Ive just been on a little excursion to Central America, so whilst the house is progressing really well, this update will focus on my trip & all the fun things I learn’t along he way.

Make yourself comfy, we’ve got lots to get through 🙂

Regular subscribers will recall that in order to bring all my worldly goods into the country, via container & tax free, I have to have entered the country within six months of its arrival. This translates into simply needing stamps in my passport, which meant leaving the country for a minimum of 5 days. The thing is, I didnt want a holiday…life already feels like one long holiday most days, so deciding where to go wasn’t straight forward. I considered a quick visit to the UK, however, 30 + hrs of return travel & the prospect of Autumnal weather soon put the keebosh on that idea, no matter how good it would’ve been to spend time with family & friends.

Austrian Sophie, a friend from last year here in Ecuador,  now lives on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, so an offer to spend time with her sounded like a winner until I checked the air fares – at over $1500 just for the flight, I couldn’t justify it – they´ve come down again now, so Im assuming it was just a seasonal fluctuation. In the end I went with the cheapest “package” option I could find & chose Panama. Ive always been curious about the canal, so this would also be an educational experience as well, which of course means I now get to share all that experience with you. Don’t worry, there will be plenty of pictures 😉

See that green container on the left, no, the one next to that. Yeah, thats not mine, nor are any of the others on board as my container is not now due untill 22nd November 😦

I was travelling on my own, so leaving Roey supervising the house build. I loaded up my phone with music & Spanish lessons & threw a few clothes in my knapsack before heading for to the airport. As you will know by now, there are many things you just can’t get in Ecuador & if you can, they are expensive, so I intended to buy a carryall in Panama & return heavily loaded.

Because I dont like going into Guayaquil unless I really have to, I wanted to make full use of the trip, so wanted to submit a return request for the title deeds to my land & other documents submitted as part of my visa application at the Ministerio de Relacciones Exterior. I still owed my visa “lawyer” $50 from the original application & she had promised to get my documents back in return for me paying the balance in cash. I haven’t had a response from her since May, so it was down to me & frankly, I was more than a little unsure of how to proceed. As I’d been in Guayaquil for Jeff´s departure back in September, I went to the Ministerio then to make some enquiries & discovered it was amazingly easy, just hand in a simple request letter & return after 3 days to collect. With my previous experience of all things official, on the day of my flight I allowed myself 6hrs from bus arrival to plane departure. However, In what is I’m sure an unprecedented event, I was in & back out again in under 5mins when my number pinged up as soon as I was given my ticket – I guess very few people bother to collect application documents as they only have a limited validity of 6 months, but better to have & not need as they say…..

So Wednesday morning at 5.30, I left a bemused looking kitten in the safe hands of my neighbour Enrique to feed & care for – I’d agreed this with his wife Carolina, but as she gave birth to a beautiful baby boy on Sunday, she already had her hands full of needy infants.

 

The difference between a Mule & a Donkey

For the first time in a long time, I was pulled from the line at outgoing customs. A young & enthusiastic guard took me into a back room with a lot of new looking, technical equipment. He went to great lengths to explain the procedure & pointed to all the pictures filling the walls with 3D x-rays, depicting various human abdomens, clearly filled with multiple “packets”. I couldn’t tell for sure, but they looked very real & were so clear & detailed, I could read the branding on the condoms. He then spent another 5mins flicking through a graphic photo album of people for whom the smuggling experience had gone horribly wrong. Was there anything I wanted to tell him before he began – the longer it took, the harder it would be for me. Now Ive spent backroom time at Miami Airport…. & of course I was clean, so this wasn’t even vaguely scary by comparison, but he seemed confident he was on to a winner. Does anyone else find there is a strange thing that happens to the brain when faced with Authority? If you know you are guilty, all your thoughts are protesting or at least feigning innocence. But when you actually are innocent, you begin to explore ways in which you might possibly be guilty, but somehow weren’t aware of. I began thinking back over the last 5hrs Id been hanging around the airport (probably being monitored). Had the guy who innocently bumped into me, planted something? Had someone slipped something in to my food, or whilst I was having a nap, no doubt snoring open mouthed, would I have swallowed unknowingly as an opportunistic Cartel member quietly made me their mule? I took a deep breath & stepped into the machine & as the glass doors swished shut around me, a conveyor passed me through everything from a CAT scanner to the Hubble Telescope. As lights around me began to flash, the alarm went off & all moisture disappeared from my mouth, reappearing in rivulets down my spine & coating my forehead. The guard, now joined by several of his well armed colleagues, smiled broadly & beckoned me to exit the machine. On jellied legs I approached his monitor where my full body picture was now displayed with the suspect area circled in red.

