floor shacks that line the rocky and winding dirt roads of this seemingly forgotten shantytown in southern Panama.

However, this represents only part of the cruel irony of the place called The Promised Land. The approximately 500 men, women and children who inhabit the close-knit community of La Tierra Prometida live most of their days without running water.

Water only flows through the village’s pipes once every three to six months and the government car that brings water during the dry times only comes every eight days, if at all, resident Maritza Correa said. Even when the car does show up, that water lasts only two or three days before it becomes contaminated and unusable.

Without the proper means to store and conserve the transported water and without a dependable supply of fresh water from the pipes, citizens of La Tierra Prometida have done their best to cope, but continue to endure unending problems.

Residents collect rain water in large barrels for drinking, taking showers and washing clothes, but due to changing climates and insufficient storage procedures, this water source is not reliable and undrinkable.

“During the winter, we have fewer problems, but during the summer, sometimes it doesn’t rain,” Correa said. “And even when it does rain, the water only lasts two or three days before it starts to smell bad. This has affected the kids. It gives them diarrhea, vomiting and fever.”

Hoping to prolong the water’s useful life, one resident added Clorox to the rainwater, hoping to clear up the black residue that had accumulated at the bottom of the barrel. The residue cleared, but the resident, Clara Santos, was left with rashes throughout her body after bathing in the improperly-treated water. “Look at me how I am,” Santos said, painfully revealing several scars spread across her forearms.

Like the rest of the people of La Tierra Prometida, Santos is fed up with the waterless conditions.

“For a whole week, my grandson had a fever and diarrhea, and he was vomiting,” she said. “There are no more options. The water from the rain is making us sick.”

“When there is no water from the water car, from the pipes, from anywhere,” Correa said. “We have to go to the stream to shower. The stream is in the woods and there could be snakes or other animals. That’s dangerous. Aside from that, there are people with bad intentions living in the woods. They can take a girl and take advantage of her,” she added.

From the car, to rain water, to the streams, Correa said the people of La Tierra Prometida have tried tirelessly to come up with a solution, but have yet to find one. “I have been living here for seven years and the problem is still not over,” she said angrily. “We have tried in everyway to solve this issue, but they haven’t solved our water situation.”

“They,” according to Correa, is the Instituto de Acueductos y Alcantarillados Nacionales (IDAAN), the country’s national aqueducts and sewage institute.

“We’ve ask the IDAAN to do something about it, but they haven’t solved our problem,” Correa said.

Their pleas to the IDAAN – the country’s water distributor – have gone unanswered other than the time some of the villagers banded together in protest, creating a human roadblock on a nearby street.

“When we did that, we got water,” Correa said. “And what does that tell us? That tells us that there is water available because the day we closed the street, the engineer from the IDAAN came here and the next day we had water, and a lot of it.”
But, within days, the village’s pipes were again dry, leading Correa and other residents to believe their situation is the result of a lack of compassion and competence on the part of the IDAAN rather than an issue of supply.

IDAAN officials do not deny the accusations of the village’s residents. However, officials say they have no foreseeable solution to the problem and they do not know when running water will be consistently available to the area. “The people that live in the metropolitan area have different conditions of service of potable water,” IDAAN official Catalina de Guema said.

“There are zones in the city of Panama that always have the flow of water. “There are other zones that have it sporadically.” La Tierra Prometida is located in one of those zones and its lack of water is due to the nature of its establishment said fellow IDAAN official Julio Cefar.

”Those are zones that were not planned and the communities are growing without the government being able to keep up,” Cefar said. “Because of that, we cannot always cover those areas with water.

“Despite that, I believe we have one of the major coverage areas of potable water based on population in all of Latin America,” Cefar said. “That’s what the statistics say.”

But, it’s not the statistics that matter to the people of La Tierra Prometida. “They always tell us to wait and it seems that we are going to stay waiting,” Santos said. “Nobody listens to us or comes here to see the situation. We’re totally abandoned.”

Here is an accompanying video::

VIDEO: Tierra Prometida: Panama's Waterless Promised Land

And here is a blog post about it by one of the university students:

Panama Day 3: Harsh Reality

Why is the rainwater undrinkable? Why does it go bad so quickly? What storage solutions can be implemented so that rainwater can be cached safely for longer periods of time?

Comments please.

Living in the Past, Living in the Future

Living in the Past

I have an American friend in Panama who seems to dwell in the past more than the present. He grew up in the Bahamas in the 1970's, a particularly carefree place, and his walls are covered with photographs of the days when he flew high in many ways - he was a surfer and a pilot, but also a drug and alcohol abuser and lived in what was essentially a commune. Someone in his life was a painter and he has several of her paintings on his walls, most of them depicting idyllic scenes of the Bahamas: a curving beach lined with palm trees, the water lapping at the shore.

He began to lose his vision in his late teens. It was a progressive condition with no cure. He sobered up and became a drug and alcohol counselor. He can still see, but not well.

His life is very different now. He has been sober for fourteen years, he is divorced, and he lives alone in a comfortable house in the Panama countryside.

