Wizard's Blog

Simon is very cute. So sorry for your loss. It's amazing how much pets can become like a part of the family.

Lo siento por su pérdida de Asistente. 12 años es mucho tiempo. Su familia le trajo mucha alegría.

Mike, preferiría que hubieras empezado a practicar tu español con algo menos triste. Creo que sería mejor enviarte correcciones por PM. (Damn! my written Spanish feels rusty!)

Since I speak almost no Spanish, I have to guess this is your late cat Simon participating in The Infinite Cat Project.



Or, you got sick and tired of dealing with the idiots on this forum and turned the whole shebang over to the cat, who doesn't suffer fools.



Either one works for me!



How did I not know about The Infinite Cat Project? My second son usually lets me know about such things, and I had to tell him. He has Asperger's and is very much into cats and internet cat-related things. My older cat loves to park on top of the laptop, so he's a natural for this. The younger one had been a feral cat and won't sit still very long, but she tries to grab moving objects on the screen.

This is a very happy day for America. I like your pic, but what's with the dramatics with the gun and all?? Lol



HOORAY FOR OUR COUNTRY and for the rest of the world as well! Unfortunately they say 68,000 died in fighting this war and that the war will not only continue but that they will be "doubling their efforts now". Don't know why that is but I'm not much for politics. At least we can be happy in knowing that Osama is dead and at least some justice has been served.

hear! hear!



the gun there surprised me a bit too. Finger on the trigger too.

About my finger on the trigger, I should be ashamed of that. Proper gun safety is you never put your finger on the trigger until you're about to shoot.



That is a Glock 17, by the way, 9x19mm.

Super-clever pic. How do you like using the Glock? The one I fired once felt very good but the accuracy was not as good as my smaller .380. Yhough it was a free-loaner when I bought bullets at the gun glub so I don't think it got the TLC a good gun shouold have. Glocks are not saturday night specials.



BTW: Do you have a cigarette or is that some kind of reflection?

It's a shame that those soldiers cannot be recognized by name because of danger to their loved ones. But, no matter how professional someone is, it must have been hugely satisfying to know you were the one who pulled the trigger that ended his life.

>Do you have a cigarette



if you click on the pic you should get a bigger version. You can see that it is a reflection then. I'd guess a professional photographer would have done something different with the light, but I like it, makes it kind of eerie. Except the gun could show up better.

Quote: pacomartin

It's a shame that those soldiers cannot be recognized by name because of danger to their loved ones. But, no matter how professional someone is, it must have been hugely satisfying to know you were the one who pulled the trigger that ended his life.

Nice choice of weapon. I've got a Glock 21 and it shoots true, never had a problem with it. My Smith & Wesson on the other hand...

Pakistan Military Academy (PMA) was established at Kakul in October 1947 soon after the creation of Pakistan. Photo was taken on the drill square less than 1 mile for Bin Laden's compound for the Azadi Parade 14 Aug 2009. Abbottabad Golf Club only 1 mile in other direction.

No, I wasn't smoking. The picture was taken about 8 a.m., which caused the indirect lighting. That picture was taken by self timer, with the camera on top of a Topsy Turvy.



I'm not the best one to compare handguns, but Glocks are said to be very reliable, simple, easy to clean, and the best choice for simple personal defense. Accuracy is generally not a priority for those who own them, or any handgun. When I took a two-day course at Front Site the emphasis was on the shooter, not the gun.

Sometimes I'll note lifespans when looking at headstones, too.



BTW I've been to only 5 cemeteries in my whole life. 4 of them Jewish: two in Mexico City, one in Monterrey, and a military one in Israel.

Going back as far as I can remember I have always been fascinated with cemeteries and graveyards. Being from CT I have 4 centuries of them to explorer.



I must say the number of young folks you found was a bit odd being that it was the 20th century. Here I oft find groups of children who all died within weeks of each other. They always coincide with smallpox or influenza outbreaks. I found one recently in my family's cemetery that had 3 brothers ages 2, 5 and 7 all died within 6 days on the mid 1860's. That one made me step back just imagining the situation.



