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What Time is it?
When you’re traveling, getting the time
right can be crucial. Unfortunately, time-keeping is one of the
trickier aspects of traveling, as thousands of people discover
each year when they miss their flights, schedule appointments on the
wrong day
or inadvertently call a client in the middle
of the night.
When trying to figure out the time in say London or Singapore, the
first thing most people take into account is the time zone.
Theoretically, the world is sliced into 24 neat wedges, each of
which is an hour’s difference from each other. By convention, the
times in each wedge, or time zone, is offset from the time on the
main clock in Greenwich, which gives the Greenwich Mean Time, or
GMT. So theoretically, every city in every time zone running to the
east of Greenwich should be GMT + 1, GMT + 2, etc, while all those
to the west are GMT – 1, GMT - 2 and so on. Sounds simple enough?
Read on.
Confusing Time Zones Around the World
Keeping track of the time zones may seem relatively easy, especially
if you have a good map, but the tricky bit comes when crossing state
and/or country borders, because due to local political and
geographical practicalities, most countries have their own
peculiarities. For example, Russia, being such a vast country,
covers all of 11 time zones, while China, which is even more vast,
uses just 1 time zone (UTC + 8). Though it makes it easier for
visitors to China to adjust, it does mean that in parts of the
country, you can get sunrise at 9am and sunset at 10pm.
Then there’s the Malaysia – Thailand border, where countless
travellers have found out with dismay that the two countries, though
neighbors, do not share the same time zone. Malaysia is one hour
ahead of Thailand, thanks to a political decision made in the 1960s
so that Peninsular Malaysia would share the same time zone as the
two Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak, which are located on
Borneo further to the east. Incidentally, this is why Singapore
shares the same time zone as Malaysia; as until 1965, the island was
a part of the Federation of Malaya, and after their secession, the
Singaporeans chose to keep the same time zone.
Russia is a particularly good example of how political decisions
affect time-keeping, as in 1930, in accordance with a Soviet
directive, the clocks in Moscow were put ahead by one hour, creating
Moscow Time, which is 3 hours ahead of Greenwich Meridian Time.
Every other major city in Russia sets its clock to take Moscow Time
into account, so that today the local time in each city can be
anywhere from ahead to behind its GMT by anywhere from half an hour
to one hour - except in the former Soviet Republics Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
Another deviation from the neat, 24-time zone model is the
half-hour time zone, which is best illustrated by Australia,
where travellers moving east to west or vice versa have to take into
account both the normal hourly Eastern and Western time zones and
the Central half-hour zones. Australia isn’t the only place where
half-hour time zones occur however; Newfoundland in the United
States is the other famous example. Iran, Afghanistan, India and
Myanmar also have areas where this is, officially, in effect (of
course, in these countries, the local concept of time is much more
flexible, so a half-hour difference give or take has far less impact
than it would in the States or Australia). Most unusual of all is
Nepal, which offsets its clocks not by a neat hour, or half hour –
but by 15 minutes (GMT + 5:45).
Dealing With Daylight Saving Time
Another issue to take into account when figuring out the time is
Daylight Saving Time (DST), a time-adjustment method that is
used in many locations around the world. In countries where DST is
in effect, clocks are put forward one hour in spring at the end of
March, and one hour back in autumn at the end of October (hence the
phrase, ‘spring forward, fall back’), theoretically to take greater
advantage of available natural light during the summer months.
Unfortunately, the real-life situation isn’t as simple.
Though most major industrialized country (in a temperate region)
will observe DST, Japan is famous for refusing to do so. Countries
in the tropical regions almost never bother to, since they have more
than enough sunlight already. In countries that do observe DST, not
every state within it will do so; for example, in the United States,
Hawaii doesn’t follow DST because it is tropical, but neither does
Arizona and parts of Indiana. In Canada, most of Saskatchewan
famously refused to follow DST, while many of its other cities have
to deal with a tricky combination DST with Mountain Time, Central
Time and Eastern or Western Time. The time-keeping problem also gets
complicated when a state decides that it doesn’t want to follow DST
anymore, or vice-versa; the most famous example is Arizona, which
decided to get rid of DST in 1995 – except for its Navajo Indian
Reservation, which still follows DST.