Congratulations arsehole, you’ve caught me trying to leave the country with a nipple ring. I hitched my t-shirt, we all had a good laugh & they bade me bon viaje.

 

From Bon Viaje to Buena Vista

 

Before I get into any detail, here’s Steve Wright in the afternoon with a few fun factoids about Panama.

 

• Panama is the most Southerly country of Central America & with a population of just under 4 million, nearly 50%  live within the metropolitan area of Panama City
• Panama City is the only capital that has a rain forest within its city limits
• Panama was the first country outside the US to adopt the Dollar as its currency.
• Senator John McCain was born in the Canal Basin back when it was still governed by USA
• The Panama Hat originated in Jippi Jappa, Ecuador (where I got my driving licence), but was transported to Panama for sale & export. When US President FDR opened the Canal in 1914, he was given one to protect him from the Sun & they were known as Panama Hats from then on. They are graded on the fineness of their weave, with the finest being a Montechristo – the best are so fine they hold water & when rolled will pass through a wedding ring.
• At barely 50 miles across at its narrowest point, Panama is the only country in the world where you can see the Sun rise over the Atlantic & by just turning your head in the opposite direction around 13hrs later, see the Sun set on the Pacific.
• It is one of only 6 Capitals in the world that include “City” in their name to distinguish them from their namesake country. Can you guess the other 5?   Answers at the end 😉
• The Panama Canal generates roughly one third of the countries $55 Billion GDP (2016)
• The train from Balboa to Colon is the longest running railway in the world. Completed in 1855 it was the highest traded investment of the era on the New York Stock Exchange priced at $369 a share.
• Panama has more varieties of bird than USA & Canada combined & holds most of the world records for bird watching – You will be surprised how often this will now come up at diner parties 😉
• Ex-Pat investment fees go directly into Rain Forest preservation.
• What was once thought to be a grounded Japanese submarine from WWII, was found off one of the small archipelagos at low tide. Looking a bit like an upturned boat, it turned out to be the worlds first submarine which had previously been transported to Panama from the Pearl Islands by Julius Kroehl in 1866. After hunting for pearls in the Pacific, he died after less than a year of a fever, thought to be the first ever case of decompression sickness (the bends). It is said this story was immortalised 3 years later by his friend Jules Verne, who used it & the island as inspiration for 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea….& then of course, installing a bloody great church organ  to get the right atmosphere 🙂

Arrival

After a 1hr 50 flight, I touched down around 8.30 Wednesday evening to torrential rain & a rather chilly 26 deg. The forecast for the week was stormy, with only Saturday likely to be rain free. The hotel had all the facilities its 3 stars claimed, but only delivered them at a 2 star level. Unfortunately the plot next to mine was being developed & had just started construction, which meant jackhammers for 10hrs a day. After an awful nights sleep due to general noise, I was up at dawn & out on the streets soon after to start my shopping. Previous experience has taught me that if I find what Im looking for & its more or less what I was expecting to pay, I buy it there & then or Ill never find my way back to where Id seen it. The City has all the shops a man could want, so I was done by lunch, but with no idea where I was, I bundled into a cab to get back to the hotel. Unfortunately in my rush to get me & my swag into the cab, I sat on my phone, breaking the screen for the second time in a week. One thing they don’t sell in Panama are Microsoft phones, so unlike Ecuador, a quick trip to one of the gazillion phone shops wasn’t going to get me repaired, as perhaps peculiar to MS/Nokia phones, the screen is electronic, so wont function when cracked. Luckily I’d thought to bring my actual camera, but stupidly had forgotten to charge it, which of course I didnt find out until I went to use it, which was just as we arrived at the entrance to the Panama Canal, but more on that part later.

Zzzzzz’s dead baby, so we got us some Ving Rhames lookin Muthas on Jackhammers & a couple of pipe bending brothers getting medieval on their bars

I spent the afternoon fruitlessly chasing a phone solution, which gave me a chance to use the Metro. To be fair its more like a tram & many of the streets are being dug up to accommodate more track, but those already in operation were spotlessly clean & almost Germanic in their minimalist efficiency. What I didnt see though were any maps – all the stations are named after a road or location, but unless you already know where that is, planning a journey was challenging. Well it was for me at least. I don’t know who built the stations, however, I couldn’t help but notice all the escalator hand rails ran in sync with the stairs. An important design feature of escalators is that the handrail moves faster than you do, which is supposed to keep you alert & attentive when using them. But at only $2 for a travel card, it seemed worth the risk

 

Friday on my Mind

To paraphrase Dostoyevsky…..