The inscriptions and sentiments expressed in the Victorian era are usually very beautiful. The small Lamb monuments used for children, the obelisks, mausoleums. If you are a cemetery fan you have to visit Green Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Magnificent is the only word. Aside from great views of lower Manhattan you will find some amazing artwork (in addition to some boisterous parrots). Boss Tweed, L.C. Tiffany, Horace Greeley, Samuel Morse and thousands more.





Not sure if you have seen this site http://www.findagrave.com/

Perhaps its a matter of economics. Headstones are expensive, plots cost money, the cemeteries have to be maintained. It could simply be that local economics involving land values played a role in what cemeteries continue to exist.



Probably very skewed data to begin with.



Of course since its in a Mormon area, it probably was well maintained.

I have always been one to read the dates on the headstones, both for short, long, and long-ago. There is a very small cemetary near me that is right next to an airport runway. I mean RIGHT NEXT TO. How it maintains itself I do not know, but my thinking is it was there long before the airport. I do wonder how much longer we will really have cemetaries. More and more people would rather be creamated. I hear from my parent's generation how they had to go weekly to cut the grass around the graves of loved ones back then. One uncle made good cash by charging $2-5 to do it. Just a few seconds work for him but saves the people loading the lawn mower in their cars. But now, I can't think of having really visited a grave since I was a little kid. Myself I plan to donate my body to a medical school, my parents want to be creamated. The cost being so high and visits falling, I'd say in 100 years few will exist and people will not believe how much was spent on headstones, etc.

being close to graduation, i have to remember something i tell my two daughters to remind them to be safe and not take life for granted. sadly almost every graduating class of almost every high school will 'lose' someone within the first year after graduating or even during their senior year, and at this young age almost always due to violence, (usually a car accident). i'm sure most of us can personally relate to a sad story like this.

I found some old government statistics from about a decade ago, that had 8.4% of all deaths as happening to people under the age of 45. About 15.08% were people who were age 55 or younger. For 56-74 it was 28.39%, and a total of 56.53% of deaths were people age 75 or older. I don't think things have changed dramatically since then.



I think with older people cremation or simple urns are more popular. With younger people there is more of an urge to build a monument.

@INAP: You are right but might even be understating it. When I was in high school the next district over had a student death a few weeks before graduation, I forget the cause of death. A girl I worked with said they were told had it not happened they would have been the first class NOT to have had a death in their high school years in something like 20 or more years. Myabe WIZ can use some acturial math here, but my guess is as long as you have 250+ or so a graduating class will statistically have a death in the 4 years of High School.

Some cemeteries have areas set aside for younger decedents. Perhaps you were in that "neighborhood". The town of Parowan was founded in 1851, and is in a rual area that has tough winters. Health care probably did not improve until the 1920's or 30's that would allow folks to live to 100 or more, so maybe if you check back in 10 - 20 years there may be more. Just a guess.

I too have a semi fascination with cemeteries, especially older ones. I believe I get it from my father, every time we would travel somewhere new and there appeared to be an old cemetery he would stop and take pictures. I recently was in Germany for 6 months and stumbled across an older cemetery while walking around one day. I took a lot of pictures and noticed the great care each grave site was treated with (very well maintained). I will try to post some pictures if I can figure out how.

Today I've found some interesting thoughts about life expectancy:

"It is generally thought that life expectancy in the past was less that it is today for our species as a whole and in the case of industrialized countries in particular. However, this belief counts as a falsehood not because it is untrue (it is, in fact, true) but because many people get this idea wrong in a few different ways."

Greg Laden

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$150 an hour is a lot of money for a third world country. I don't know what Panama's economy is like, but to give you an idea the monthly minimum wage in Mexico is about $150.



Before you ask, I don't know what the going hourly rate is in Mexico City.

I think Panama is wealthier than Mexico, on average, but not by a large order of magnitude. Also consider that the girls I saw Monday-Thursday were absolutely gorgeous. The customer base seemed to be largely Americans, who can afford to pay the $150 an hour. In the US, for a top shelf hooker, the cost would be at least $500 an hour. I know the disparity is huge compared to the average monthly wage, but such is the case with developing countries. $150 would seem a reasonable intersection of supply and demand to me.

Chip hustle?