And to add the finishing touch, not all countries go on DST at the
same time. For example, British DST begins on the last Sunday of
March and ends on the last Sunday of October, while American DST
starts on the first Sunday of April and the last Sunday of October;
so traveling from the US to Britain in the last week of October can
be a disorienting experience if you’re not prepared for it.
Keeping Track of the Workweek
Not only do some places keep different times, they also keep
different days as well, or more specifically, different work days.
Though most of the Western world considers Sunday to be the day of
rest, in other places, the rest day falls on Friday, while in others
it takes place on Saturday. The differing idea of when the rest day
falls all depends on the religion practiced by the locals.
In many (but not all) Muslim majority countries, the holiest day is
Friday, so the weekend takes place of Thursday and Friday,
and the workweek begins on Sunday. This is the case throughout most
of Arabia and in the state of Kelantan in Malaysia. In Israel, the
Jewish Sabbath begins at sundown on Friday and ends at
sundown on Saturday and for the Israelis, the weekend is from Friday
to Saturday, with the workweek starting on Sunday.
Though some companies in both regions will operate according to the
Sunday-rest day model, most notably the multinationals, many of the
smaller local companies follow the local rest-day traditions, and as
many busy executives have discovered to their chagrin, it doesn’t
pay to try and do business on the wrong day.
Keeping Track of the Year
If dealing with time isn’t enough trouble, you may also have to take
the year into account as well. Don’t look now, but depending on
which part of the world you’re in, this might not be 2006. If you’re
in certain parts of the Middle East or Africa for example, this is
the year Hegira 1427, while in China you would consider it the Year
of the Dog. The reason for all the confusion is because there’s at
least three major calendars being used around the world today; and
if you’ve noticed that much the hullabaloo has to do with religion
(or culture, in China’s case), then you’d be right.
In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII revised the old Roman, or Julian,
calendar that was in use then, so that it followed a solar year
of 365.2422 days per year. Since most of the western world at the
time was Catholic-dominated, the Gregorian calendar, as it
was called, came to be the predominant method of time-keeping in
most – but not all – of the West. Many Orthodox countries however
refused to change to the new calendar, and for a long time kept to
the Julian calendar. Many of these countries only agreed to change
to the Gregorian calendar in the last century, and even today, many
countries, such as Greece and Ukraine, still use the older calendar
to keep track of their traditional events.
Though the Gregorian calendar follows the solar year, another
equally ancient and established form of time-keeping is the lunar
calendar, and outside of Europe and the Americas, it is still
widely used, either as a standalone calendar or in conjunction with
the Gregorian calendar. Many of the more developed countries in
Asia, such as China, Korea and Thailand, follows the joint-calendar
method, with the Gregorian used for purely business and civil
administration purposes, while timing the many traditional holidays
using the lunar calendar. This is why the dates for the major
events, such as Ramadhan and the Harvest Festival, are always
changing. It’s worth noting however that even if the official policy
of the country is to use the Gregorian calendar, oftentimes the
further away you go from the cities and more developed areas, the
more likely you are to find the locals using the traditional methods
of time keeping.
If you’re in the Middle East however, be prepared to completely give
up the Gregorian calendar, as many of the Arabian countries use only
the lunar Islamic calendar, which takes its starting point
from the month the Prophet Muhammad emigrated from Mecca to Medina.
In the more cosmopolitan areas such as Dubai, visitors can see
calendars dated as well as 2006, but the further away from the
cities, the less likely this becomes. Incidentally, since the lunar
year is about 11 days shorter than the solar year, Islamic festivals
will usually shift about 11 days earlier in each successive solar
year.
And all of the above are
just a few of the better known examples of exceptions and anomalies
when it comes to figuring out the time in another part of the world.
So, the next time you make an appointment in the Ukraine, or decide
to go on a holiday in Vietnam, do triple-check the dates to make
sure you don't make a costly, or embarrassing, mistake!
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