Couting blessings as we look north

When i was a small kid growing up in a seaport town in Wales, one of the regular Saturday evening spectacles was the local Salvation Army Silver Band, playing in a corner of the town’s principal square, They accompanied a lusty choir which regularly sang “Count Your Blessings, name them one by one.”

I didn’t notice too many counting especially when the hat was passed around, but the memory lives on, and when I read yesterday’s news about the snow storms in the north-east United States, and of course Canada, it was time for me to do a little enumerating of some of the benefits of living in Panama.

Of course, for every action their is an equal and opposite reaction according to my physics teacher, who would illustrate the fact with a dose of detention for chattering in class or poorly performed homework.

So While I add up the good sides of life in the tropics, some bad points surfaced.

But on the positive side, heading the list is of course the weather. While the first snowfall of each year is a magical experience, After that snow becomes an unwanted encumbrance, except to operators of ski resorts, It would be nice to celebrate the last snow of the season, but you never know which is the last one, even in late spring. Toronto for example, known by some citizens living further north as the “banana belt”, recorded one of its biggest snow falls of the 20th century in May.

So Panama has all that beat, and most locals would have a hard job identifying a snow shovel.

Behind the weather on the list of positives come many smaller items which we tend to forget as longer stays take away the earlier surprise factirs. A good example is the way Panamanians greet even those they don’t know with Buenas Dias (tarde or noche) even when stepping into a crowded elevator. A cynical New Yorker friend said that if someone stepped into an elevator in his home city and said “Good morning” everyone would grab their wallets.

The kiss on the cheek and the handshake at each meeting are other nice touches, but it loses a bit of its shine when you have to circle a table of 20 guests waiting in a restaurant.

The colorful flowers that adorn balconies, gardens and sidewalks year round, are another bonus that we soon start taking for granted. and then there’s the traffic. The traffic, is the man crazy?

Well take a look at the latest report from the US, listing the worst cities for traffic jams. Heading the list is Los Angeles where people can take 2 1/2 hours getting to the office as they sit, polluting the atmosphere, wondering whether the credit card has enough money to refill the tank before they reach their destination only a couple of miles away, And then there’s the homeward drive. Compared with LA, Chicago, Dallas and New York, (runners up in the jam Oscars) Panama is a snap, but working hard to catch up to the big brothers up north, Los Angeles was one of the first cities to believe that it could solve it’s traffic snarls by building more expressways and flyovers. Didn’t work. Panama is following suit in its own small way, starting with the widening of Avenida Balboa and disguising the true purpose of the $389 million project by calling it the Coastal Strip (Cinta Costera).

In some parts, the sea view will disappear. That was a mistake that Toronto made many years ago when they spent millions building an expressway that separated the city from the lake. They are now knocking it down.