The more demurely dressed woman was a good enough player to know what the proper Double Down opportunities were, she intentionally offered a low buyin and soon ran low on chips but even later when she had sufficient chips she kept roping you in to a "share in my Double Down opportunity" with no specific agreement about sharing the profits or at what rate to share the profits. Despite the lack of any agreement, she kept sharing in a mathematically correct fashion that you felt was fair. Now WHY would she be doing this? Is she trying to practice her English with a nice American tourist?



A more brazenly dressed woman does the same thing of a low buy in and a none too subtle come-on about give me some chips and she shares the payouts with you on a less than consistent basis and less than fair and generous basis.



I'd say that they were each in the same profession, but one was dangling a different sort of bait than the other. If it were a casino crew hustling tips you might refer to one as a soft hustle and one as a hard hustle. Same game, different level of blatancy. The demurely clad girl plays out a longer line and hooks fewer fish but asks for more money. The more skanky one goes thru more victims each night.



Sort of the difference between the hookers allowed into a hooker bar and the hookers required to ply their trade outside the bar.



In the USA we have the term "dedicated woman" for a prostitute who provides the service and does not steal from her johns. We also have "car girls" who pretty much do nothing but steal from their johns. There is always a range in the middle. I think you ran into the equivalent in Panama. Just as our strip clubs require the girls to get there early to pay lower stage rent, the casinos in Panama require early entry by the girls.



Note: Why would a woman introduce a newly arrived male as being gay? Appearances aside, its a prompt and prominent announcement of non-threat to any future business negotiations you might wish to have with the woman. Is he her friend or is there an economic relationship? I'm not sure.



In the USA just about all the young ladies these days are aware of the commercial value of their assets and the fact that such assets depreciate rather promptly. At the lower end of the economic scale we have girls who migrate between fast food restaurants, security guard positions and low-level prostitution. At the higher end we have top flight escorts offering a Girl Friend Experience. In between there is a tremendous amount of commercial activity on a informal limited-clientele basis. College girls often have one or two men paying their expenses in return for "being appreciative". Young girls who hold jobs, often well-paying jobs, will still have some man paying their rent. Beautiful girls are the coin of the realm. Always has been, always will be. What changes is the price and the blatancy level. Some bars are known for "chippies on the make" and well-off men. Some bars are known for having cheap hookers and men who are not wealthy at all but are still willing to pay for some action. Its a bit like the two girls you met in Panama: different levels but same general occupation.



I think the value of the American dollar is such that your paying for a tour guide was still a profitable experience for her.

I don't disagree with any of that. When I first encountered girl #1 I did think she was a novice gambler because that was the act she put forth and I had no base of experience to doubt it. Call me a rube. In retrospect I agree they were doing the same thing, but one slow-playing it, and the other going for the fast take down. You can see I indicated girl #1 said girl #2 was a competitor.



In an earlier draft I offered those same ideas about the gay confession. However, it was running about 1000 words more than what I have now, so I started cutting out things that I thought the reader would assume, like that.



The prostitution chapter in Super Freakonomics makes the same point you just did about the enormous economic power of attractive women in their twenties in the escort business, and pondered why more don't get into it. I think they were right.

Concerning economics: Although the above Draft is a bit over-long you might want to mention the economic effects of prostitution in Panama being legal. You might also mention the closures of some of the more notorious nightspots by nearby hotels versus the obvious expectation that casinos will have large numbers of such women plying their trade there.



I wonder if the subtle approach by the normally dressed young lady means that she was a part-timer or whether it was all a polished act of a full timer?



Perhaps you might reflect on just how soon you tipped to what was up with the first girl's obvious skill in playing versus her utter lack of skill in money management. When did you realize that style of dress and manner of approach may have been "upscale" but the activity is indeed the same as always?

Fascinating. If anything, make it longer. Put the rest back in and cut it in half, do a two parter.

Before this trip I didn't even know prostitution was legal in Panama, or at least not illegal, which is the status in Macau. You don't see many Catholic countries openly allowing gambling and prostitution, but good for them for doing so. About the history and economics of prostitution in Panama, I have almost no clue. Would you care to write something about that?



With both girls hustling for tips at the table was not the only angle. Girl #1 did private tour guide services, and she also said she makes introductions to prostitutes if customers ask for that. I was told girl #2 did double duty as a prostitute, and was known to steal from her customers at the same time. A story was told where she stole $50,000 from a customer and did a year in jail for it, on the condition she repaid the money, which she did.



