Homeless By Choice

”It is time to get up. The time is five o’clock.” I reached over and grabbed my cell phone and reset the alarm for 5:30. Another restless night’s sleep, punctuated by half hour intervals of pacing and gnoshing since I retired four hours previously. Half an hour later my cell phone provoked me again. I made a pot of coffee and packed some clothes in my day pack along with my notebook and netbook computer. A little after six I headed out the door and walked to Walter’s real estate office. I gave him my notebook computer and my external drives for safekeeping and took my digital SLR camera. We walked over to Bocas Marine tours and bought tickets for the water taxi to Almirante. The six thirty boat was full. I ordered eggs and a couple of cups of coffee and nourished myself while waiting for the seven o’clock departure. A few minutes before seven we boarded the boat, taking the rear most of the six bench seats. The closer to the bow, the more ass pounding one gets and I had no great desire to have my ass pounded this morning. Four girls from Texas took the seat ahead of us and we discussed the weather in Texas. One was attending A&M, poor thing and had left weather even more inhospitable than the 113 degrees Dallas was experiencing.

Twenty five minutes later we were in Almirante with the usual hustle, “Where are you going my friend?” “I thought I’d pop by Lago Arenal and that lovely German bakery on the east shore, take in the hanging bridges, stop by the Observatory Lodge at the base of the Volcano then go for a jungle walk the next day. How about you?” “My friend are you going to Puerto Viejo?” No point in talking to this moron. I invited the Texas girls to ride along with us to Chaginoula but the opted for public transport as our SUV wasn’t really large enough for all of us in comfort. Walter and I walked a couple of hundred feet to the parking lot where Chester’s SUV is kept safe and secure for $40 a month, got the car and headed out to Changuinola. Cool morning, low hanging clouds enveloped the base of the hills. With the windows down it verged on chilly. Thirty five minutes later we passed through town and stopped at a road side cafe with which Walter was familiar. The owner/operators were from Boquette and served coffee from the province of Chiriqui, home of the most expensive coffee in the world that hasn’t passed through the gastrointestenal tract of a wild feline. (Look up “civet cat coffee”, yeah, no shit.) We had some veal sausages and tortillas. In Panama a tortilla is a three inch by 3/8” deep fried ground corn pastry. We also ordered Omadilla a deep fried white flour pastry. The tab came to $8, I slipped a tenner under the plate and we headed out.

A short while later I was dropped off at the bridge which connects Changuinola, Panama to Sixaola, Costa Rica. I stopped by the pre-immigration office, paid my $3 exit tax, then when to immigration and got my exit stamp. The walk across the bridge was a mundane experience. Twenty one months prior it seemed a strange and unusual thing to walk across an ill kept wooden bridge between two countries. Now it seemed more natural than trying to buy cauliflower.

Arriving at the Costa Rican side, I stopped by immigration. I was handed a form, filled it out and submitted it with my passport and was asked for my airline ticket out of the country. I was forging one the other day, modifying a heavily marked up Travelocity html email confirmation that nearly put open office into a death spin. I told the woman that I lived in Bocas and that I was going to buy a boat ticket from Puerto Viejo to Bocas del Toro once I got to Puerto Viejo. She was having none of it. So I walked down the road to the pharmacy (first building on the left) and bought a bus ticket. I had a choice, I could buy a ticket from San Jose to Changuinola or not. No other options were available. For $12.80 I bought one, returned to immigration, presented the ticket and passport, the latter was quickly stamped and returned to me.

My plan was to take a shuttle from Puerto Viejo to Fortuna. The price of a taxi from Sixaola to Puerto Viejo was ostensibly 20,000 colones, about $10. The taxi driver offered to take me to Puerto Viejo for $35. I told him I would look for a collectivo, he denied that they existed. I returned to the pharmacy and attempted to buy a bus ticket to Fortuna, but was informed that the only tickets they sold were from San Jose to Sixaola. “Yo necessito comprar billete pora bus hasta Fortuna. Donde tengo?” She directed me across the street. The chino across the street didn’t sell bus tickets but pointed me next door. I entered the hardware store, but they were baffled too and suggested the bus around the corner. If you ever find your self in the same situation it’s the first road on the right after you cross the bridge.

I approached the ticket counter. My choice of destinations was Limon or San Jose, Puerto Viejo was not an option. San Jose $12, clock back an hour bus leaves at 10.

Impelled by an imperious necessity, a compelling nervous expression of my bowels, for a near immediate riddance of something found suddenly offensive, the tacos I consumed last night, prepared at home by yours truly with plenty of hot sauce, I sought appropriate accommodations for the requisite task. Spying a bano publico (public bathroom) I walked over to the soda (typical food outdoor cafe) and made inquiries. The cost was 95 colones, I proffered a quarter and the woman provided me with enough toilet paper to cover the walls of the room. There was no sign, but I put the used paper in the bin next to the toilet. The sink outside had a one liter water bottle with a strong concentration of lysol for washing one’s hands. No towels,of course.

