descending from the volcano
I am debating whether to write this entry first or call the tax office first.
You see, i have had a problem since leaving North America. When i left Canada, i was no longer able to reply to text messages on my Canadian SIM because i have a cheap-as-chips prepaid number with no roaming. No biggie, i bought an American SIM and used that instead - with a different number, obviously. But when i got to Panama neither my Canadian nor American SIM could either send or receive text messages. This has cut me off from all of my accounts that require two-factor authentication.
I am sure i have ranted about two-factor authentication on here before, so here is the short version: FUCK TWO-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION. Everything about it fucking sucks. It's ridiculous to require people to have a phone, with the same phone number, in the same country, for the rest of their life. People lose phones and change numbers more often than they change underwear. There's a reason passwords exist. Let me use my own password made up of a very long nonsense string of characters generated by my password manager you useless fucking user-hostile security boffins.
Okay, now that that's done. I can't log in to my tax account, but i know that i have a message in there that i need to respond to, because they email you that there is a message, but they don't allow you to log in, even if you have the password, and the email notification. So what the fuck am i supposed to do? Not do any taxes until i return to Canada? This is absurd. Fuck two-factor authentication to the ends of the Earth.
Deep breath. Yeah maybe i should write this entry first, because i will almost certainly be even more pissed off after sitting on the phone for an hour or more trying to prove that i am who i say i am and still not being allowed to access my own fucking tax file.
So. I think i am going to Colombia. Today i recharged my Panamanian SIM with 10 days of unlimited data, so i feel like that's a good deadline to get out of the country. That means i will be in Colombia before carnival, and Barranquilla (the next city over from Cartagena) has the Latin America's second biggest carnival after Rio de Janeiro. Assuming it isn't canceled - here in Panama all carnival celebrations have been canceled due to COVID. I'm not sure if hanging on the Caribbean coast of Colombia during carnival in the COVID era is a great idea, especially considering i hate big, organized festivities in the first place, but it might be a bit of a change of pace after largely sleepy Panama. Worst case i hate it and escape up to Medellín ("the only place in the world i would choose to retire outside of Panama" - misc. Panamanians) or into the Caribbean proper to give those islands one last chance to impress me.
In the mean time, i will try to visit Portobelo to satisfy my Pirate History Podcast curiosity. I know it'll be touristy and perhaps not a lot different to Bocas, but it's a place i feel i'd be remiss to miss.
I wanted to write a bit more about my experience working at the fancy restaurant. Something that i noticed after 5 days of service is that everyone coming into the restaurant was white. I know, i know, my centrist and conservative readers will be thinking "there goes the race-obsessed liberal again, seeing color instead of being color-blind"... But it's hard not to notice it when the rest of the country is so diverse. Walk down any street in Panama, you will see people with every complexion under the sun. And yet in the more high-class areas of the country - whether that's a gourmet restaurant in a quiet B&B town, or a fancy shopping mall in the capital - the people are notably much less diverse.
There is a mythology in Panama that racism doesn't really exist here, and that the Spanish in Latin America weren't genocidal like the English in North America, and that the Catholic church helped the indigenous people instead of oppressing them... And this is a mythology that you will hear from people of all backgrounds, not just European. I think it's a side-effect of countries in this hemisphere always comparing themselves to the United States. Everyone always looks at the US and thinks "well, we're not as bad as them", particularly on the topic of racism, and that's the end of the thought process.
I mean, i guess the other side is that people here are much more concerned with corruption in their government than with the mysterious coincidence that the wealthy class appear to be disproportionately white. Which is fair. I don't have much of an opinion on the political priorities of people in other countries, i just thought it was an interesting observation.
It reminds me a bit of these protests happening in Canada, whose supporters bend over backwards to put together videos showing how "diverse" they are, that - yes - we have a black person here, and an indigenous person, and an immigrant from South Asia, so we're definitely not racists. I mean, sure. You're not racists. But it doesn't take a genius to look at the people who have gathered and see that they're disproportionately white men, compared to the population of Canada as a whole. Not to dismiss the concerns of white men, but it's pretty telling when these guys act incredulous when they are moved along or - shock! - arrested for their civil disobedience. They've never really had to face resistance from the cops in their lives. They can't fathom that the choices they make might be offensive to the rest of the country or - in this case - even illegal. That's about as clear an example of privilege as you can get.