In order to understand how a Society functions on the surface, we must first examine its underbelly.

       Fat Bottom Girls Don’ Make My Rockin World Go Round, but their message isnt difficult to read…..       “Mujer de Rodillas” or “Woman on her knees” by John Berry, inspired by a real muse.

The Best Place to Catch Crabs

I had done no prior research, so whilst it was my intention to walk as much of the city as I could, I figured it would help if I knew where I was heading & why. Thanks to those that have gone before & then written about it, I found out my hotel was in the middle of a Soho equivalent, so pretty much everything “fun” was within a short stroll. The area is known as El Cangrejo, which literally means “The Crab” & all its roads are laid out in curves like the legs & claws of a crab, which luckily meant eventually I ended up back more or less where I started everytime I got lost. This area was first established by the Jews in the 50’s & is host to many, many bars, restaurants & bordellos. As a nod to its founders, in the middle of Plaza de Einstein sits a giant stone head of the squares  namesake, though given the volume of sex trade in the area, perhaps a bust of Harvey Weinstein would have been more appropriate. (boom…tish) Anyway, whilst it wasn’t exactly 7^th Avenue, like Simon & Garfunkles’ ‘Boxer’, I do declare, I sought some comfort there (Lie La Lie).

What he used to look like & how he looks now, “protected” during construction works

Like Ecuador, prostitution is legal here, but whilst most were not to my taste, its always fun to hang around with them. Much like coming home at the end of the day to a room full of puppies, they are eager to lavish kisses & cuddles on any potential clients & usually up for a fun chat between ‘appointments’. I received extra attention on account of my “European Blue” eyes. This prompted me to try to explain to one of them that scientists now believe the Norwegian Blue Parrot really did exist & was potentially the great ancestor to many of the Parrots & Macaws now found in South America today. That conversation quickly shuffled off its mortal coil, joining the Heavenly Choir, it was bereft of life & pined for the Fjords no more. It was a dead chat-up.

The rest of this vibrant city is a vast cornucopia of stylised buildings, both commercial & residential,  interspersed with the construction of even more. Not unlike NYC, the visitors are the ones looking up – for me that was mostly trying to get my bearings, but usually I’d clock up more miles than The Proclaimers in the morning, stop for lunch then grab a cab back to the hotel, before heading off in a different direction for the afternoon.

On foot I was able to appreciate many of the little things one might not usually notice from one of the drag racing tour buses, so the following contains some sweeping socio-economic generalisations & lopsided comparisons between an Ecuadorian coastal pueblo & a modern Capital City that is the central hub of The Americas.

 

• There are a lot more smokers in Panama, but it is working hard to make the whole country smoke free by imposing many regulations & restrictions.
• The people appear slimmer, healthier & a little bit taller, so I was back to being just average instead of the tallest in the room. 😉
• They appear to have agreed their automotive supply with Japan as opposed to China, as all taxis & service vehicles are Toyota & not Chinese built Chevrolets. Pretty much every other car is what you’d expect anywhere else, but few very expensive ones.
• Panamanians drive much faster, but more considerately & it seems foot traffic has right of way, resulting in jaywalking being something of a past time, with traffic stopping whenever anyone steps in the middle of it. They put Italians to shame on horn usage.
• The whole city is accessible by wheelchair & clearly marked ramps are everywhere. I only saw one person in a chair, but the condition of the pavements is diabolical, so they would need 4×4 to travel between ramps…but it’s the thought that counts eh?!
• I only saw 2 women begging & appearing to be sleeping rough. I gave them change, & they thanked me in English. With the exception of my hotel staff, most other Panamanians speak good English.
• Things are roughly twice as expensive, so $5 for lunch & $20 for dinner. They also expect tips of between 10 & 15%. Change is never an issue & no one blinks at a $50 beside checking its validity. Perhaps its because the cash machines also dispense $5’s, but charge you $5.50 for the priviledge of using the machine.
• Panamanians smell nicer – the usual wide range of scents & deodorants are available here, plus great water pressure, heated properly, means maintaining personal hygene is a pleasure not a chore.

