Journey to the South

Tomorrow I will be embarking on another journey to the south. I will have been in this country for 180 days and by law I am required to leave for 72 hours. So with that in mind I am going to make good of my original promise and go to Panama.

What will I see there? Who knows? But it's bound to be interesting.

Planned Obsolesence

There's an old saying in Chicago. Once is coincidence, twice is happenstance, and third time is enemy action. Well, it's now enemy action.

A few months ago, my dad's laptop had his battery quit on him. His battery icon has a red X over it, and whenever you hover over it, there's a message telling him to replace his battery. Damn, that's a shame, but he must have just gotten a bad battery.

A short while later, my mom had the same issue. Uh oh, that's not good, but it can't happen to me. Right?

Well fast forward to today and now my battery has given out. What's wrong with these computers? It can't just be bad luck at this point. Three laptop batteries (all the same model) going out at the same time. It can only mean that these batteries were designed to give out shortly after the warranty period had expired. If that is indeed the case, that's just plain evil. What happened to making a good product which lasts the test of time? Wait, don't answer I already know what happened.

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Rain Hard With a Vengeance

Simon says, rain harder than ever before.

We are in the dry season, and it's raining like crazy here. Last night we had to get up in the middle of the night because Nemo was taking in too much water. That's not to mention all of the drains getting blocked from all the wood shavings on Anarchy. What I would do for the rain to end and for work to resume.

Post Box

Those maniacs have finally done it. They went into town and purchased their own private post box. You guys know what that means! Time to send me some physical mail! You do remember what that is, yes? I don't care what you write, just write something and ship it off to me. Do not include anything other than paper, because customs guys down here can be a real pain.

Baking Soda

Ever since coming here, my mom has been going around looking for some baking soda, to no avail. Well, we have found it now, and in the most unusual place. Rather than being found inside a regular grocery store, baking soda can only be found in pharmacies. Strange isn't it? Why would something like this be found in a pharmacy of all places? Talk about a mystery wrapped in an enigma and encased in a riddle. What other hidden oddities are there here?

School System

In Canada we are very lucky to have a school system which takes care of most of our needs. Outside of buying our own supplies, the cost of going to school is relatively low. Down here, things aren't quite as simple.

Once reaching grade 6, students are required to pay $1 a day to go to class. That doesn't sound like a lot of time, however when a semester is roughly 150 days, it becomes an incredible expense here. For many families, once grade 6 comes, their children are taken out of school and enter the working world. Imagine going to work as an eleven year old.

Sad stuff indeed.

100x

When New Years finally arrived, the townsfolk put on a show like no other before it. Like everywhere else in the world, the river was full of fireworks, however even more people were into it compared to Christmas.

From about seven at night, people began to fire off fireworks with small time intervals in between launches. This wan't the real show, but people just wanted to fire them off anyway. There was some pretty good ones, they had a nice gold one which really sparkled brilliantly. Alongside that was the standard fireworks we all know.

When midnight finally approached, the river lit up like never before. There was a light rain shower, so the cloud cover made the fireworks seem even brighter, as the light reflected off of the clouds. Every single marina (except ours) was firing their own fireworks alongside the two towns. One marina near the castle had the best fireworks by far. They had all sorts of amazing shapes and colours, some types I had never even seen before. Another marina has rather basic fireworks, but because they were next door to us they seemed really amazing up close. This amazing show went on for about 20 minutes before they ran out. My one complaint is that there was no real "show stopper". The display kind of just ended.

The President also stepped up his game a tiny bit. They were better than Christmas, but still under par compared to the others...