Goats in the Road

I was driving home and saw a herd of goats in the road.  This was in a rural area close to our house.  Also in the road was Rudy sitting on a chair, right in the middle of the road.

The goats are Rudy's.

I stopped behind 2 other vehicles.  I said hi and told him his goats were looking good.

He said, "I meditate for 30 minutes while the goats eat a delicate snack on the grass and weeds along side the road.  This grass is much tastier than the grass by my house."

I said, "Rudy, you can't meditate sitting in the middle of the road.  Everyone stops to talk to you because the goats are novel."

He laughed and said, ya...no meditating.

Rudy is another of the quirky people in Boquete.  He is Swiss, has 6 huge dogs that "vill obey my every command!"

The Swiss are obsessed with order.  So he thinks his dogs perfectly obey him.  I didn't tell him that his dogs visit us when he is not looking.  That would spoil his "world view".

We have been improving several things in our house.  This means we have Panamanian works here.  That means that I am FULL TIME working for them.

That's the way it is here.

Workers show up without the tools and the things they need.  So they are constantly asking, do you have a screw driver, a ladder, a nail, tape, and it goes on and on and on...

Then, you have to run to the store and buy material for them.  And re-buy material because they tell you to buy the wrong stuff, or they can't estimate quantities and you have to buy more stuff, or you bought too much stuff and you have figure where to put it.

It goes on and on and on.

We had our garage doors, the swing out variety, replaced with the standard roll up door like in the US.

Why?

Well,  the doors were so heavy that they needed constant maintenance to get them to close, which is mandatory because of theft issues.

This crew is similar to what you are used to in the US.  They do this everyday, installing many doors a month so they are practiced and tooled by a big corporation.

They were great.  But I had the preliminary work done by my local, normal Panamanian worker and he screwed them up good.

They were at the house until 7:30 Thursday evening trying to finish the job.  This is rare in Panama.  Workers always go home at 4:00.

They didn't get it done because my worker used the wrong kind of wire for their sensors.  They had to return the next day.

It is finally complete...one week total time for one lousy garage door installation.

Next week we start on the living room.  We are install molding around the ceiling because the drywall tape pulls away from the concrete block walls from the high humidity.

We hope to get around this by covering up the pulled drywall tape with molding.

God knows, but this will be at least a full week of work with the painting.

I am tired and frustrated just thinking about it.