Anyway, back in the restaurant i'm kinda bowled over by the odd parochialness of the diners. One of the starters was a salad made with all locally-grown produce. A garnish for the salad was a little pyramid of papaya balls, a fruit which is cheap and ubiquitous here in Panama. And several diners asked what these strange balls were, some even after having eaten them! "I've never heard of putting papaya on a salad before!" I wonder if any of them have ever eaten melon and prosciutto and didn't make the connection, or if papaya is just so far from their upper middle class frame of reference that they can't comprehend seeing it on a dish in a gourmet restaurant.
It happened again on Sunday when chef switched up the menu to add a locally-influenced dish. Arroz de guandú con gallina. That is, rice and peas with chicken. It's a dish you can find at pretty much every greasy spoon in the country, but there was snobbish commentary from some of the diners "oh, that's food like at a fonda". I mean, sure. Elevated, but sure.
Here is a pic of an extra dish that chef made for me. The little green balls are fresh cilantro/coriander seeds from the garden.
For reference, here is a similar dish from a fonda. Arroz con lentejas y pollo guisado.
I guess what kinda strikes me is how diners can be simultaneously both snobbish and parochial. Like, they look down on the normal food that the other 90% of the country eats, but also don't seem to get how a fancy chef can elevate it and then charge 5 times as much. It's like, your $20 ossobuco and $18 pomarola were peasant dishes too, just elevated from European peasants instead of Panamanian peasants.
So i suppose even if there is no such thing as racism in Panama, i do feel like there is some kind of classism going on. It's probably not deliberate in many cases, it's just a lack of awareness. Which, i guess, is the same as most "racism" in Canada and the US too. People who just don't realize that those with a different background have different - and sometimes much more serious - challenges.
But even Rich Panama is still not exactly a developed country. The weekend before last in the restaurant we lost power. It wasn't just the restaurant. Half of the whole town lost power. Even the telephone cells lost power - suddenly there was no signal at all. Without electricity, without a phone network, we went to work and set up. For about 5 hours the chefs prepared food without power, we hand-squished juice instead of using a blender, everything stacked into coolers full of ice, without any knowledge of if or when more reservations would come. We got power back around the time the first table arrived, but it was a reminder that services aren't quite as reliable here as they are in countries with better infrastructure.
Remember a couple weeks ago when i was complaining that i had no 4G data up in the mountains? Yeah, the phone company acknowledged that was an actual outage, and that it had affected cells all over the country, so they generously gave their customers 500MB of free data as an apology. Such charity, in a country where many people are on prepaid unlimited data plans that expire after 7, 10 or 14 days. Least they could've done is give us an extra day. On the other hand, can't really complain when in Canada and the US you pay an order of magnitude more and still only get limited data.
Anyway, yeah, working the restaurant was an interesting experience. Seeing the customers face to face. It was nerve-wracking, in a foreign language, but i survived despite sometimes misunderstanding their requests or having to fetch my colleague to give some kind of smooth-talking spin on which wine was "the best". As a result of the work i understand front-of-house better. I understand the mindset of the wealthy a bit better. And i definitely understand the imperative conjugation better.
At the end of my last day, as well as getting a small share of the tips, chef handed me some rolled-up bills for my efforts. I didn't look at them till after, but it was over $100. I didn't expect or ask to get paid anything at all, so it was a real surprise. It was enough to cover all my hostel stays up there, which was awesome. I'm glad i chose to go back for the second weekend, even though i do hate dealing with customers. I don't regret doing this over traveling around a bit more adventurously in Panama. There's something a lot more satisfying about taking part in the local culture than just flitting from one tourist site to another.
Anyway, it's now 10am, so i suppose it's as good a time as any to sit on hold with the tax office. I really hope i can call them through Skype, because my local prepaid SIM can't call international. Sigh. Let's go.
