Posts Tagged With: time zones

Away with time zone confusion

How many times has this happened to you? It’s nine o’clock. You’ve had a satisying day at work. You’ve made a wonderful dinner and cleaned up afterwards. You’re happy with your life. You’re happy with the world. You want to reach out and contact an old friend. Why not call Jacques Bonhomme? But wait, he lives in Paris! What time is it in Paris? Does anyone even know? Even Parisians might not. Is he at work? Is he at home? If so, is he sleeping?

Wouldn’t it be nice to know? Would it be easy if it were simply the same time everywhere? Then if it were 8:49 pm, as it is now in my beloved Poway, it would be 8:49 pm in Paris. Merveilleux, c’est trop facile.

Now, I can call Jacques knowing that he’ll be at home and awake.

I know the benefits of having a universal time are immense, but what place shall we use for the universal time?

Poway, California

Why Poway? I live there. It’s my idea. I call dibs. There, it’s settled.

Will this brilliant idea meet with universal approval?

Probably not at first. I go to bed around 10 pm. So will Jacques, because 10 pm is the time most people drift off to sleep. However, the Sun will just be coming up at 10 pm in France under the new Poway Universal Time System (PUTS.)

Jacques and billions of other people need some time (hee, hee see what I did there) to adapt to seeing the moon overhead at lunchtime. Yacht races and other fol de rol will become particularly challenging, not to mention archery contests.

Yet there is hope the teething period with the onset of PUTS will be short and easier than expected.

Afterall, a polar day at the South Pole lasts six months. And you never hear the scientists there explaining.

PUTS starts tomorrow. I hope you find adjustment easy. I know I will.

I see a Nobel Prize in my future.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.