Never the latitudes and the longitudes played a pivotal role in my life. For me, they were just another lesson in my elementary geography course. Learnt one day, poured in the paper the next day and forgotten later on. My change in relationship status from single to committed has made me suddenly more aware of the global time zones and the technicalities involved in trying to talk to someone on a different time zone. The process that I followed earlier to see what time it is has few more additional steps. I subtract 4.5 hrs from the current Indian time and mentally figure if the daylight saving has started or not in London
I have realized, it is not political boundaries nor race neither religion nor culture that divide the world but the segregation is according to the time one follows. It is the world of ESTians, CSTians, ISTians , GMTians etc. People in the same time zone follow the same routine. They wake up approximately at the same time, their work hours are almost parallel and their leisure time coincides with each other. An alliance among people in the same time zone set is the most convenient, easiest and beautiful one. The trouble is for those who are from two different sets trying to make their courtship as memorable as can be. I am in the latter category who would like to modify the line ‘Distance makes heart go fonder’ to ‘Distance makes connecting with one another longer’.
The communication more seems like the one we experimented as kids, with two cans attached to one another with a string. The excitement is the same, as the kid at each end experiences just the difference is that the string is the internet the two cans are my ThinkPad and his Mac respectively. The glitches faced to connect are paramount, or they seem to be. When the free time coincides, the internet slows down, if the net is fast, a sudden power failure happens. Each glitch acts as the new age villain for us. Skype seems the only savior amongst the baddies. I am sure the idea to have a technology like Skype must have germinated in the mind of those who were in the same boat as me.
Time Zones, not only act as deterrents for two people in love but also as the world goes flatter in terms of work and the concept of cloud computing steps in, arranging a meeting when the team is widely distributed around the globe can be havoc for the chairperson. Picture this, how to coordinate the perfect time for people to meet on a web conference when one sits in Australia , the other in India , one in UK and one somewhere in USA