Mosca, glad you liked the story. I could easily make it twice as long. If there is sufficient interest I'll make a long version later on. My next project is to write up the general casino scene in Panama City.

I initially felt overwhelmed so I found a blackjack table to play towards the back of the casino I kind of had to smile at this. Your discomfort with prostitutes while at the same time having to acknowledge the attractive power of the high priced call girl also resonates with me, but I was even more surprised that you describe what I always feel walking into a place of gambling new to me. I would have thought you would have left that behind long ago, yet here you do something that I would!



Any parts I should cut down or leave out? I agree that a two-parter is the way to go.



Any details you feel I glossed over too fast? Sorry it runs so long. It was long already as you note. I guess if you did a two-parter you could have more on this Alicia, if there is more to tell.



Super Freakonomics Haven't read that book, but here's my thoughts on how few women become high paid call girls:



*naturally people try to keep their daughters away from the kind of influences that would lead to this.

*those women don't take on apprentices or go around advocating other women take it up. I have to say such is very much not in the nature of women, to tolerate competition from other females, much less encourage it.

*I think we may be under-estimating how scary women find such a lifestyle. I think the fact that they rely on Pimps so much testifies to this. Certainly it is true some of them get abused, even killed [there's a fairly recent case of a Minnesota college woman IIRC who secretly led that lif and paid that price].

Great story.



I'm surprised that you didn't use the services of a prostitute - in the name of research, of course!



But seriously, in the name of research, at some point you should have confronted Angie to see what her reaction would be.

Great story. As a single guy who travels a lot, and doesn't monger as such, this kind of stuff happens to me often.



Nice to see you got on well with Alicia without it being a money-for-sex thing. There's probably a market for that.

Panama: I have very little knowledge of Panama but when has having little knowledge about a topic ever been the slightest impediment to my spouting off about it?

My understanding is that many of the women are not Panamanian but the general situation is the prostitution is legal and that some more notorious businesses are being closed by economic and other pressures as neighborhoods change. There are bare bones hotels that we might refer to as Micro Hot Sheet Hotels. They are not illegal and are often sensible options for customers who are not involved in commercial activity. Economic pressures make the prices for prostitutes rather low. American soldiers used to be a major segment of the market but now the market also consists of tourists and ex-patriates. It is possible to obtain something for as low a price as twenty dollars but in reality higher prices can be expected. From various internet sources, it seems that 150 for an hour would be a top of the line price.



Its likely that a man's wallet would be safer with the soft-hustler than with the woman who was being less generous with the chips that had been provided to her. I think casinos in las vegas are not much different: economics plays a major role and dangers abound.

I'm surprised that you didn't use the services of a prostitute - in the name of research, of course!



Dang, now you tell me!



Seriously, I'm like a woman in that I need to know somebody before I have a sense of attraction. Even if I could put marital vows aside, I don't see enjoying it if I didn't know the girl well.

There are bare bones hotels that we might refer to as Micro Hot Sheet Hotels.



I heard there were places nearby that rented rooms by the hour. They may have been next to strip clubs. Lots of taxi drivers try to get male customers to go to these places at night.

if I could put marital vows aside with a story like this, I think my wife would have assumed I had done just that

Great trip report! I've been to the similar scene (casinos and zorras) in Costa Rica a couple of times but I might have to consider a trip to Panama now. Your story plus the Panama episode of No Reservations make it seem like a fun place to visit. Also seems a bit safer than San Jose from your description.

Are you sure she wasn't calling you a "conejo" (a rabbit)? It would seem to make much more sense than calling you a crab. In many countries it is not unusual to pay a girl (not a hooker) to be entertaining company. Japan has thousands of girls from Sri Lanka and the Phillipines that will engage in small talk, look pretty, and giggle and laugh without any prostitution. They are often used to liven up a business meeting.

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You have to watch your Spanish words from country to country. "Cachar" and "Coger" in particular can range from very inoffensive verbs in some countries to vulgar slang in other countries. In Spain "conejo" is vulgar. Huevos is often vulgar in Mexico, even though we are used to the word in the Southwest.

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I have never heard of the word Beneto in Spanish. The word "Veneto" is pronounced like it begins with a "b". Did you see the casino name written down, or did you just hear it?