As I walked out I was greeted by Skip, the floating house builder, on his way to San Jose to close on a sale. “Skip, I never got your articles of incorporation, your corporation is not listed on the Panamanian online registry, I never got a copy of your approved concession. Did you finish making the modifications to my house that we discussed?” “Here, Jim, want a drink?” I looked at the canned rum and coke and declined. Shortly thereafter a bus pulled in a people started to board. I checked the time then the destination on the front of the Mepe bus. We boarded, I got current on today’s blog entry, opened the window for fresh air and we departed at ten exactly.

11:45 Pulled into station my freakin’ neck. What the hell happened? I had fallen asleep and head had flopped over to the right, straining my neck muscles. A dutch girl took a seat next me. I put my daypack on my lap. “Que este nombre aqui?” “Cuhuita.” Shit, still on the Caribbean. Back to nodding off and I have to exhausted to sleep on a bus.

12;45 We pulled into a terminal, a sweater lies on the vacant seat behind me. I grabbed and ran over to the steel gates and holding the sweater between the bars yelled, “Chica Nederlander, su ropa!” n She turned around, came over to me and said, “Thanks, can you put it back on the seat, oh, I’ll take it!” We were at a cafeteria, this was just a stop. I entered and looked at the food and deemed none of it worthy of consumption and bought some junk, an tajaditas de platanc on chicarron del rancho, an ice cream, and a 1750 ml water. Tres mill tre ciente. Three thousand three hundred colones? I have here 7 dollars and got 200 colones back. Was this a screw job or has the dollar weakened that much? Nice homework, peckerhead.

The fried plantains were thin and extra crispy, the pork rinds very scarce. This was truly a bag of evil stuff.

3:30 Finally cold and wet pulled into the terminal in San Jose. A taxi driver informed me that the bus to Fortuna left from another terminal. This much I already knew. The fact that there were no more today was news to me. He offered to drive me for 75,000 colones. Hell, that gets me there in three hours, what else am I going to do, rent a hotel room in San Jose? Inside the terminal was an internet cafe. Some computer from the archives of hell booted for ten minutes, then took another five minutes to bring up an instance of Chrome. I fired off an email to my friends that I am to meet in Fortuna, bought some more poison and headed out front. The taxi driver gladly accepted the chocolate covered ice cream bar I gave him. “Su llama”. “I am George.” “Jorge mi nombre Jaime, but you can all me Jim.” Off to his little Hundai, through the rain and mist. Onward through the fog!

I tried to find some comfort in the back seat in a semi-recumbent position but found little. Finally I asked the driver to stop, got into the front seat and put it in full recline and achieved some rest. When we arrived in Fortuna, he had no idea where the Aparthotel at which I was staying was located. I quickly gathered my bearings and gave him directions. As we pulled into the drive I was warmly greeted by Ruth and Rudy. I returned to the taxi to pay my fare and on returning saw no evidence of my possession. Upon inquiry as to their whereabouts, Ruth, pointed. I ascended the circular stairs to find shelves with neatly folded clothes, none of them mine. With a quizzical look on my face she indicated that she had been pointing to room seven, my former quarters. I guess I should have known that the “through the walls” was implicit in her gesture.

Rudy invited me to go fishing on Saturday. I hadn’t intended to stay that long. I caught a cab to Las Lagos, where Richard and Maggie are staying. A six kilometer fare came to 4,800 colones, almost $10 and about five times what I would pay for a similar trip in Panama.

We pulled into the entrance and I entered the lobby inquiring for directions to the bar, our agreed upon meeting location. I was informed that it was dark and not very straight forward and a man was summoned to guide me there. I had stayed at this lovely resort sixteen years earlier with my two boys, then five and seven. We looked at the bar, the poolside bar, the bar in the restaurant, called their room, made another pass of same and finally got a shuttle to their room where I talked with Maggie’s son Alex, whom I hadn’t seen in 15 years, now a fine strapping young man and met Cole, a joint effort, now about six. Oh well, there is always tomorrow.

I gave up and took a taxi back stopping at Garrapata for dinner. In my old blog I had a pretty funny story about that but in never made it from WordPress to blogspot. Oh well. The owner recognized me and we engaged in friendly banter. Tilipia was served ten different ways, none of the descriptions being helpful. “Tilipia Ballerina”. Garrapata informed me that this was a humorous menu. Some clue as to the sauces would have been more appreciated. I ordered Tilipia Marisco which was served with a cream and white wine sauce with shrimp a faux scallops, faux crab and faux calimari then walked back to my lodgings.

No word from the attorney on the house.

On another deal the promised paper work didn’t come.