You see, i have had a problem since leaving North America. When i left Canada, i was no longer able to reply to text messages on my Canadian SIM because i have a cheap-as-chips prepaid number with no roaming. No biggie, i bought an American SIM and used that instead - with a different number, obviously. But when i got to Panama neither my Canadian nor American SIM could either send or receive text messages. This has cut me off from all of my accounts that require two-factor authentication.
I am sure i have ranted about two-factor authentication on here before, so here is the short version: FUCK TWO-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION. Everything about it fucking sucks. It's ridiculous to require people to have a phone, with the same phone number, in the same country, for the rest of their life. People lose phones and change numbers more often than they change underwear. There's a reason passwords exist. Let me use my own password made up of a very long nonsense string of characters generated by my password manager you useless fucking user-hostile security boffins.
Okay, now that that's done. I can't log in to my tax account, but i know that i have a message in there that i need to respond to, because they email you that there is a message, but they don't allow you to log in, even if you have the password, and the email notification. So what the fuck am i supposed to do? Not do any taxes until i return to Canada? This is absurd. Fuck two-factor authentication to the ends of the Earth.
Deep breath. Yeah maybe i should write this entry first, because i will almost certainly be even more pissed off after sitting on the phone for an hour or more trying to prove that i am who i say i am and still not being allowed to access my own fucking tax file.
So. I think i am going to Colombia. Today i recharged my Panamanian SIM with 10 days of unlimited data, so i feel like that's a good deadline to get out of the country. That means i will be in Colombia before carnival, and Barranquilla (the next city over from Cartagena) has the Latin America's second biggest carnival after Rio de Janeiro. Assuming it isn't canceled - here in Panama all carnival celebrations have been canceled due to COVID. I'm not sure if hanging on the Caribbean coast of Colombia during carnival in the COVID era is a great idea, especially considering i hate big, organized festivities in the first place, but it might be a bit of a change of pace after largely sleepy Panama. Worst case i hate it and escape up to Medellín ("the only place in the world i would choose to retire outside of Panama" - misc. Panamanians) or into the Caribbean proper to give those islands one last chance to impress me.
In the mean time, i will try to visit Portobelo to satisfy my Pirate History Podcast curiosity. I know it'll be touristy and perhaps not a lot different to Bocas, but it's a place i feel i'd be remiss to miss.
I wanted to write a bit more about my experience working at the fancy restaurant. Something that i noticed after 5 days of service is that everyone coming into the restaurant was white. I know, i know, my centrist and conservative readers will be thinking "there goes the race-obsessed liberal again, seeing color instead of being color-blind"... But it's hard not to notice it when the rest of the country is so diverse. Walk down any street in Panama, you will see people with every complexion under the sun. And yet in the more high-class areas of the country - whether that's a gourmet restaurant in a quiet B&B town, or a fancy shopping mall in the capital - the people are notably much less diverse.
There is a mythology in Panama that racism doesn't really exist here, and that the Spanish in Latin America weren't genocidal like the English in North America, and that the Catholic church helped the indigenous people instead of oppressing them... And this is a mythology that you will hear from people of all backgrounds, not just European. I think it's a side-effect of countries in this hemisphere always comparing themselves to the United States. Everyone always looks at the US and thinks "well, we're not as bad as them", particularly on the topic of racism, and that's the end of the thought process.
I mean, i guess the other side is that people here are much more concerned with corruption in their government than with the mysterious coincidence that the wealthy class appear to be disproportionately white. Which is fair. I don't have much of an opinion on the political priorities of people in other countries, i just thought it was an interesting observation.
It reminds me a bit of these protests happening in Canada, whose supporters bend over backwards to put together videos showing how "diverse" they are, that - yes - we have a black person here, and an indigenous person, and an immigrant from South Asia, so we're definitely not racists. I mean, sure. You're not racists. But it doesn't take a genius to look at the people who have gathered and see that they're disproportionately white men, compared to the population of Canada as a whole. Not to dismiss the concerns of white men, but it's pretty telling when these guys act incredulous when they are moved along or - shock! - arrested for their civil disobedience. They've never really had to face resistance from the cops in their lives. They can't fathom that the choices they make might be offensive to the rest of the country or - in this case - even illegal. That's about as clear an example of privilege as you can get.