• Whilst most are slim, there are a ‘large’ number of women who appear to belong to The Church of Adonitoligy. Like a Sir Mix-a-Lot dream date, this is where women sculpt their upper body through cardio to be slim & toned, however, heavy weight squatting & lunges expand their glutes beyond normal proportion. Yes its popular now because of the revolting kardashians etc, but its always been a Latin/Afro cultural thing that I just don’t get! The pretty ones looked like Jessica Alba as far as their belly button, then flared out to Queen Latifah from there on down….. 😦

 

There’s no Dixon, but the Dock is definitely green

I’d looked online when I booked my plane ticket & tours to the Canal & around the City were Gringo priced, starting at $180, so my plan was to DIY it. Idly scanning around the hotel foyer, Selotaped to a door, was a scrap of paper advertising Canal tours at $15. So after confirming a taxi was a $35 round trip, I booked a seat on the bus for Saturday, hoping the weather forecast would ring true. It hadn’t rained since Wednesday night, was warming up nicely & by Saturday was a respectable 30 deg, with clear blue skies. I was looking forward to capturing some great photos…..doh! Taketh with one hand & giveth with the other & all of that, I began to chat with the others on the bus. Turns out Raul & his wife Julianna were from Cajamaja in Peru, the same place Jeff & I had stayed with Steve Perry, so we were off to a flying start, he had a nice professional Canon SLR & offered to take all my photos for me. Result!

It costs $15 entry into the Mira Flores, Pacific side of the canal & with no need to waste time fighting the crowds to get a photo, I was able to spend our allotted hour wandering around soaking up the info. But of course, you’ve got to go & check it out with your own two eyes, if only to say you’ve seen it. So I have to say, the Canal wasn’t that impressive, or at least from the only perspective we were allowed. The fourth floor of the Mira Flores building is the observation deck & was at least 15 people deep the whole way around. Pushing kids & old ladies aside, I forced my way to the front & all you can really see aside from the green fields all around, was the top of a big ship gradually rising. It takes about 10hrs for a ship to get through 3 sets of locks & 24hrs to get where the chicken was going, so nothing much was happening quickly. Yes of course the sheer enormity of the ships was impressive, but you weren’t allowed anywhere near enough to see anything else of interest, so I went back downstairs to look in the museum & watch the historical film reels. Now we were talking! Of course construction is my thing, so I was far more interested in the how than the what. So let me share with you a little bit about what they did & how they did it.

For the best part of 200 years, ships wanting to get from the Atlantic to the Pacific needed to risk life & limb going around Cape Horn, until eventually during the rise of the industrial revolution, men of substance & learning looked to find an alternative, shorter & less hazardous route. With Panama being such a skinny barrier to the financial reward of trade routes, a plan was devised to create a system of locks rather than to try digging a channel all the way across. So it was in 1880, Ferdinand de Lesseps, who had previously built the Suez Canal with much success, began another ambitious plan. Working in the desert is worlds away from a rain forest & it didn’t go well. Over 20,000 men removed a strip of rainforest canopy & began to dig. Unfortunately for them, with the forest gone, there was nothing to hold the loose soil together when the torrential rains started & these then washed all their hard work & many of their bodies away. In another blunder, no one had thought to invent insect repellent, so those that were left, fell to malaria, yellow & dengue fever. In 1887, desperate for a positive turn of events, the Board of Financiers bought in another expert in his field. Flushed with his own successes designing the internal structure for the Statue of Liberty & then the worlds largest Meccano set in Paris, Gustave Eifel was tasked with pulling the French out of the proverbial merde. But barely a year later, they were down to less than 700 men & had spent so much of the investors money, that Eifel was charged with misappropriation of funds, a charge he was found guilty of in 1893 & fined 2000 francs, though he was later acquitted on appeal.

 

Lights, Camera, Action……Take Two!

Following a deal by FDR wherein the USA guaranteed independence for Panama & paid a one off $10 million for a 10 mile wide strip of land across a slightly different part of Panama, work began again in 1904. 10 years later, it was completed with the inaugural entry of the SS Ancon on 15th August 1914. To give that a little context, Henry Ford didn’t produce his Model T until 1908 & planes still had two wings made of wood & painted paper, so whilst they did have some basic mechanical equipment to help them, this was manual labour in the extreme.

Back in 1904 with picks, shovels & broken backs. Then again in 2006 with the benefit of machines.

