We Better Get Used To It!

FRUSTRATION! Yep, we had better get used to being frustrated by inefficiency! From what we have read on Panama forums and other blogs , living in Panama or any other South or Central American country for that matter , can be rather frustrating at times. But! Wait! We are still living in good old’ U.S . Of A, and holy moly, did we feel the sting of frustrating inefficiency yesterday!

We simply wanted to cancel our AT&T Uverse cable but keep the DSL which was advertised for $34.99 per month. Seemed like a fairly simple request, and we speak the same language as the customer service agent soooooo why did such a simple transaction take a better part of an hour to complete? Well, I have no answer to that mystery but it got me thinking about how much we had read about this very subject from other expats living abroad. When we initially arrive in our new town we will , presumably have many services to establish in order to set up our new home. Electricity, water, cell phone providers, Internet , Tv and banking accounts, just to name a few off the top of my head. And let’s not forget, our Spanish is farrrrr from fluent, so whoever is trying to deal with us may be frustrated by the inefficiency of our grasp of their language, ha, ha! We expect to run into many issues and often frustrating inefficiencies. The whole,” mañana ” thing will likely cause some serious eye rolling from these Gringos. But I for one, plan to remember that frustrating inefficiency abounds everywhere! The thing that kept Scott and me sane yesterday during that long, long telephone call for such a simple transaction, was a sense of humor! Yep! We were laughing at how absurd and unbelievable the situation was. So I’m sure there will be moments when we are tired and frustrated but hopefully patience and humor will override anger and frustration! Maybe “Deep Breathing”, too?