Warped
28 September 2014 | En Route to Vava'u, Tonga
Sunday 28 or Monday 29 September 2014
We're en route from Niue to Vava'u and don't know what day it is. We left Niue yesterday, Saturday, and will arrive Tonga tomorrow, Tuesday. Huh? Have a reasonably good grasp of the time, but that day thing has us stumped. You see, Tonga is east of the Date Line, but pretend they're not and got everyone to go along. Time starts at Greenwich, England, to go west 11 and east 12 hours to 180 degrees east. For those proficient in math this adds up to 24 hours (does too, you forgot to add in Greenwich Time, hour zero) and, fortuitously, that's exactly the length of one Earth rotation. Pretty sure the Brits did this on purpose so the 3 hours of "prime" time TV would remain convenient to watch between dinner and bedtime. So, everyone else adds or subtracts (normally, but not always) in hour increments from the zero degree, "prime" meridian, up to 12 hours... except Tonga. They add 13. Niue is minus 11 - same time, different day. A very friendly and normally agreeable people, Tongans are apparently willing to spurn world order just to be on the same day as New Zealand and don't seem perturbed that they're 3 hours later (pretend daylight time is just a myth). We've adapted to the situation by pretending today is Sunday so we can have banana pancakes and don't mind losing Monday as it's generally considered a pretty sucky day, anyway.
"A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure." - Segal's Law
Jack