Keith's Panamanian Travel Ramble

Progress Continues

By Keith on Friday, 9 January 2015

Today is Friday, 09 January 2015! How time flies! Progress continues on the house. We have just completed week 5 of the project and are close to being on schedule, despite a change order that has added a closed in storage room below the front deck. This has added four additional walls, a concrete floor, and a complete revision to the foundation approach.

Today is a statutory holiday here in Panama today.  It is Marter’s Day and it is dry.  I have written about this in the past https://jkeithhowie.com/2012/01/09/martyrs-day-is-dry/.

Today is Friday, 09 January 2015! How time flies! Progress continues on the house. We have just completed week 5 of the project and are close to being on schedule, despite a change order that has added a closed in storage room below the front deck. This has added four extra walls, a concrete floor, and a complete revision to the foundation approach.

The ugly exchange rate from Canadian dollars is painful but we cannot do much about it since we are already under way.

 

Our workers are not use to so many visitors looking at their production. There are a number of people visiting the site to see what is being done and the quality of the work. There are lots of questions and already one query about how soon they could book the crew to do a project for them. This is encouraging to us to find that we have created so much attention to our little project.

Our team has a number of technically trained specialists. Lester is specifically trained in rebar work. Tomas is our welder. Noreli is our ceramic tile specialist. Dario is the supervisor who is skilled at all aspects of the build. The balance are not specifically trained in any particular area so they act as helpers wherever they are needed. It is interesting to see how things work as everything is hand built. When a particular skill is needed, the skilled worker takes the lead and the balance fall into a helper role. This is the significant difference between our team and local builders. The local builders do not have training in any specific area, but rather are generalists in all areas. Compared to our team they would all be consider assistants. This makes a huge difference to the quality of the build.

We have just acquired a Frog! This is a device that is used to compact the dirt around the project. Pictures to come with Andrea bouncing on the frog! (I have to sneak the pictures).

In the meantime, we have friends who have arrived for their first visit to our fair Panama. Pam and Brian are staying in Coronado for their visit. We will spend time with them over the next three weeks showing them this beautiful country. I hope they take to it the way we did. Tomorrow we head out to Coronado to pick them up and take them on a day trip to el Valle.

Yesterday, I wiled away my day at the Immigration office, here in Panama. I have started my Pensionado application and have successfully attained the first step in the process. I spent all day yesterday to get a “Registered” stamp in my passport. There are several more steps but I have been assured that this one is the most time consuming. This will give me a residency status here called Pensionado. It has nothing to do with age but rather proof that you have a monthly income from home. Lots of families have obtained it for their whole family. It comes with all kinds of discounts on almost everything. Things such as travel, restaurant meals, home utilities, and many other things are all seriously discounted for us old people. Great!