Someday is Panama
I’ve been living in the US for the last year and now that I have to leave the country I’m taking this as an opportunity to travel across Latin America. I use Panama City as a starting point for this: Easy to reach from New York, cheap flights, US dollars are accepted as the national currency, everything is quite simple. In addition, the country of Panama is in the same time zone as New York when I left.
My onward flight to Colombia is scheduled for 11:40am, so I plan on getting a taxi around 9:45-10:00am – which is about within what my airline suggests as the airport is about 15 minutes from my hotel away. On the day of departure, I go to breakfast at 8:30 a.m. – my suitcase isn’t packed yet, but everything else is settled. I don’t look at the clock anymore, go back to my room and click around a bit more on the web. Sudden panic: My computer says it’s already 10:20 am! I frantically throw everything in my suitcase, hope I don’t forget anything and run to the reception to check out. Then I immediately look at my cell phone to call the Uber to the airport. But: it’s only 9:25 am? I first ask for the connection so as not to lose any more time (as with all my trips, the driver will be there in less than 2 minutes).
In the taxi, I then do some research: In the USA, there was a changeover to daylight saving time in the night from Saturday to Sunday, but that doesn’t exist in Panama. My cell phone was not affected by the time change in my country of origin, but my computer had not yet noticed that I had changed the time zone and put the system clock forward one hour. In my memory, however, the computer is often a little hesitant to find the right time, so I didn’t expect overzealous corrections right away. Turns out, the laptop didn’t even have permission to use the location data to find the time zone:
I can’t say why it’s set up that way, but as a result I’m already at the gate an hour and a half before departure.
(Feathers McGraw)