Panama Day 4: Learning on the job

So that didn't go as well as planned.

Last time I posted, I was awaiting the arrival of University of Panama biologist Ariel Rodriguez for an interview on fresh water salinization.

Well, it's 8 p.m., and I'm still waiting...

I'm not quite sure what happened, but it seems that Rodriguez isn't going to show up. Natalia and I hung around in the lobby for nearly an hour after the scheduled meeting time, but it was of no use. And, conveniently, the cell phone number that we have for him did not work. I don't know how that happened.

I do know that Rodriguez was out of the country and flying back into Panama this afternoon, and was going to drive straight to the hotel from the airport to meet us. In fact, according to Natalia (who spoke with him over the phone last week to set up the meeting), he was quite excited about it. But, I guess this just goes to show that things happen and, in this profession, you have to be prepared for the unexpected.

While the lack of this interview is definitely a setback and will surely affect our visual presentation of the story (we were planning on producing a video), I'm confident that we can still reach Ariel once returning to Miami by e-mail or phone (we're leaving tomorrow morning so rescheduling is not possible). We won't have the video footage that we hoped for, but we'll just have to make adjustments as journalists all over are forced to do each and every day.

While I'm not exactly thrilled that this, our final interview of the trip, did not work out, it was definitely a good lesson to learn early on in my career. Things happen and you have to be prepared for the unexpected.