Sunday, May 22, 2011

The Trouble With Time Zones

Written from Greece (and with a computer that keeps trying desperately to change my writing into Greek font):

The biggest issue with time zones is that the second I leave my usual zone, I have no idea what time it really is. Usually, when in the United States, it isn't so bad, because my phone (bless you, technology) usually updates immediately to the proper time. However, when traveling farther afield, like say...maybe Greece... I'm completely lost. This far out of its comfort zone, my phone can take days to "automatically" change to the correct time. I could change it myself manually, but then I'd actually have to know what time it is myself, which is the whole reason I need the clock on the phone anyways.

Now, of course, I could be old school, and use my watch like a normal person. But that is in Philadelphia time... which I'm not in anymore. Using the power of google, I determined that I am 7 hours ahead... Shouldn't be too hard then to figure out the time, right? Wrong. I can't do anything that involves numbers with any degree of certainty. So sure seven hours difference. So off I go to calculating and I get... 1:45am. Yeah...that should be fine...right? Hrm, well its a weird time, since its sunny out, and it really doesn't feel like the middle of the night. Must have done my time calculations in the wrong direction.

Then that's only half the problem. When I finally get everything set in Greece-time, I still have to figure out what time it is in the States so I can talk to my friends and family. But wait! They're in two different time zones, three hours apart. And then I'm completely lost.

Since I'm not a sun dial, its hard to me to accurately figure out what time it is. Yes, night = dark and day = light, but 11am and 4pm look pretty much the same when it comes down to it. I need to be like NASA with three different clocks displaying the different time zones I need to think about, to save me from my own calculation errors.

Certainly, it wouldn't do at all to just abolish time zones altogether, but there has got to be a better way than this madness! Everyone on the planet experiencing different times all at once? When you think about it, its kind of weird. And also, if you get a good look at a map with the time zone lines on it, that stuff is whack. Russia is split up every two hours instead of every one hour, India is on the half hour when all of its neighbors are one the hour, and the lines meander crazily about the map. Shouldn't they just be straight and uniform? Granted, I'm an idiot when it comes to numbers, but it seems like there's a lot of ways for a lot of people to get confused here.

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