Stridulations

There’s not really a punch line to the header. It’s not totally accurate, anyway, because it was a restaurant, not a bar. And I was eating dinner there at the time (Friday evening), with a group of Panamanian, American, and British acquaintances. The informality of the whole thing was surreal; except for the presence of a couple of obvious bodyguards near the door, nothing about the ambience changed. And the sad part is that it took very little red wine to render my reflexes so slow that I missed a chance to shake hands with President Martin Torrijos as he circled the room on the way out. Some of my tablemates did, though, so I’m now only one degree of separation from a head of state. (Apparently the place is one of President Torrijos’s favorites; one of my tablemates had encountered him there before.) I’m trying to imagine a similar scene in the U.S., but I just can’t.

I have bug photos in the pipeline, but Blogger's upload feature is taking more time than I have free. So, more later.