I am not surprised that the prostitutes are not Panamian. It is traditionally a very multi-cultural society, as tens of thousands of people were brought in to work the canal. Because of their reliance on the dollar, it is a good place for money laundering. Also there are wealthy people in Panama compared to nearby countries (Costa Rica is better off than Panama).

Paco: "conejo" would be a mocking term for a man, so maybe that's it. But I don't see how you can integrate an "fr" sound the Wizard said he heard.



"Huevos" has lost some of its vulgarity. It always depended on context, so finding the word on a breakfast menu dind't set anybody off. But then many terms that were, literally, unprintable years ago are now found in print. "Coger" is still current. Say it in public and someone will either be upset or tease you for using it.



For everyone else, "coger" literally means "to grab," or "to take." As used in Mexican slang it means "to f****"

Dang! After the above exchange I went to verify the spelling, and it should have been CANFREJO. This comes directly from "Alicia":



...The name is "CANFREJO",...



I responded by asking about the etymology, but have not heard back.



Several people there referred to the prostitutes as the "Columbian girls." At another casino I happened to be there when they were having a beauty pageant. When they introduced each girl they always seemed to be from Columbia as well.



Another way to tell the prostitutes is you could tell they had a lot of plastic surgery done. Not just the usual adjustments here and there, but it was often very over the top. I think most of the girls would have been prettier left alone.



It was a real racial mix in Panama. You had the range from white as me to dark as Adi Amin, and everything in between. As far as I could tell everybody got along pretty well, unlike in this country.

Actually, I think that the story is far too long. It's interesting here in the blog, but on your WOO site, a couple of things, it's a bit too long and descriptive.



I don't think it's anyone's business of your "flirtateous" behavior or the fact that you're not dead to young women. You could make a precis of the whole story, and retain full interest. Just my two cents anyway.

I was wondering about that veneto/beneto thing... but if it was the Veneto then the description of the crowd means the ranks have been very much pruned of late. He was at the "after"... the "before" would have been wall-to-wall hookers. I have an acquaintance who did his military service in Panama and one who is thinking of becoming an expatriate down there.



I did note that it was impossible to google the Spanish term and come up with a reasonable meaning.

It is my style to run long when it comes to trip reports. I think blog entries are supposed to be detailed and descriptive.



The casino name was the Veneto. I see that I misspelled it with a B in some places. Perhaps someone can explain the difference between the B and V sounds in Spanish.



Nareed was the one with the theory that the F replaced the G to combine the words CANGREJO and FEO to make CANFREJO, which would mean ugly crab.

The Spanish "b" (be larga) and "v" (be corta) are pronounced exactly alike. These letters have two separate sounds, hard and soft. At the beginning of a word and after "m" or "n", the hard Spanish "b/v" closely resembles the "b" in the word "boy," except that the lips are held tense. In other situations, the "b/v" is pronounced like an English "b" in which the lips are not allowed to touch. (This is a sound that does not exist in English.)



The Spanish "g" has three separate sounds: hard, soft and an "h" sound. After a pause and when followed by "a", "o", "u", and when following the letter "n", the hard Spanish "g" closely resembles the "g" in the word "got." The soft "g" sound is not like any English sound, and will require considerable practice. This sound normally occurs between vowels. Finally, when "g" comes before "e" or "i", it sounds like the "h" in the word "hot" except that it is "raspier."



El Cangrejo is the neighborhood of Panama City that would include your hotel (crabs are wonderful meals there). I really don't think that confrejo is a Spanish word, unless it is a very specific Panamanian slang. I doubt that "f" stands for "feo".

Hmm. I just got another thought of what "Canfrejo" could mean. It doesn't make much sense, though. And I don't know Panamanian Spanish well enough to say. So take it with like a half-ton grain of salt.



There's a word in Spanish meaning roughly "a**hole." The word is "pendejo," no "f" anywhere. According to the dictionary (is there a kid in the world who doesn't look up dirty words in the dictionary?), the word is a term for pubic hairs. Anyway, a way to mix "cangrejo" and "pendejo" might come out as "canfrejo." Of course the letters are wrong, but I asked here around the office (I really did), and the concensus is that, yes, it mixes both words together, but not well (I got some questions to answer, too).