He speaks of the past often, and when I visit we frequently end up talking about one of the photographs on his walls or in his albums: him sitting on the stoop of a ramshackle house with a big German shepherd dog on his lap; standing next to a small airplane, wearing shorts and a tank top; sitting in a bar with his arm around Count Basie, a famous jazz pianist who died in the 1980's.

This friend of mine becomes easily discouraged when things don't go his way here in Panama. He doesn't have a clear idea of what he wants from Panama, aside from a comfortable, peaceful place to spend his days (which would certainly be enough for many people, but is not enough for my friend); and I wonder if his inability to visualize his future is what causes him to turn to the past for comfort. Sometimes I think that the loss of his sight is responsible: that in losing the ability to see the beauty around him, he is forced to detour in his mind into the past, where everything is as bold and bright, and pleasantly nostalgic as he wants it to be. Herb Caen, who for many decades wrote a column for the San Francisco Chronicle before he passed away, said half-jokingly that he tended to live in the past because most of his life was there. I wonder if my friend believes this as well.

The Unreality of Linear Time

What is the past, anyway? Sure, there are physical remains of the past all around us, such as volumes of ancient books under glass in museums, or the bricks of the pyramids, or the bones of a dinosuar embedded in the earth. But those things exist in the present. What happened to the past? Where did it go?

Nowhere, according to modern physics. Einstein believed that the disctinction between past, present and future was an illusion, and that all exist simultaneously. It's only we humans who are limited to our linear reality and our moment-by-moment perceptions.

The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said in what Muslims call a "hadith Qudsi," or a statement in which the Prophet is narrating a statement of Allah that is not a part of the Quran:

"Allah said, 'Sons of Adam inveigh against [the vicissitudes of] Time, but I am Time, in My hand is the night and the day.'"

So if God himself is time, and He is eternal, existing in all times and all places, then time must also be unconfined by our incredibly limited linear perspective.

I find it interesting, by the way, how much of modern quantum physics echoes and confirms religious concepts expressed in the Quran.

Coming to Terms With My Personal Past

But I'm thinking more of my personal past, or yours: my childhood, my pains and joys, my humiliations and victories. Are they just chemical markers in my brain, perhaps remembered wrongly, or do they exist? What am I supposed to do with this past, how am I supposed to use it?

You see, I don't have quite as comfortable a relationship with my past as my friend.

I know that I need to come to terms with my past. I have a vast and motley assortment of memories colored with regret, shame, confusion, and yes some happy memories as well but they are widely spaced lights on a dark road.

Virginia Woolf wrote, "Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title."

This not to say that I have no worries about the future or that I am supremely confident. But I am strong. I always have been. Watch me wrap my knees and get under a 450 lb. bar on a squat rack. I'm strong, mind and body. I can take whatever the future might throw at me (but that's not a challenge, God)! I can ride it, bust through it, go around it, tunnel under it. I'm strong.

What I want is not to be free of any ill that might befall me, but to conduct myself well. I want to do the right thing and have no regrets. And that's the thing about the past you see, that there are times when I did the wrong thing, and there's nothing I can do about it now.

Like the time, many years ago, that I was walking along Seventh Street in San Francisco with Laura, only a block from our building. We were probably on our way back from the Brainwash Cafe or some SOMA restaurant, I don't recall. Seventh street is a sketchy neighborhood, especially at night. Lots of drug dealers, homeless folks and nutcases. We were coming up to Market Street from Mission, when across the street in the dark mouth of Natoma alley we noticed three men beating and kicking a man who was on the ground. Laura said, "What should we do?"

I could see that this was not a case of some innocent tourist getting robbed. All the men involved looked like thugs. I didn't feel like running over there and getting stabbed or shot. So I said, "Leave it alone, we'll call the cops from the apartment." We kept on walking.

This was not the right thing to do, and I knew that even then. At the very least I could have shouted from my side of the street, or hollered for the cops. Maybe the three men would have run off. I could say that I was thinking of Laura's safety, but the truth is, I was just afraid to intervene.

There are other examples in which my behavior was less understandable or rational, and I don't particularly feel like discussing them. Suffice it to say that I have caused pain to others deliberately and inadvertently, and now that I am older, calmer, wiser, more understanding of other peoples' behavior, and more in touch my own soul, I regret many of the choices I made when I was young.

I can't go back and re-do any of it. I just have to live with the regret. All my strength and courage in the face of the future seems to avail me nothing when thinking of the past.

I know the AA folks say that regret for the past is a waste of spirit. And I believe that. In spite of this post I don't sit around crying over the past. I mostly just avoid thinking about it. And that's exactly my point. I wish I didn't have to do that. I wish I had a better relationship with my own past and could allow myself to experience it, relish the bright parts, laugh over the stupid mistakes, and remember the day to day pleasures. But in fact my memory of the past is very poor, perhaps because I avoid it. I find that when I meet old friends and they tell stories of things we have done together in the past, I rarely remember. I rely on them to be my memory, in a since, which is rather pitiful for someone who hasn't been in a coma or car accident.

