Losing Time
Today marks the end of Daylight Savings Time in the United Kingdom, which means that the clocks have to be turned one hour back sometime after midnight.
I find it rather distressing that I am losing one hour in such a manner, having it disappear into thin air as such. It is rather different from a displacement one gets from taking long distance airflights, where the time change can be rationalized from the very real fact that you are in a completely different location with corresponding changes in climate, culture and so on. This feels like just having an hour vanish into thin air. I probably shouldn't complain seeing that I had one free hour last October.
This reminds me about how intriguing and indeed slightly unnerving it was having to undergo a shift in daylight patterns while in the UK. Singapore being close to the equator, I was quite used to having 12 hours of daylight everyday, with sunset and sunrise around 7.15am and pm respectively. In the UK of course, the sun sets around 4.30 in winter, and as late as 9pm in the summer. I recall missing dinner in hall one evening because I had totally lost track of the time - I associate dinner back home with the evening darkness, and it was still bright and sunny outside my window then. Even now I am still slightly perturbed by it. It is interesting that this, more than the change in temperature is what seems to affect many Singaporean and Malaysians whilst in the UK.
One can only wonder at the manpower cost it must take to change the time on all the clocks in the country, particularly in Oxford, where each college has large tower clocks and countless others. Not to say that Oxford isn't finicky about time. Christ Church College famously refused to adopt Greenwich Mean Time as the official standardized time across the UK (in the past time was independent of local boundaries). Thus, instead of ringing the bells to summon the undergraduates and to signal the closing of the main gate, which was traditionally done at 9pm, on the hour, they chose to do so at 9.05pm, which was the original time difference from Oxford to London. It must come as to a relief that they, and indeed no other college in Oxford, has resorted to such shennanigans with regards to daylight savings time.
I find it rather distressing that I am losing one hour in such a manner, having it disappear into thin air as such. It is rather different from a displacement one gets from taking long distance airflights, where the time change can be rationalized from the very real fact that you are in a completely different location with corresponding changes in climate, culture and so on. This feels like just having an hour vanish into thin air. I probably shouldn't complain seeing that I had one free hour last October.
This reminds me about how intriguing and indeed slightly unnerving it was having to undergo a shift in daylight patterns while in the UK. Singapore being close to the equator, I was quite used to having 12 hours of daylight everyday, with sunset and sunrise around 7.15am and pm respectively. In the UK of course, the sun sets around 4.30 in winter, and as late as 9pm in the summer. I recall missing dinner in hall one evening because I had totally lost track of the time - I associate dinner back home with the evening darkness, and it was still bright and sunny outside my window then. Even now I am still slightly perturbed by it. It is interesting that this, more than the change in temperature is what seems to affect many Singaporean and Malaysians whilst in the UK.
One can only wonder at the manpower cost it must take to change the time on all the clocks in the country, particularly in Oxford, where each college has large tower clocks and countless others. Not to say that Oxford isn't finicky about time. Christ Church College famously refused to adopt Greenwich Mean Time as the official standardized time across the UK (in the past time was independent of local boundaries). Thus, instead of ringing the bells to summon the undergraduates and to signal the closing of the main gate, which was traditionally done at 9pm, on the hour, they chose to do so at 9.05pm, which was the original time difference from Oxford to London. It must come as to a relief that they, and indeed no other college in Oxford, has resorted to such shennanigans with regards to daylight savings time.
posted by Caleb Liu | 10:51 PM
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