The land between both oceans along the canal route is 26m above sea level, so the first of three locks on each side start at zero, although this differs by as much as 7m on the Pacific side due to the extreme tide variations. Through a clever system of gravitational hydraulics & culverts, 26 million gallons of water are flooded into each 1050ft long by 110ft wide chamber, to raise a ship to the next lock level. Once at the top, it crosses a massive lake, (formed by the damning of the Chargres River), sailing the 50 miles to the docks on the other side & then taking the three lifts back down again. The walls of each dock are 55ft thick at their base & with a Panamax container ship sitting in between them, it has exactly 2ft clearance each side. For the 100yr anniversary in 2014, further works began in 2006 to increase the capacity & future proof its use by enabling super-size, gega-vega-mega ships to transit. They have also refined the process such that 60% of the water is now re-circulated back into the reservoirs or following docks. This is engineering at its most awesome 🙂

 

It costs on average about $500k for a big ship to cross, a luxury yacht can do it for $2k & if you want, you can swim it for 35c. The largest boat to go through paid just under $900k.

 

You guys are gonna be in so much demand at your next works party when everyone else’s conversation starts running dry….. 🙂

 

Olden Town, textured by Sun, through the ages it has burnt down…

As dawn gently broke & crept her way silently through the gap in the ill-fitting door, something felt different about this Sunday. It was now somehow.…. Quiet!

Like in any city, many people who work there leave it at weekends heading to beaches, the country or whatever, but Panama also has some forward thinking initiatives for those who stay. There is an incredibly long cycle path/running track, interspersed with city provided exercise equipment & random artwork. It runs all along the seafront from the city out to the old town, so its offers exercise with something great to look at. However, on Sundays, they go a step further by closing many of the multi-lane “commuter routes” to traffic & open them to cyclists, mums on blades pushing prams & even whole families in 4-seater pedallos…. as long as the only engine is you, you’re good to go. So it was a lovely quiet & relaxing walk, down through the city towards the Marina, around the bay & onto the old town. Id fixed my camera so I was Mr Snap Happy on a gloriously sunny day that was getting even hotter as I neared the Old Town. Ironic really, as back in the 17^th Century, before it became old, it used to be THE Panama City & it was destroyed by a fire that burned for months.

He’s a Right Rummun

Somewhere around 1650, a young farmer from Glamorgan in Wales named Harri, was abducted from Bristol & sold into indentured slavery in the West Indies. Released a decade or so later, he adopted the more English sounding Henry Morgan & enrolled as a privateer under Sir Christopher Myngs. Privateers were an early version of mercenaries, who in this case were tasked by the British to cause as much havock as they could to the Spanish, who at that time owned everything from Mexico & Florida downwards except Brazil. It seems he’d found his niche in life & quickly progressed up the ranks, such that at the time of Myngs death, Henry took over the command to become Captain Morgan. He & his crews ran rampant throughout the Caribbean & Central America, causing chaos to all. It wasnt all smooth sailing though & after a dispute with the French over a revenge hanging, many men left him & returned to the islands around Tortuga. These islands were infested with wild boar, which the French hunted almost to extinction & became known as boarcaneers, which became baconeers & then, the now familiar term of Buccaneers….Anyway, at that time, Porto Bello on the Northern Coast of Panama was the third largest city in the Central/Southern Americas & Henry announced his intention to attack. On July 11th 1668, he lead his men in 23 canoes up the Chargres river, took three castles & the town, holding the then President of Panama, Don Augustin to ransom for 350,000 pesos. Much raping, pillaging & plundering allegedly followed before Henry had had his fill & returned to Caribbean Port Royal with over $100, 000. Panama was raised to the ground, though no one knows if Don torched it himself to prevent its capture, of if Henry was feeling spiteful & tossed a torch over his shoulder as he swaggered out of the city gates . At the time the amount Henry “aquired” was more than the agricultural output of Jamaica & half of the sugar exports of Barbados. He was Knighted on his return to London but returned to to the Caribbean as Governor of Jamaica. Although he owned several large sugar plantations there, he did not produce the rum that bears his name. The next 150yrs or so saw a back n forth in governance until Panama joined The Grand Colombia Alliance & broke away from Spain who had managed to take it back from the British. It is for many of these reasons that the indigenous gene has been tweaked so often & from so many different angles over the years, that their “look” is now very much cosmopolitan.

