Michael: Five hours and still no can opener

If God were quiet
The existence of heaven
Would be beyond doubt.

Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2015

Hopping on a bus for two and a half hours to go from one small town to another sounds like something a tourist or retiree would do. Since I’ve done that a few times now, I should accept that I fall into both of those categories, but it still doesn’t sit right with me.

This time round we hopped on board and headed for Boquete and David in search of cacao and a can opener. Kimme dry roasts cacao as a low calorie snack. We can get it in nearby Cerro Punta, but an old fashioned, hand operated, vice grip and twist can opener is another story; Those are proving very hard to come by in the Chiriqui region of Panama.

At the Do It Center and at the Super 99 in David we struck out. Super 99 did have an even older fashioned hand operated can opener - the kind that looks like it was last used in the military to open ration tins, and that you could very easily accidentally slit your wrist with. But it does have a nice clean looking modern stainless steel finish to it, so we’ll see if that can usefully supplement our aging twisting opener. I don’t have high hopes and I foresee blood gushing from multiple self inflicted wounds as a distinct possibility.

We also picked up a tomato knife. I didn’t know every fruit and vegetable had their own distinct cutlery. I feel like such a cretan brutishly hacking away at all my food with a butter knife my whole life. But live and learn.

At the Boquete market they have a good selection of used books. This time round I picked up The Big Book of Self Reliant Living and Quantum Questions. The theme of the first book is pretty self evident, but it’s not a wacko survivalist manifesto, just a book about exercise, mortgages and what not like that. Quantum Questions is an anthology of what some of the major physicists of the past think about religion. Physics has never been a strong point, for me. I dropped out of course in college, but I do like to challenge myself and what scientists think about religion has always interested me.

Now back to the rocking chair, drool and naps in Volcan.