Oh, and who knows how "pendejo" is used in panama. For all i know it's not used at all.



Make that a two-ton grain of salt then.

I found this comment in Panama News, and English language online website.

The Via Veneto Casino, more so that most others, is prowled by prostitutes ...

If you look up canfrejo in Google you'll get lots of references. You will have to override Google's inclination to change it to cangrejo. They are all in Spanish, and mostly look like recipes. I wonder if maybe they just call crabs canfrejos in Panama. There is also a Yahoo discussion specifically about what is a canfrejo, but nobody seemed to know better than we do.

The Yahoo discussion starts with a question "How do canfrejos breathe?" And that has to be a typo for "cangrejo." I mean, f and g are next to each other on the keyboard. the rest is mostly mockery about the typo, with one answer about how crabs breathe.



No help there.

I did find 86 references to "canfrejos" but they were all blogs (many were recipes or youtube comments). There were no proper looking websites.

1) One teenager did use the word "canfrejos" attached to this picture, but 20 minutes later he used cangrejo. It's clear he means crabs because he says "pinche cangro" (like he has having trouble getting the picture to appear). Pinche is a word that is usually translated "f@cking" ( but in the adjective sense, and not the verb).



2) The website that you listed two people say "What is a canfrejo?" or a more vulgar version of the same answer. The responder says

"los canfrejos no se como respiren pero los cangrejos respiran de esta manera:"

The CANFREJOS cannot breath, but the CRAB breathes in this manner.

===========

In either case your girl calls trolling for lonely wealthy men "catching crabs" and not "catching rabbits". Either way works. I don't think that rabbits are as common in Central America as they are in North America.

"Pinche" also means "miserable" as in "miserable bastard." In Spain the word means someone who helps around a kitchen.



Anyway, I thought for some reason the word might be in Portuguese, given that Brazil is a big country with growing influence in latin America. But the Portuguese dictionary I tried didn't find "canfrejo."



I'm all out of ideas.

The opposite is true, Mexico is wealthier than Panama on average, but not by a large order of magnitude. Argentina is the wealthiest Latin American country, but once again not by a whole lot. At one point Argentina was one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

To the best of my knowledge, gambling in Panama goes back to the first days when the canal opened. But the total number of machines in the city is roughly 4K and their are less than a hundred tables as well.

I move we adjourn to a forum thread.

>naturally people try to keep their daughters away from the kind of influences that would lead to this.

Usually. Not always. Many women encourage a realistic attitude these days. Retiring at 30 to a life of fine restaurants and spas has advantages. Alot of those high school girls getting "enhancements" are really receiving an income generating asset, not a self-esteem enhancing implant. The girls get their implants but view them as temporary enhancements to be removed as soon as they've signed up a good divorce lawyer.



>those women don't take on apprentices or go around advocating other women take it up.

Not always true. New Orleans had a top flight brothel that had three generations of madams from the same family.

Also, the way to move up from hooker to madam is not always to oust another madam and take over her book but to recruit other hookers and establish yourself as the madam by convincing the other women that they are sitting on a small fortune. Travel is profitable and traveling hookers are often welcomed as "visiting escorts" since the escort service makes more money that way than sending their existing offerings.

The opposite is true, Mexico is wealthier than Panama on average, but not by a large order of magnitude.



I concede you're right. this page indicates Mexico is 41st, and Panama is 52nd. Just eyeballing it, Panama looked more wealthy, but maybe it was because I was in the best areas, while I've found myself in some slums of Mexico due to getting lost.

Wealth of a country is somewhat dependent on urbanization rates. USA is 80% urban, Mexico is 75% urban while Panama is 57% urban. If you went into the Panamanian countryside, life would be very different. I know there are a lot of urban slums, but outside of the developed world urbanization may increase productivity which increases the overall wealth of the country. It may simply be concentrated in the hands of a few.

- Panama has one of the world's most unequal distributions of wealth with the top 10% making over 50 times the income of the bottom 10% (mostly rural subsistence farmers).

- It has also changed drastically since the canal zone was taken over by the country. The building boom is unrivaled in the USA.

-- There is an ever-present fear that the canal will become less important, either because of competition or because the US-China trade imbalance will begin to equalize as the US economy is eventually crushed. There are at least 7 projects that could compete with the canal. Several are new rail lines, plus discussions of a competing canal in Nicaragua, plus the economy of scale of shipping really really large ships through the Suez canal will make up for the extra distance. The Suez canal has no locks and is a sea level canal.

