Weekend Notes

I've taken a few days off. The class I've been teaching has extracted it's pound of flesh. I suppose that's a good thing. No sense coming down here with not enough to do. (the dean should be reading this).

Friday night I went to the movies. I caught "Star Trek" at the "Multiplaza". The movie was fine, actually fun, but I'm not blogging movies here.

Multiplaza is a fairly big and fairly nice (modern, upscale) urban-style mall. Lots of familiar designer and restaurant names. The movie theatre has 10 screens with stadium-style seating. Very similar to the newer theaters in the U.S. Apparently it started with fewer than ten screens, then with expansion came two to three more screens. These were upstairs. Upstairs is where Star Trek was playing. This was also the upscale part of the theatre; a bar serving mixed drinks plus a sushi bar. Not having dinner before the 6:40 show I ordered a "popcorn con mantequilla y una Coca-Cola". For some reason I didn't get the butter. Might be my pronounciation.

By the time we got into our seats it was 6:50. Fortunately just like the states, there are twenty minutes worth of previews. The movie was loud. Spanish subtitles. (I checked this out in advance, had it been dubbed, I wouldn't have gone).

On Saturday I mostly worked in my room, took a bit of a walk, had lunch at Manolos (a diner near my hotel, excellent sandwiches). It rained of course. Quite hard, for about two hours. Late in the afternoon I took a cab out to the "Causeway", a narrow stretch of land (man-made, with dredged material from the construction of the canal's shipping lanes). The Causeway runs a couple of miles out to some small islands. It's a lovely promenade, with bike paths and benches and great views and generally it's just incredibly pleasant. I rented a bike, rode to the end where there are quite a few restaurants and shops. With the trip back it took barely over an hour. Hailed another cab back to my hotel.

(Worthy of note.. .cabs don't have meters. You negotiate the fare in advance. The ride out cost me $5, and this is a 10 minute ride, maybe 5-6 miles. For the return trip when the driver asked how much I paid to go to the causeway and I replied "cinco", he winced. "Six?" he asked. I hopped in the cab quickly. Another buck is no big deal to this gringo.)

Sunday afternoon I spent with three other professors. We went to the other big mall, Allbrook, drove around the old canal zone (some beautiful homes, former U.S. government property), and also went to a Panamanian coffee cafe, Kotowa (similar to Starbucks). Allbrook was very busy on Sunday. I'm going to retract an earlier entry. There were plenty of shorts at the mall yesterday. I'm wondering if this is a function of (a) the weekend as opposed to a weekday and/or (b) it's a surburban mall as opposed to a city neighborhood. Anyway many, not lots, but more than a few, shorts, especially by women. The mall has many U.S. fast food chains (e.g. Burger King, Dairy Queen, Dunkin Donuts, Cinnabon, KFC) but no U.S. retailers. I went to a Target-type store, "Titan". Some of the prices were unbelievably low but the quality was suspect. There are children's outfits for 99 cents, men's shirts (polo-type) for 5.99. In the electronics section there were DVD players for 39.99 and some 32 inch LCD screens for 599. I haven't priced new TVs recently but these looked like very low prices.