The inspectors never wrote back to tell me when they could perform the inspections.

Screw it. I’m heading out to Fortuna, Costa Rica tomorrow.

Hopefully by the time I get back, somebody will have gotten his shit together.

My circadia ain’t got no rhythm.

I woke up at 11:30 after going to bed at five in the morning. The day was glorious but I spent three hours finishing off some code. A bit after two I made my way to Casa Verde to see Skip the floating house builder and his sidekick Jeff at my favorite venue, Casa Verde.

I showed Skip a bunch of pictures of floating houses on the web and made some radical design changes, opting for widening the boat, making the “front” the port side, sliding a bunch of rooms around and adding an acre or two of glass. Skip took it in stride. Jeff and I discussed some other business opportunities and I helped him set up a Gmail account and showed him how to suck his contacts and mail out the detested yahoo mail he has been using.

We looked at four boats extending from Casa Verde to Stephen’s house, none were operative and lamented our inability to fulfill our destiny in these beautiful waters of the Caribbean. Ok, I’m three weeks away from my first boat here, I can hang on.

Walter showed up, then sweet Nikelda and we just generally hung out, cruised the town in the mobile mural, his tiny little red van, went down to the park to see the $40,000 palapa under construction at a cost of $180,000 (it’s no better in banana’s country than it is in the states), sat in front of the park and greeted the locals and interacted with the tourists.

More emails and then some music and some highly overpriced fish tacos at Casa Verde. My fish tacos are far better and are not stretched out with rice and beans. The bill for the three of us came to $21 for the tacos alone. Between them all there was maybe $0.60 worth of fish and it wasn’t even high quality fish. Time for me to start entertaining more at home.

The band played, more locals joined us, we shot the shit and I headed home early to get some work done.

Another day of activity on the house and the floating house tomorrow, then a quick four day break to meet up with some dear old friends in Fortuna, Costa Rica.

My real estate agent recommended the guy who installed the solar power system for inspection of same on the house I have under contract.

I was a bit reluctant to have someone grade his own paper, so to speak, but my primary concern is an evaluation of the batteries, which are four years old. At a replacement cost of four thousand dollars this is not an incidental expense. I posted a request for suggestions in a local yahoo group for residents and was immediately told that the best guy for the job is the guy recommended by my real estate agent.

The man was in town yesterday, but has returned to David. I just got an email from him informing me that the cost of inspection is $150. For that he must travel four hours from David to Almirante, catch a five dollar water taxi to Isla Colon and a $10 water taxi to the house. The same time and expenses are associated with the return trip.

I should be getting the contract from my attorney in Panama City tomorrow along with reviews and all associated documents. Her fees are $2,000.

The seller of the corporations that hold the houses have to pay a 5% transfer fee on the corporation, irrespective of the actual gain or loss on the property in question.

It’s different down here.

Early this morning the rain was pouring, nearing six I was still banging away at code finishing off a highly productive night. I awoke after noon to a slew of emails and started tending to business.

My dear friend Walter also a real estate agent a reader of this blog and all round hell of a nice guy has advised me to ensure the following

Walter Kawano has advised that I request the following:

Make sure all corporation fees are up to date

That the corporations transfer to me free of debt and liability the following permits and plans up date

• the building permits
• the occupation permit
• the approved house plans
• the approved electric plans
• the approved sanitary and plumbing plans approved
• and related documents

Verification the corporations have no penalties to be paid to the ministry of finances.

Furthermore he has corrected me and told me that foreigners are allowed to own titled property in Panama, it is land sold with Right of Possession that requires ownership through a corporation, but more on that later.

I tried to contact the company that installed the solar power system. My real estate agent, the listing agent for this property gave me their contact information. I sent off an email and it bounced within a minute.

The floating home builder sent me some ideas on how to break up the external lines on the floating house.

The earnest money wiring went through successfully so I wired another chunk of change. Tomorrow I shall transfer the balance of the earnest money due. Messages were exchanged between my Panama City attorney and my real estate broker. I’ve located a septic system inspector and have been given the name of the man who installed the solar power system; he should be qualified to check out the batteries, but I don’t know if I want him to review the balance of his own work.

In Panama foreigners are not allowed to own real estate. The work around is the property is owned by a corporation and corporations may be owned by foreigners. There is a $300 a year fee for filing returns per corporation. As this house is built over two lots, it is held in two corporations, which I want to merge. Half the house is on one lot, the other half is on the other lot. There was no way anybody could have built on either lot, this is built on a crest of a hill that divides the two. The original developer is a bit of a weasel and was advertising cheap lots knowing full well that no one could use one.

The builder of the floating houses has not responded to emails or telephone calls today, something to balance out the smoothness of this transaction.

Today marks the second anniversary of my great adventure of wandering. I celebrated by putting down earnest money on a house.