-- But Panama is betting heavily on retirement and second homes plus eco-tourism. Costa Rica has done very well in this area. Costa Rica is very popular with Californians.

---------

Shortly after independence, Central America broke away from Mexico as a single country. Internal wars further subdivided the region. Many people feel that a uniform set of laws and building codes will encourage European countries to invest. A common currency might help. With Panama and El Salvador using the US dollar, and Belize having their currency pegged 2:1 to the US dollar, the only likely choice is the dollar.

Thanks everyone for all the comments. I just posted a cleaned up version with a few pictures on my Wizard of Odds blog.



When I was there I read an article about Columbia doing a "dry canal." I guess that means they would pull ships across dry land, I suppose like in the movie Fitzcaraldo. Panama is also trying, and becoming, a major player in the world banking. They also are scheduled to complete a canal widening in 2014, which will handle ships 2.5 times as large as the maximum size now.



Based on what I saw, I think Panama will improve its wealth ranking over the next generation. They desperately need a subway in Panama City though, as traffic is horrible. A cab driver told me they were in the middle of making one, but I don't know if that is true. I may have misunderstood him, as he said it in Spanish.

I hope they get their subway if it is that desperately needed, though I fear it will be very expensive. I am certain, absolutely certain, that the paperwork for the building inspections and engineering tests will be flawless.

Its rather obvious that many of women are not really there to play blackjack for solely their own account. Chip hustling seems to be a group affair so perhaps there are teams and the "gay males" are simply spotters or other partners. I can't see much reason for the chip sharing amongst the "friends" otherwise.



I'm not going to suggest that American casinos are not without female whose interests and activities extend beyond gambling. In a Las Vegas casino I would expect most blackjack games to be serious blackjack rather than chip hustling facades. I just wonder what sort of percentage of the Panamanian tables seemed to have such interesting activity going on at them? Do you think its a high enough number that the casino's "rake" is a substantial source of income to the casino?

Please note: In using the phrase Casino's Rake I am perhaps assuming too much, but I feel that it has to exist.



I think you went there expecting a casino and found instead a very high number of young women whose dress and demeanor left little to the imagination as to the nature of their occupation. The numbers were far, far higher than you anticipated and it was an event that had a major impact on your perceptions. I wonder if there might be casinos that actually offer serious blackjack and discourage the very large numbers of prostitutes.

Wizard, there was a discussion of the history of dry canals beginning with 1880. It is attached to your blog below.

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Panama is unlikely to build a subway as it would be expensive. They are leaning towards "bus rapid transit" like they have in downtown Vegas and in Mexico City. The primary features of "bus rapid transit" are

1) dedicated bus lanes with barriers so that you can't drive into them with a car

2) toll collection outside of the bus so you don't slow things down

3) Minimal stops - intervals between stops on the order of a mile (instead of 3 or 4 per mile on most bus routes)

4) computer control whenever possible

5) Multiple entry points like "light rail"

6) Long vehicles that hold a lot of people

RE: Fleastiff's comments



The Veneto was in a class by itself in Panama. The other casinos did not let the working girls inside, and I was left alone most of the time. At the Royal casino a woman once tried to do the chip hustle on me, but I didn't let her get away with it. At the Fiesta casino I got into a friendly conversation with an older woman. I think she was trying to pick me up, but she was much too old and drunk.



My review of Terrible's tells the story of a chip hustle there, but I didn't let it get far. It isn't the only time I've seen it here, but it does not happen often. It never seems to happen with attractive women, unlike in Panama.

I enjoyed the whole story, but was puzzled about what prompted the supervisor to close your active table. Were they short staffed, and giving your dealer a break? I would think on a crowded weekend evening, they would have all hands on deck. Any theories?

>Supervisor closed an active table...

That did strike me as odd and perhaps it was an indication of the casino being alert to the actions of these teams of chip-hustling hookers and the people they share their chips with. It seems to be Team Play but the casino is not the direct and intended victim. Perhaps the casino supervisor felt some line had been crossed or perhaps insufficient tips had been paid?

