Memories

Memories is a type of song or sound, which captured my attention on day one.

I remember I would walk into school and memorize everything I knew about the song. It only happened once, the song “Samba Madness” was in the background playing while I did my lessons.

It became a part of me. I would study the song before I walked in and would sing along. It became a part of me. I never stopped studying the song and sang along with a few words in the background.

The song is a Latin dance to show off. I like dancing. It shows off my Latin culture.

The original song is sung by José Letizia Gonçalves. I remember studying some songs with a fellow peer at school, I would practice different songs or rhythms. We would talk about our favourite songs and learn different sounds and feelings.

We were best friends.

We became much more than friends. We became both friends and partners. We worked together as production assistants and back sound engineers.

We literally were the two people in the company, we worked in secret, as we hid the more important part of the company and the projects that mattered more.

As Panamanians, we never left our country, as long as the border of Panamania and Panama went open. We never left our country as long as the Panamanian and United States remained to work together.

As studio engineers and Panamanians, we were very strict about working together with our Panamanian colleagues. Of course, we were respectful to our Panamanian employers too, with better-paid and better living conditions in the US as well. But we always worked together with Panamanian colleagues.

That was my job when I worked with Jose Letizia Gonçalves. But once we moved on to be production assistants. The two studios worked together as a team as we were back sound engineers at the same studio.

Our production assistants were the most fun at work as we could get into a good mood and enjoy our working day as a group.

We prepared our meals together in the studio as a team, we asked for recipes and watched funny videos on Youtube. We made lists of to-do’s and studied reports on the project that needed approval.

If it was our fourth day, we made sure our stories were the last day as a group, at least, we share the responsibility with the other production assistants, if not, we start work on our separate projects and leave it up to the other production assistants if they are lazy or need help.

If we finished on day 4, we took a break, usually on the day’s last date. We liked to finish on Friday. We have a saying “tomorrow never belongs to the ones who wait”. The saying explains why we made sure that we finished on Friday.

We had our lunches before the last record to eat. We enjoyed our morning lunch together. We looked forward to working that morning and spent time with our bosses, testing the work.

We had a drink for every recording session to celebrate our listening on Friday. It was a communal activity. We received bottles of wine that broke our hearts. We had the after-work drinks. We made a small party to celebrate being back at work.

And then the morning show. It's a night routine. And then more night routine.

It was difficult to get from work to school, but we strived to make everything go as smooth as possible. We fought like hell to make things happen and we never failed.

We moved between our own little worlds, like a friendship that you can only build on work and school.

Our working lives in Panama became very difficult because we worked in Panama City, which felt like an international city. We lived in Panama City and the feeling you have for the people in Panama still reminds you of the small town you have lived in since you are a child.

We don’t like to have as many conversations with more people around us, we prefer to go to bars and restaurants alone. We want to isolate ourselves from our friends. We don’t want to go out that much. We don’t want to go home on a Saturday night.

We have already worked enough hours in Panamania. So, we are not going to spend Sunday night partying because it is a trip back to our Panamanian way of life.