Anyway, back in the restaurant i'm kinda bowled over by the odd parochialness of the diners. One of the starters was a salad made with all locally-grown produce. A garnish for the salad was a little pyramid of papaya balls, a fruit which is cheap and ubiquitous here in Panama. And several diners asked what these strange balls were, some even after having eaten them! "I've never heard of putting papaya on a salad before!" I wonder if any of them have ever eaten melon and prosciutto and didn't make the connection, or if papaya is just so far from their upper middle class frame of reference that they can't comprehend seeing it on a dish in a gourmet restaurant.
It happened again on Sunday when chef switched up the menu to add a locally-influenced dish. Arroz de guandú con gallina. That is, rice and peas with chicken. It's a dish you can find at pretty much every greasy spoon in the country, but there was snobbish commentary from some of the diners "oh, that's food like at a fonda". I mean, sure. Elevated, but sure.
Here is a pic of an extra dish that chef made for me. The little green balls are fresh cilantro/coriander seeds from the garden.
For reference, here is a similar dish from a fonda. Arroz con lentejas y pollo guisado.
I guess what kinda strikes me is how diners can be simultaneously both snobbish and parochial. Like, they look down on the normal food that the other 90% of the country eats, but also don't seem to get how a fancy chef can elevate it and then charge 5 times as much. It's like, your $20 ossobuco and $18 pomarola were peasant dishes too, just elevated from European peasants instead of Panamanian peasants.
So i suppose even if there is no such thing as racism in Panama, i do feel like there is some kind of classism going on. It's probably not deliberate in many cases, it's just a lack of awareness. Which, i guess, is the same as most "racism" in Canada and the US too. People who just don't realize that those with a different background have different - and sometimes much more serious - challenges.
But even Rich Panama is still not exactly a developed country. The weekend before last in the restaurant we lost power. It wasn't just the restaurant. Half of the whole town lost power. Even the telephone cells lost power - suddenly there was no signal at all. Without electricity, without a phone network, we went to work and set up. For about 5 hours the chefs prepared food without power, we hand-squished juice instead of using a blender, everything stacked into coolers full of ice, without any knowledge of if or when more reservations would come. We got power back around the time the first table arrived, but it was a reminder that services aren't quite as reliable here as they are in countries with better infrastructure.
Remember a couple weeks ago when i was complaining that i had no 4G data up in the mountains? Yeah, the phone company acknowledged that was an actual outage, and that it had affected cells all over the country, so they generously gave their customers 500MB of free data as an apology. Such charity, in a country where many people are on prepaid unlimited data plans that expire after 7, 10 or 14 days. Least they could've done is give us an extra day. On the other hand, can't really complain when in Canada and the US you pay an order of magnitude more and still only get limited data.
Anyway, yeah, working the restaurant was an interesting experience. Seeing the customers face to face. It was nerve-wracking, in a foreign language, but i survived despite sometimes misunderstanding their requests or having to fetch my colleague to give some kind of smooth-talking spin on which wine was "the best". As a result of the work i understand front-of-house better. I understand the mindset of the wealthy a bit better. And i definitely understand the imperative conjugation better.
At the end of my last day, as well as getting a small share of the tips, chef handed me some rolled-up bills for my efforts. I didn't look at them till after, but it was over $100. I didn't expect or ask to get paid anything at all, so it was a real surprise. It was enough to cover all my hostel stays up there, which was awesome. I'm glad i chose to go back for the second weekend, even though i do hate dealing with customers. I don't regret doing this over traveling around a bit more adventurously in Panama. There's something a lot more satisfying about taking part in the local culture than just flitting from one tourist site to another.
Anyway, it's now 10am, so i suppose it's as good a time as any to sit on hold with the tax office. I really hope i can call them through Skype, because my local prepaid SIM can't call international. Sigh. Let's go.