Today I spoke with the other new employee at the office, over lunch (office lunch—a topic for later). She is from China (I think? I don’t want to be ignorant and see someone Asian and automatically say X, but I’m pretty sure). Anyway this is relevant because I said that I was a student at U of Cincinnati, which she didn’t know about. I said that it was in Ohio, “far away,” but she didn’t really know where Ohio was either. Finally I settled on “3 time zones away,” which she understood.
A long time ago I read a book by Cory Doctorow, called Eastern Standard Tribe. I don’t recall my thoughts on the book in full—knowing him, preachy—but the concept of society breaking into time zones, rather than by nation or culture, was interesting. At the time I didn’t think it was plausible, but back then I had never ventured out of Eastern Standard.
Since then I’ve ventured out of -5, staying six months in -6, three months in +1, stood on the Prime Meridian at the Royal Observatory, and now six in -8. Oddly, +1 (6 different) was less noticeable than -8 (3 different), probably because it was different enough to seem like another “place” entirely, while I find myself thinking “It’s X o’clock back home right now” here.
In Eastern, Jonesy would sign offline to go to work at midnight. A convenient time, because I should go to bed soon afterward, but now he signs off at 9! So early! (He pointed out that when I used to go to bed at 11, that was his 9; just as inconvenient, but w/e!)
Don’t really have a conclusion to this, nor a clever witticism to wrap up…