Chip hustling may be too strong a word here, since there is no outright deception. It sounds like most men are completely aware that chips are vanishing, but are enjoying the attention and company. Possibly after sobering up a little, they decide that they should have been more forceful, but it's not really thievery. It's more like you are getting "clipped".

Okay, so the whole time I'm reading this I'm snorting and thinking "This sucker's getting hustled!" I mean, how much did you shell out merely to have an aggressive, unlikeable female (Angie) sit next to you grabbing your chips? At least the other one gave you a tour, but you're lucky the tour guides didn't spike your drink and roll you in a shady part of the city.

Chip hustling may be too strong a word here, since there is no outright deception. It sounds like most men are completely aware that chips are vanishing, but are enjoying the attention and company.



Dictionary.com defines hustle as, "to pressure or coerce (a person) to buy or do something." I think that word is appropriate for the situation. I also think there was deception. The victims probably think the experience will end up in the bedroom, but in the case of girl #1 (Alicia) it doesn't. She was basically a tease.

Mystery solved. (Perhaps).

While you were in the company of the Chip Hustling Blackjack Players were you perhaps dressed in a rather stylish manner? Or perhaps simply more stylishly dressed than other men in the casino that night?



The translation is a bit difficult but I think you were being referred to by a slang term best translated into English as Spiffy Dude or Cool Cat.

The Spiffy Dude/Cool Cat is not a translation that you might obtain from a consular official who was tasked to translate shipping documents from Spanish to English. It is more a translation that you might obtain in a dockside bar frequented by the longshoremen who handled the cargo rather than the documents.

Welcome back. I didn't even realize there was a casino scene in Panama. Did you get any kind of tour of the canal?

Yes, there are quite a few casinos in Panama City. I will have to some research on a specific number, but probably about 20 with table games, and some more that are slots only.



I saw the canal only from the Miraflores Locks, which are one set of three, and the closest to Panama City. There is a company that does boat trips through part or all of the canal on certain days, but I was not there when such a trip was scheduled. In the visitor center they show a time-elapsed video of the whole journey.

Here's an odd request: What did you think of the Panama City airport? I ask because Copa Airlines advertises itself a lot here, promoting that airport as a hub for travel to South and Central America (inc competition with Miami).

Can't wait for the reports!

The Panama City airport is quite nice. I don't know why they put it so far from town, as there seems to be a lot of empty land between it and Panama City. Airport security is tight and they frisk everybody leaving. My plane leaving was an hour late and then they unplugged the plane before turning on the engine, so they had to jump start it, which took another half an hour. So I missed my connection in Miami and had to spend the night there.



I have a first draft of the Beneto article done.

Welcome back Wiz: In Spanish the V is pronounced like our letter B, so the hotel is the Veneto Wyndham. Panama City has changed radically since they took over the Canal Zone. It is starting to resemble a tropical Manhattan with some of the densest urbanization in Latin America. Unfortunately the mass transit has not kept pace, and the streets are very overcrowded.

It has become a popular retirement place for gringos. They are attracted to the use of the dollar as currency, and the complete lack of hurricanes or earthquakes. The downside is the incredible humidity.

There were proposals to build a "dry canal" across the isthumus of Tehuantepec (narrow part of Mexico) about 1880 by James B. Eads. He reasoned that the building of the Panama Canal would come at the cost of thousands of lives due to Malaria vs normal death rate for building a "dry canal" in relatively malaria free Mexico. Of course, he was correct, but it was mostly not white people who paid the price of their lives. The "dry canal" is back in the news again, this time as a China-Columbia construction project. I don't know if things have advanced to the point that they won't try and drag the ships across the land or if they will invent a mass unloading procedure to get the goods across the land .

The same Eads who built river ironclads in the American Civil War methinks.

(1) James Eads built the ironclads in the civil war, and the bridge over the Mississippi River at St Louis. He was a respected architect which is why his plan to carry ships over Mexico on rails got a proper hearing. The decision to build the canal probably would not have been made if all lives were valued on the same level.



(2) The airports were built to guard the canal against an invasion, not for civilian transport. Panama didn't even have a million people until the mid 1950's. That would explain it's location.



(3) The Trump Hotel will be the tallest building in Latin America at nearly 1000' when completed. It is the building on the left that looks like a sail.