{"id":534426,"date":"2015-12-18T14:26:38","date_gmt":"2015-12-18T14:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.webuildvalue.com\/uncategorized\/l-amico-segreto-di-panama.html"},"modified":"2020-10-25T10:23:18","modified_gmt":"2020-10-25T10:23:18","slug":"panama-s-secret-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.webuildvalue.com\/en\/reportage\/panama-s-secret-friend.html","title":{"rendered":"Panama\u2019s Secret Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The secret friend can be anybody. You arrive at the office and you find a present on your desk, but you don\u2019t know who put it there.<\/strong> Only when Christmas approaches, at the end of the game, is the name finally revealed.\u201d
Biagio Fiorino<\/strong>, who for a year and a half has been working in administration and budget on the construction site of the new Panama Canal, explains about how they are celebrating the Christmas festivities <\/strong>at one of the most complex and ambitious infrastructure projects undertaken in the world.
\u201cWe play this game with all our colleagues. Everyone pulls a name of his secret friend for whom they must buy a present without this friend knowing who they are.<\/strong> The identity of who gave the present is revealed only at the end.\u201d
\u201cIt\u2019s a very fun atmosphere,\u201d he adds. \u201cThis morning, for example, I had to do a $3 present for a colleague. So if now I go to the restroom, maybe I come back and find something on my desk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"panama1\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This is how they are passing the final days ahead of the holiday season in Panama where they are working on the Canal that will allow for the passage of big ships carrying 13,000 containers. Their traffic will generate $6 billion in revenue a year by 2025 for the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe respect the local tradition,\u201d Fiorino says. \u201cThen we add decorations in the office and before going for the holidays we organize a party for everybody<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His Venezuelan wife, Sikiu, like every year, will prepare dishes that are typical of Venezuela like pan de jamon (ham bread) accompanied by foods from Venezuela, Panama and Italy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their family is modern and multiethnic. \u201cMy wife and I, we had our first daughter in 2013, born in Venezuela,\u201d he says. \u201cIn November of this year, our second was born in Panama.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They will celebrate together with other colleagues who are staying in Panama, each one bringing food that is typical of their respective countries. \u201cBefore we say goodbye, we always arrange a buffet, usually the 22nd<\/sup>, 23rd of the month. We put on the table different foods, from red beans to sausages, rice to fruit and vegetables.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"panama2_en\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Others have already left to pass the holidays in their home countries. Eugenio Marini did that after celebrating Christmas on site for four years.<\/strong> He is an Italian who has been living 20 years in Thailand \u2013 the last 16 married to Chalita, a Thai.
\u201cI arrived in Panama on April 1, 2011,\u201d he says. \u201cI celebrated four Christmases on site \u2013 two with my wife and two without her.<\/strong> Usually we celebrate the season with friends. We meet up at each other\u2019s homes and celebrate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marini, who in Panama is the storehouse manager on both the Atlantic and Pacific, this year has decided to spend it in Thailand where he lives 300 kilometres from Bangkok.
\u201cEven though this is a country that is mostly Buddhist, my wife and I celebrate Christmas as tradition would have it. We often do it with our foreigner friends who live near us. It might seem incredible, but this year I bought panettone,\u201d he says, referring to the Italian version of a fruitcake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The secret friend can be anybody. You arrive at the office and you find a present on your desk, but you don\u2019t know who put it there. Only when Christmas approaches, at the end of the game, is the name finally revealed.\u201dBiagio Fiorino, who for a year and a half has been working in administration and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":534421,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[19002,19013],"yst_prominent_words":[5081,13471,14799,2189,696,5359,13454,16974],"class_list":["post-534426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reportage","tag-new-challenges","tag-north-and-south-america"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webuildvalue.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webuildvalue.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webuildvalue.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webuildvalue.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webuildvalue.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534426"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.webuildvalue.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":542214,"href":"https:\/\/www.webuildvalue.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534426\/revisions\/542214"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webuildvalue.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webuildvalue.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webuildvalue.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webuildvalue.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534426"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webuildvalue.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=534426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}