Sunday
2 January 2000
Yesterday Ma and I were watching TV and the Corona beer Christmas
ad came on. You know the one. It's a night shot of little beach house with a
bunch of palm trees silhouetted against the sky, and at the end one
of the palm trees lights up like a Christmas tree. Then in the corner of
the screen it says, "Feliz Navidad from Corona Beer." Ma says to me,
"What's that?" "What's what?" "What's it say?" "Feliz Navidad," says
I. "Oh. What's that?" "Ma--! They must've
played the song Feliz Navidad on the radio (Ma listens to the
radio in the car) about a bazillion times in the past month! Where
have you been for the past 79 years?!" "I don't know" says she.
"Ma..." says I, "how can you be so oblivious?"
Well, I guess we're all oblivious to some extent, to some things...
Until tonight I never knew that there's more than one time zone
that operates on the half-hour. I knew about the time zone that
runs down the middle of Australia where the time difference is
-9.5 hours from Zulu Time
(GMT)--
Sometimes, when I'm bored, I set
my computer time to that time zone and switch languages, too. Makes
me feel like I'm traveling.-- But I never knew there were other
places that operated on the half hour-- like India. Or that in Arab
countries they set their clocks to midnight at sundown. And I
never even suspected that there's a place in South America-- looks
like Guyana-- that has a "variation other than half an hour from
Standard Time." What does that mean? What time do they think
it is? I wonder...
And I wonder how I could have gone all this long time without
knowing all this.
Do you know what time it is?
Official U.S. Time
World Time
Both sites have cool sun clocks.
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