I’m probably one of the few people out there who hate taking the Long Island Rail Road to the city. Whenever I take the train, I feel like I’m sitting there squeezed into a tight spot and can’t move. I can’t read my paper because it always seems to annoy someone and when I play my ipod I get the nudge from the passenger sitting next to me that it’s too loud. So, typically, I sit there, look out the window and think, “when are we going to get there!”

When I take my car, it’s a different story. I sit in my plush driver’s chair, turn on either satellite radio or my ipod and relax. Even if there is traffic, I alway think this is the better way.

So, when Allie Herzog, my Coordinator of New Media Services, asked me to join her on the train yesterday to our city office, I hesitated.

“I don’t know why you don’t like taking the train in,” she said. “It really is relaxing.”

I met her in Long Beach on the 7:23 am into the city. It was a direct train. We sat in the first car but didn’t get a window seat. We started to chat quietly about HJMT and strategies for some of our clients. The woman sitting on the other side of Allie, who was changing her band aid, kept looking over at us with annoying stares. The woman diagonally across from us, wearing a green and white spring coat and oversized gaudy gold ring, said, “you guys need to tone it down a bit. We’re trying to relax over here.”

“We can’t talk?” I asked her.

“Just keep it down,” she said in a condescending way.

So, we kept talking but this time we whispered. Believe or not, she still complained. I guess people who ride the train in the morning want to feel like their in their own cars alone…

The day got better. In the evening, Allie and I sat on an Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) panel to give a seminar to the group on Blogs and Social Media. Although there weren’t many people, the seminar really provoked some interesting conversations. A few of us went out for dinner afterwards.

I just joined EO. My friend and client, Rob Levin from the New York Enterprise Report, referred me to the group. And I’m glad he did. I really liked meeting the people at the seminar last night. I can definitely see that it will be a good experience.

I generally hate those cards that the stores give out.  You know the ones they give out at CVS, Walbaums, St0p and Shop and Blockbuster!  Every time I get a card, and it seems lately that I get one all the time, I end up shoving them in my wallet and then loosing them because my wallet is so stuffed up with membership cards.

I have more membership cards in my wallet than I do pictures of my kids!  Even the nail place gives me membership cards.  “If you buy 10 manicures, you get one free,” the nail technician says to me.

Okay, so now I have “fifty million of these cards” and I never have them when I need them.  About a month ago, I was in Barnes & Noble looking for a book for my son.  He demanded that I come home with this particular book or else he wasn’t going to school!  (BTW, I never liked getting yelled out so I totally understood!)

When I got there, the woman behind the counter talked me into getting a membership card.  However, this one wasn’t free.  “You know, you’ll make it up after your fifth book and anyway, you’ll save money on every book you buy no matter what,” she said.

A bargain, I thought.  Okay, I’ll get it.  So I dished out $25 to get this membership card so that I can get discounts on all the books I purchase there.

Before this card, I hardly ever went to Barnes & Noble.  I would purchase books on line via Amazon.  But now, I have the Barnes & Noble card, so I’m going to purchase as many books as I can to get that discount!

If you ask anyone, including my daughter, they will tell you that the only books I read are business books – marketing books, leadership books, management books, recruitment books and so on.  So, when Lori Alexy, my supervisor of event planning at HJMT COMMUNICATIONS, LLC, recommended, “Eat Pray Love,” written by Elizabeth Gilbert to me I smirked.  I don’t read those kinds of books, I said.  “Read it, you’ll really love it,” she said.

Now, I’m totally entrenched in the book.  I read about Liz’s trials and tribulations in her bad marriage and her breakup with her boyfriend.  I read about her time in Italy where the food was fabulous and she gained a ton of weight while learning the Italian Language. (BTW, my son wants to take Italian in school instead of Spanish.  Personally, I think Spanish is a bit more useful but he wants to go to Italy and converse with the citizens there.)

Then I read about her spiritual awaking in India, which I was thinking would be a cool thing to do for me!  Yoga and prayer eight hours a day with very little contact to the outside world could be just the very thing I need!

And now, she’s in Indonesia with her medicine man friend.  I still have about a 100 pages to go but I’m really enjoying this book.  So Kudos Elizabeth Gilbert for hitting the “nail in the head” and touching people like me who only think about work and read only business books….

We just went to dinner at an amazing restaurant in Panama City. Called, Market, close to Uraguay street, the restaurant was a NYC chic restaurant serving an assortment of fine wines from around the country along with amazing steaks!

I had a black angus filet mignon. It was better than a Ruth Chris Steakhouse steak! Along with the steak, we had creamy mashed potatoes, garlic creamed spinach, and cheesy mac and cheese! Wow! It was totally amazing and well worth the recommendation.

In addition to the amazing meal, we ordered a bottle of Chilean Carmen Reserve Merlot. At first, I didn’t like the acidic taste, but after a glass, I was really enjoying it. We finished the bottle with no problem!

