Boutique Boquete and Earthy David

Our time in Boquete has ended, so today we took the bus to David, Panama. It is an hour and ten minutes away, but may was well be a different region entirely.
Boquete sits on the most western part of the Chiriquí Province, surrounded by mountains. Costa Rica is 60 km away. The altitude could be difficult for some; it is 1,200 meters (3937.01) above sea level. 

According to government statistics, there are over 3,000 foreigners permanently living in Boquete representing over 30 different countries, but the vast majority are from the US and Canada. Boquete’s weather forced me into wearing a sweater at times during the day and often in the evening. At times, it was not the temperature, but the wind that created the change of attitude about the altitude. I have checked this off our list of possible places for a future move.

David, Panama is the capital of the province of Chiriquí. It is the 3rd largest city in the country with a population of 144,858 as of the 2013 census. Average high temperatures run from 89 to 96 degrees Fahrenheit with lows ranging from 66 to 71 degrees. There is enough humidity to make the temperatures feel warmer, but not enough to drain your energy like Panama City.

Now this is definitely a cultural thing and probably really a North American thing, but if we lived here, I could not see having guests visit for more than a couple of days at a time. There is not much to do for entertainment. However, Americans like things pristine. I don’t mind seeing torn up sidewalks, holes in the cement, or bags of trash that have broken open and spilled along the sides of the buildings. I really get stimulated from the earthy feeling, but most likely, not many would feel the same way.

Between yesterday and today, we discovered that David has a vibrant downtown area with a tremendous number of shops, restaurants, and kiosks on the sidewalks, but none of these are name brand stores or any that are recognizable from outside the area, I would guess. 

Interesting distinctions!

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Top Budapest Interview

I submitted to an interview. Generally, I don't like these types of interviews, because the questions are vacuous, leading me to ask "Who gives a rat's %#@^ about it." However, this one had something I could work with and after I explained that I had been here over 11 years, she was still interested. 

It is uncertain how Anna, the publisher found me; I forgot to ask. Regardless, she was gracious to include my mental health therapy and life coaching with a link to my site, so I was appreciative.

You can read the interview here. This is a site I will keep handy for reference. 

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Reader Comment -

Well it looks like the Hungarian population is going to decrease yet again. I just received this comment from a reader who has thrown in her own towel. Gosh Katie, we should have met for coffee before now to swap battle stories.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Nightmare on Akacfa u.":

Wishing you all the good luck I can. I would also offer my shower but it's a bit far for you to come. (Szentendrei sziget)
I really admire your patience, I had enough! 'Evacuating' in 30 hopefully very short days.
Really wish you all the best.
Katie 

Actually, sad, but true, it takes a lot less patience to deal with things here than it does trying to find a respectable job that utilizes my education and experiences in the US.

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Qwerty

If the name Qwerty rings some bells in the back of your memory, look down at your keyboard's top row of letters from the left. This clever name is the store where we bought the computer for the kitchen for guest's to use. When we had the seemingly fatal black, not blue screen that said "Opps! Something is definitely wrong here!" we called the ex-pat American computer repair guy. His solution was simple. Haul it off, diagnose it and create a service plan. We allowed him to cart our box off to his office, but there was a niggling thought in the back of my mind. Hmmmm....the computer was not that old. Could it possibly still be under warranty? The strange thing here is that you have three business days after making a purchase to return it to the store. Even within those three days, the allowances for the return are limited to the item not functioning. Changing your mind about a purchase is as worthy of a refund as hoping to win the lottery without buying a ticket. You bought it, you own it. You want to return it? Break it within three days or you are out of luck. After three days, you are destined to bring or ship the item to the "Service Center" for repair or replacement. Guarantees can very from thirty days to a year, but what is guaranteed is that the service center will not be anywhere convenient. With all of this in mind, we had to debate the pros and cons of trying to find our guarantee for Qwerty or let our fellow patriot have a go at it. Since he charges 5,000 Huf an hour, we opted to rescue the computer, bring it to the store and see what happened. Our fellow American still charged us for an hour's time for coming to get the suffering patient. Ron took the computer to the store, sadly admitting we could not find the receipt. They looked it up on their computer (amazingly) and found to our delight that he guarantee was for a year and six months. Holy motherboard! Which was exactly the problem, the motherboard stopped being the intended nurturer and needed replacing. So in laymen terms, our mother abandoned us and we have been thrown out for adoption only to now have a surrogate mother...board. It took two weeks for them to discover our faulty lineage, but heck, it was free. We are up and running yet again. Thank you Qwerty, you have won our allegiance.

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The Communiqués of R to the 2nd Power 3

Ron: "all are enjoying scanning your book. like the intro of the expat's pilgrimage, food sections, outings, et al."

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Where Is My Hard Drive?

One of the first things I do each morning is boot up the computer, let the Spam program do its thing and then download the good e-mails. This morning was the usual routine, but the computer had a mind of its own. With the black and white screen still showing, there was a message that the NTLDR was missing. I should press CTRL-ALT-DELETE to reboot. Computer problems are my middle name, so I have since gotten over the "I am going to have a nervous breakdown if this is not resolved" stages at this point in my life. However, what gets me by is having a second desktop in the kitchen for guests to use and two laptops. It is not like my cable Internet is out. Then I would be downing coffees at the nearest WiFi coffeehouse. So I hit CTRL-ALT-DELETE and rebooted. Same story, same screen, nothing new. Thinking three times is the charm, I did it again. There were no lucky charms this morning, nothing changed. On the kitchen computer, I Googled the problem and found hundreds of others with the same issue at one time or another making me feel like I found a new support group. Hello, I am Ryan and I destroy working computers. Then a chorus of "Hello Ryan" echoes back to me. After digesting each solution, I transferred my new unwanted knowledge on the computer. Nada, nothing, nincs, no serenity prayer was going to change this situation. After a good ten different 'solutions' I humbled myself and resolved calling the Expat Tech Repair, a computer repair company run by an American. Friday, late morning is desperation time to call for a repair person regardless of what country you are in. I pleaded my case like an addict calling his sponsor for a life line, told him I had grades on that computer that needed to be turned into the university on Monday. Being pathetic has worked in the past with getting repairs done expediently and it worked this time too. Within an hour, Alec was here. Alec was here for four hours. He reinstalled Windows on another drive as a last resort, but I did not have access to any of my programs. All of them would have to be reinstalled, an unbearable task usually taking two days. When my eyes teared over, he suggested he try one more thing. What he discovered was that my C: drive renamed itself as the F: drive. The D: drive was now E: while the E: drive was now C:. All of this musical chairs playing of the drives, Windows did not know where to look for the program to start up since none of the files were now in the C: drive. Once Alec was able to discover this, he was able to 'trick' it as he said into redoing itself to the original configuration. After he left, I cleaned a bunch of stuff out and I am doing a mirror back up of all drives on my 500 GB external hard drive with Acronis TrueImage. It will take four days for the initial image to be created, so I am destined to using the other computer for a few days, but hopefully, this will be a saving grace in the future.

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