Sunday 1 January 2017

the island of the day before

Year in and year out, as the Earth’s rotation marks the procession of the hours around the globe—although with geo-political license that apportions certain time zones to one area and groups national entities, especially those comprised of disperse archipelago and the divisions aren’t smoothly radiating from pole to pole—one’s given to wonder how it might feel to live in a place that’s off-set from the rest (majority of the population, perhaps, but there are quite a few of these zones and ones that describe great swathes of the Earth’s surface) by a half-hour and even rarer lesser increments.
Any readers in those places, please let us know your thoughts. Would it be strange and jarring to be synchronised at the top of the hour or does it even register? Maybe that is by turns convenient and awkward for scheduling and meeting dead-lines.  Though probably not longer than living memory Tonga (UTC +13:00) and New Zealand’s Chatham Islands (UTC +12:45), places which are sadly usually covered up by the frontispieces of globes, have lied precarious close to the international date line, the edge of tomorrow—by convention—and now are afforded times later than, ahead of the neighbouring, relatively neighbourless waters, which to my mind would push them into tomorrow, instead of just later that day. We’re eager to hear from any residents of Nuku’alofa or Waitangi or anyone else that might have some insight into this perplexing situation.