The brownie with vanilla ice cream con a capuccino was a great finale! Kudos to the chefs and the wait staff at Market Restaurant in Panama!

I’ll say that most of the meals were outrageous. As a matter of fact, I think I gained 20 pounds! Time to diet again!!!

We’re on the plane coming home from our week in Panama. And, we really enjoyed ourselves.

Panama is not like Costa Rica at all! It is very unique and has it’s own charm. What struck me about Panama is that there are two classes – very poor or very rich. I thought that was interesting because we kept going through these desolated neighborhoods with burned out buildings, laundry hanging from the balcony which was also dilapidated and people wandering the streets with what looked like no place to go.

Then we would go through very wealthy areas filled with nice restaurants and shops. There really was a wide disparity. The rich drove BMW’s while the poor stood on lines around the corner for the bus. Sometimes, some would get lucky and catch a ride on a back of a pickup truck.

One little boy, with big brown eyes, approached me when we pulled over to an actually beautiful section of Panama, called Casco Viejo. “Usted dinero?” he asked. He kept repeating the word; “dinero” and then I realized that he was looking for money. He was such a handsome little boy, but I shook my head and walked away. (I still feel a little guilty about not giving him money. But I kept seeing so many hard working people on the hot streets either fixing roads, fixing buildings or patrolling the sidewalks, that I thought that there could be opportunities for him. Why wasn’t he in Escuela like the rest of the children?

The other thing that struck me about Panama is that it is a country of rainforest and nature and yet, there were so many billboards in the natural habitat that I felt like there was something wrong with that picture.

The last place that we stayed before heading to the Sheraton was the Intercontinental Playa Bonita on the beach in the Pacific Ocean. While sunbathing, I started to talk with a few of the women sitting next to me. (It was rare to hear English spoken anywhere!)

“Don’t go into the ocean,” a woman from the state of Washington told me. “We were reading that the ocean is polluted because of the Panama Canal. It’s very dangerous.”

Isn’t there something wrong with this picture? Isn’t this an oxymoron? Billboards in the rainforest, a beautiful ocean and heat like you never felt in your life and you can’t go in?

And then there was the politics. I thought the U.S. had a lot of politics. Wow! There’s a big presidential election coming up in 2009. So there were billboards all over the place for Juan Carlos Navarro. There were some signs for a woman called Balbina and still very few signs for another Juan Hernandez

We saw the house that the president lives. I can only understand why someone might want to run!

The art was pretty cool too! I’m a big art person. I don’t really know what I’m looking at, but when I see something I love, I buy it.

While we were walking through the area of Casco Viejo, with a very friendly police officer, we saw vendors selling bracelets, necklaces, whistles, and quilts. Some even sold their artwork. So I decided to buy three for $20!

(BTW, The police officer acted as our tour guide showing us all around the area. It was the oddest thing ever. He was very nice. As a matter of fact, the people in general were very nice and very accommodating, even if many didn’t know English.)

When we got to the Sheraton, I noticed an art gallery in the lobby. I was sipping a cup of afternoon java when I saw a woman looking at a photo of the rainforest. It was really nothing much — just a bunch of trees and a blue sky with clouds. That was it. Okay, so why are they standing there staring at this thing? I really couldn’t understand it.

“Look over there,” I said to Derek, my son. “That woman is debating on whether or not to buy that painting.” She was standing there for almost a half hour with two women holding the painting. The women looked tired and bored and the woman kept looking and commenting.

“Maybe she’s debating on whether or not to buy it,” he said.

Monkey Island

When he left with Brian to go to the pool, I strolled into the gallery to see what they had. I wasn’t looking to buy anything. I just wanted to look. Famous last words!

I ended up buying a painting of a woman who had birds and trees coming out of her hair. It just appealed to me.

“She looks just like you,” Merry Palma, the owner of the gallery said to me.

“I don’t think so, but I really like this one.” I said.

She called over a few people and in Spanish asked if they thought the girl in the painting looked like me. They felt uncomfortable because she looks nothing like me, and they didn’t say anything.

I promised her that once I took the painting back to my office and if anyone asked if that was me, I would write to her and let her know.

Oh Panama…. Just another page in the book….Cemetary in Panama

When we were in Panama, most of the television stations were in Spanish. Those that weren’t had Spanish subtitles. On one of the English speaking stations, during the commercials, a band called, El Curteto de Nos, would come on and play their hit song, “Ya No Se Que Hacer Conmingo.”

The first time we heard the song, we liked it. Each time, thereafter, we started to learn the tune and although we couldn’t sing along, we could bop along!

I just downloaded the album, Raro, on my ipod and the entire album is outstanding!

It’s classified “Latin,” but it’s more like Franz Ferdinand than anything else I’ve recently heard. Each song is accessible. And, although you have no idea what they are saying, unless you are bilingual, the music is hip, modern and very now. It’s definitely worth a buy!