I acknowledge that some of the problem may not be my actions themselves, but the way that I veiw them. My life in Panama was full of small joys and happy days, but now that I am back in the USA even that has become tinged with sadness.

Living in the Future

Perhaps because my past is a closed book of regrets, I focus on the future, almost obsessively so. Unlike my friend in Panama, my vision of the future burns like lasers. I am constantly thinking, planning, dreaming. I have bright dreams and no shortage of self-confidence. I am willing to take risks. I try to expand my horizons every day. I try to challenge myself mentally, physically and spiritually. I take tremendous pleasure in parenting my daughter Salma, though she does run me down sometimes like an Energizer bunny on its last legs. I'm a person of faith. I believe in God, the essential goodness of the world, myself, and the people I love.

Still, I need to find a way to come to terms with my past and even find joy in it. Focusing exclusively on the future is like driving a car and never looking in the rear view mirror. There are times when you really need to know what's coming up behind you, for your own safety. I'd like to remember my past better. It's been said that past is prologue, and I'd like to have a clearer insight into my own early chapters. I don't know how to go about this.

Any ideas? And please, don't just say, "Get over it." Give me something real to work with, ha ha. Share your insights, I am open to them.

San Francisco, California, and El Valle de Anton, Panama

I want a magical room. This room would be fully equipped with a small library, a comfortable reading chair and desk, a small but cozy bed, and a cupboard stocked with good food. And of course a bathroom with a claw-footed tub and large fluffy towels (the room in the photo, by the way, is the Captain's Cove suite at a lodge called A Place by the Sea, in British Columbia, Canada. I've never been there).

You may be thinking, “That sounds like a wonderful room but not necessarily magical.” Yes, but I haven’t told you the best part. This room exists outside of time. You can spend a month in this room, relaxing, sleeping, getting caught up on your work, eating snacks and reading novels, taking hot bubble baths, and when you emerge no time will have passed in the outside world.

And since we’re dreaming, let’s dream big. You can access this room from anywhere, and exit anywhere. Just walk through any door anywhere in the world with the idea in your head that you are going to your magical room, and voila! There you are. When you are fully refreshed and ready to leave, envision any place in the world and when you exit, there you are.

I would use this room to relax, catch up on my work, read, and best of all, to travel back and forth between San Francisco, California, and El Valle de Anton, Panama.

Wow. Wouldn’t that be something. During the day I’d be in San Francisco, maybe exploring the incredible bounty of new restaurants that are giving flavor to the Union Square/Tenderloin area. Union Square itself has been renovated and is now an inviting open space in a uniquely San Franciscan style. Yes, the Tenderloin retains its dangerous edge, but it’s changing. There are Indian, Pakistani and Thai restaurants everywhere, along with cafes, edgy art galleries, smoke shops, and corner ethnic grocery stores (not liquor stores but real grocery stores). And this is considered one of the worst neighborhoods in The City!

The Ferry Building is now a gourmand’s delight. The Yerba Buena Gardens area (seen in the photo) is bustling, with so many new shops and restaurants you can hardly count them, and of course the distinctive MOMA building, with the art deco PG&E building towering behind it. There are a few unwelcome additions as well. The new Federal Building at 7th and Mission is a monstrosity, I’m sorry to say. I haven’t yet had a chance to explore the new Third Street corridor, the lower and upper Haight, the Mission, the new Academy of Sciences at Golden Gate Park, the new Asian Art Museum in Civic Center, or to check on the well established neighborhoods of North Beach, Nob Hill and Russian Hill, the Sunset and the Richmond.

After a day enjoying San Francisco’s bounty, I would walk into my magical room and take a restful nap. Then I would exit in El Valle, Panama in late afternoon, with a light breeze blowing and the mist draped over the forested hills of the caldera. I’d look up at Cerro La Iguana standing proudly in the sunlight, and on the opposite side Gaital hiding behind its shroud.

I’d walk down the main road and stop in at Carlitos and Veronica’s Galeria to say hello and admire the original handcrafts for sale there. I’d buy a candy bar at the pharmacy next door (they have the best selection of chocolate bars in town), and walk further to the Mercado. There I would visit with my friends Cleo and Niko, both of whom are crafts vendors, and enjoy some fresh fruit. I’d go for a short hike in the hills around town, or just a pleasant stroll beneath the mango and acacia trees. I’d check in on Zach & Danyelle and Rudy & Christina and see how their home construction projects are going. I’d drop by my own house and make sure Marina and Alex, my friendly Russian tenants, are happy, and I would see how my home improvement projects are progressing.

In the evening I’d go to Pinochio’s Pizza for dinner, or maybe to Mar y Tierra or El Rancho for grilled corvina and french fries. I’d get a room at one of the many local hotels and sleep to the sound of the frogs, barking dogs, crickets, and cicadas. In the morning I would wake to bird song and rooster calls, ready for my return to the city by the bay, the city of fog, San Francisco.