Monday 1 April 2013

Time zones.

The arbitrary nature of time becomes very obvious on board a cruiser! Time is after all a human invention, tied to the movement of tides, the moon....and of course the sun. We have invented 7 days a week , and 24 hours a day to make our lives orderly and fit in with each other.

This is very apparent on a ship crossing through tropical and equatorial time zones without blinking!

This time for instance on our way out we crossed the international date line after Samoa and that week we lost a Wednesday. We adjusted fine....who needs one? On the way back though we had two Wednesdays straight after each other!

We are now involved in setting the time right for getting home to Britain! There is a five hour time difference between London and New York! The traditional way of getting this right is to warn us to move our watches forward by an hour each night. This time though we are trying something new!

We are moving our watches forward an hour every day at 12 noon, instead of when we are going to bed! This caught some people out yesterday who hadn't noticed! Previously though some of us attended events we were not intending to having missed the time correction!

This is intended to be easier than jet lag which happens when you fly!

It is very interesting how we play with time here......perhaps we could fast forward into summer if we really tried!

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