 

What grew up out of those ruins, is a charming, Creole flavoured network of narrow streets & decaying architecture. Everywhere that hasn’t yet been restored or developed, is trussed & braced with steel, gutted behind the façade & awaiting construction of hotel/office/luxury flats within them. In between some buildings you catch glimpses of centuries old rock defying the passage of time – large areas of the old town are Unesco World Heritage recognised, so all the works appear as sympathetic as they possibly could be. By midday it was up to 34Deg, so it was time for me to take a lil respite from the blazing & I stopped at a delightful deli & thoroughly enjoyed a smoked salmon baguette – Ive not had one of those in a while

 

On the way back I found myself in the rough part of town – I read later that it used to be completely gang run, but an initiative turned it around, ex gang members are now giving organised tours, they run a micro brewery, selling to tourists as well as in their own bars. Its legit business from now on son.

You could tell it was off the beaten track, because everything was just that little bit grimier, not renovated & not yet prepped for it either – these old wooden homes may not survive the clean up.

I wasn’t threatened, I wasn’t mugged, no one promised to love me long time  – they were  quite specific on cost & duration, confirming everything in Panama is twice as expensive, but here time is also money. A concept not yet embraced along the Ecuadorian coast.

One Last Hurrah!

Tuesday was my last night, so its up to Einsteins Plaza to see what’s a gogo. It was not what I was expecting, so let me back up a bit to explain. Every bar & restaurant in the area comes with at least 2 screens minimum & show a rotation of baseball, US football, boxing (Roberto Duran) & of course, soccer. They are Latin, so sure they are passionate, but I couldn’t avoid seeing that USA put 4 goals past them the previous week, so they didn’t sound very good at it. Clearly this night, having the whole city out & cheering them on would make a difference, especially against their immediate neighbours, Costa Rica (so presumably some petty rivalry exists there)

The streets were impassable, all cars gridlocked, all pavements filled with bouncing bodies screaming to be heard over the wailing of the car horns. The two winning goals were quickly looped & beamed to all flat screens far & wide, tilted at an angle to catch your eye no matter which way you looked. I was fast becoming a paranoid schizophrenic in a horror house of mirrors. I quickly finished my delicious Shawarma & headed for the sanctuary of my hotel, but there was no escaping the noise. All the stopped cars had their systems blaring either news reporting what they’d just seen, or “we are havin a paaaartay” music. The last of those two goals had secured them a chance to compete in the World Cup, but they were celebrating like they’d already won it. Im happy for them, I am, but when I finally passed out around 2am, it was still throbbing outside & I was no longer sympathetic to their celebration.

No one turned up for work on site Wednesday morning & I may have been dreaming, but Im sure I saw a news clip talking about making it a national holiday, so whilst not a Sunday, it was a quiet & easy drive back out to the airport, which was good cos I felt rough from no sleep.

Panama is a slightly wild, vibrant & cosmopolitan city, but Id had my fill & was looking forward to getting back home 🙂

 

I met a girl on her way to Venezuela, I tried to talk her into coming to stay with me instead, for her safety of course! I havent heard from her, so Im hoping she’s ok. It got me thinking about random violence & the hotel had CNN, so I caught up on a lot of news. So before I close, Id just like to share a few of my thoughts surrounding the recent tragedy in Las Vegas, an event that whether you believe in six degrees of separation or not, will likely affect us all in some way eventually.

Perhaps you have a problem with my creed, or my colour, or my sexuality or nobody loves you enough or maybe you simply, don’t like Mondays. It doesn’t really matter what the provocation may be, there is absolutely no way you can shoot me if you do not have access to a gun. Surely that is a better option than everyone needing an “equaliser”

Nearly exactly 50yrs ago, JFK asked, “If a society cant protect its weakest, how can it save its strongest?” Does anyone else see the insanity in him being shot, & the guy that shot him, shot, & the guy that shot him, shot. How many more people need to die before this madness can be stopped

The current situation in North Korea is the very zenith of bearing ones arms regardless of others well being. Somehow everyone can see that’s wrong & wants to take steps to control it, & yet on home soil…..

For every upvote a weapon will be destroyed & for every downvote, a tree will be planted. Go!

Until next time when I will bring you up to date on the house build, here are the answers to the Capital City pop quiz 🙂

Mexico City,

Guatemala City,

Vatican City,

Kuwait City

& Djibuti City.

Note, the DC after Washington doesnt stand for “Da City” so it & The City of (London) obviously don’t count, but I will give you half a point for City of San Marino.

 

Si x