It's About Time

I wanted to call my friend to wish him happy birthday. He lives in US Mountain Standard Time. Eastern Standard time is a perfect 12 hours behind, so MST would be 14 hours behind. But last night the clocks changed back for the end of daylight savings time. So MST would be 15 hours behind, except it was already Sunday here, but still Saturday there, so the clocks hadn't changed yet. My head hurt from all the math. (It turns out I didn't have his phone number saved in my Google contacts so I couldn't call him anyways.) And don't get me started on figuring out what time it is in Europe...

Western Australia does not do daylight savings time. The farmers believe it would mess up the cows, or something. What this means is that it gets light really early and dark early. Plus Perth is on the Western side of the time zone, so everything is shifted earlier. I adjusted to the time difference within a week of moving here, but my circadian clock still hasn't quite adapted to daylight hours figured out. I'll be riding my bike or going for a run at 6:00 am and it's broad daylight. My body is quite positive it's already 9:00 am and I'm late for work. And there's still over a month of it getting brighter earlier and earlier. I'll be able to go for a 2 hour bike ride in full daylight and still be in work by 7 (If I chose to get up at 4:30 with the sun).

The sun lights up the city before 5:45 am

 And it's already hiding below the horizon at 6:45 pm

 By 7:15 pm the lights of the city are in full twinkle.

This description of the time mess in Australia from Wikipedia illustrates it perfectly.

"The choice of whether to use daylight saving time (DST) in Australia is a matter for the individual states and territories. In 1971, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, and the Australian Capital Territory followed Tasmania by observing daylight saving. Western Australia and the Northern Territory did not. Queensland abandoned daylight saving time in 1972. Queensland and Western Australia have observed daylight saving over the past 40 years from time to time on trial bases.

New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia observe DST every year. This has resulted in three time zones becoming five during the daylight-saving period. South Australia time becomes UTC+10:30, called Central Daylight Time (CDT), possibly with "Australia" prefixed (ACDT). The time in the southeastern states becomes UTC+11, using "Eastern" in the time zone name, with the abbreviations being EDT or AEDT.

Officially, the change to and from DST takes place at 2:00 am local standard time (which is 3:00 am DST) on the appropriate Sunday. Of the states that observe DST, most began on the last Sunday in October, and ended on the last Sunday in March, until 2008. Tasmania, owing to its further southern latitude) began DST earlier, on the first Sunday in October, and ended on the first Sunday of April.
On 12 April 2007, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory agreed to common starting and finishing dates for DST. From the 2008/09 period, the start of DST in these states and in South Australia commences on the first Sunday in October and ends on the first Sunday in April. Western Australia became the only state to observe daylight saving from the last Sunday in October to the last Sunday in March. Since 2009 Western Australia no longer observes daylight saving."

Thinking about all this time stuff has got me to be a bit existential. Time is all relative. It's tomorrow here and yesterday back home, but if I fly home I get time back but I don't go back in time to relive that day. Minutes and hours are all meaningless but it's experiences and moments that mark the passing of time. That's enough philosophizing for now.