I’ll have one property that I can rent out and use for business meetings and another that I can live in when the spirit moves me and rent out went wanderlust sets in.

Too much world to sit in one spot all the time.

Chase Bank

After a week of trying to get my cell phone number registered on Chase’s online banking site I called their online customer support phone number. None of the options in the multi-level option menu applied so I just chose one at random.

I was then prompted to enter my debit card number and PIN on an unsecured phone line. DTMF (Dual Tone Multi-Frequency) decoders are readily available and anyone with any sense of tone could figure out what I was typing. Nice security!

I finally reached someone in the online banking department who asked me a list of questions, which I was told all came from public databases. Not sure how this provides any security.

Which of the following residential addresses are you associated with?

Which of the following companies have you been associated with?

What is Mark’s month of birth?

And so on.

Eventually I was given a PIN to enable online banking. I entered the PIN and walked my way through the setup and hungup.

When I tried to enter a wire transfer there was no option to do so. I tried to enter setup again and received the message that I needed to enter an authorization code. I clicked “Already have an authorization code?” and was informed that none had been issued.

I called support again and explained my situation and was given an authorization code without any verification that I am who I claimed to be.

Then I had to setup a payee, which required YAFP (Yet Another F**king PIN). As I hadn’t hung up I received that PIN. It rejected the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) code that I entered even though it was valid. The woman on the phone told me to append ‘X’ until it was ten characters long even though that information was not on the web page. WTF?

The asked for the Billing Account, which in fact is the source of funds account in addition to the account to be debited for the transaction with no option to choose my money market account as the source of funds.

Eventually I got a scheduled wire request to go through. Now let’s see how long it takes. I’ve been asked to make the payments in amounts of less than $10k a day so they don’t get held up.

Burglar

In the middle of this process my landlord, Bernd knocked on the door and advised me that last night at two o’clock in the morning some kids had stacked up milk crates and hopped a fence to gain access to this property but were heard by another tenant and scurried off.

Air Gun

Last night I ordered an 1,100 foot per second .177 caliber spring air rifle which is supposed to be very accurate. Hopefully it won’t be held up at customs too long, you can buy the things over the counter at the pharmacy here, not a high quality one like this, but similar power.

I doubt I’ll have many rats to shoot at the new house. There is are some big snakes, a boa constrictor and a big indigo. The are only good for a couple of rats a week apiece so they could readily keep up with a small population.

Floating House

Yesterday I met with Skip, the builder of the floating house and we spent an hour at Casa Verde laying out the floor plans. It was far more productive than exchanging emails. Then I had a three dimensional walk through on the house. Right now it looks like a giant box with two decks on each end but once we nail down the floor plan we’ll work on the external aesthetics.

I am trying to wire some earnest money for the house, but I’m not set up for online wire transfers with Chase Bank. Last week I changed my cell phone number on their site and was notified that it takes up to five business days for it to post. Welcome to the 20th Century Chase, that’s a week.

Yesterday I went to the ATM to get money to pay my rent, called my landlord from the taxi (it was raining) and asked him to come over and pick up the money. That was the last I saw of my phone, it must have slipped out of my cargo pants pocket. Can’t wait to get my new fanny pack that I ordered from Amazon a couple of weeks ago.

I walked down to the pharmacy, which sells everything from drugs to pellet rifles and paint and bought another cell phone, $35. When you go through cell phones the way I do, you go with the cheap ones, then sent out a bunch of emails to get the phone numbers for my friends that I had lost and to notify them of my new number.

Several messages were exchanged with the guy who is designing my floating house, we will be meeting tomorrow.

I registered an internet domain for a software product I will be announcing later this year and worked on the code. I figured it was about time to do a full backup of my hundreds of gigabytes of code and databases and did so, using a fast tool, it ran for only twenty minutes. Tomorrow I shall store the backup disk off site.

Rainy day in paradise. Another unsatisfactory nights sleep, damn ribs.

This morning the weather is perfect.

Skip and I exchanged quite a few emails and a couple of phone calls. “Make the bedrooms bigger, pull out the bathroom flush with the bedroom walls. Put in a spiral stair case. Make the deck 40′. No, make it 30′.

Drawings were sent promptly.

I have two foot square tiles on the floor of my apartment so visualizing the spaces is quite easy.

A good friend of mine, in Florida who owns a shitload of property in Bocas and has suffered through the building process repeatedly expressed some serious interest, but I think he’ll let me be the guinea pig. As he says, “there is no such thing as competition, only people offering alternatives.” The more, the merrier. During the low season, very few places are full and they are the low end backpacker type places. I have no interest in catering to people who want to pay $12.50 a day for a bed. There are surprisingly few choices for luxurious accommodations.

I am running out of time here, I am scheduled to leave in a few days for a week to visit some friends in Costa Rica. I’ll bring my netbook.