You Can't Make Mistakes.

Lord save us.

Egypt switched out of daylight savings time today. I didn’t know this until we were almost an hour early/late leaving for an appointment.

Oh, by the way, I’m back in Egypt now. Jeff and I arrived in Cairo this past weekend. Sorry about the lack of updates, but I’ve been jet-lagged to the point that I can’t seem to get out of bed before noon, if not 2 or 3. This does not make for very productive days. Regardless, I will write updates of this week’s adventures later.

Back to the daylight savings rules for Egypt.

Egypt goes to daylight savings time at 23:59:59 on the last Thursday in April when the clocks move forward to 01:00:00 on Friday morning, thus skipping an hour in the time-line. Egypt leaves daylight savings time on the last Thursday of September when the clock moves from 23:59:59 to 23:00:00 on the same day. Seems reasonable right?

This is, of course, unless the shift will occur during Ramadan. In years in which this is the case—2006, 2007, 2008—the time changes on the last Thursday before Ramadan. That was, of course, last night. So, I woke up this afternoon, thinking that I had gotten up terribly late, again. But this time I was rewarded with the new knowledge that I had managed to wake up a whole hour earlier than I thought I had.

You think you’re confused? Try being groggy in the afternoon in a hot apartment, blearily looking at your watch, mobile phone and laptop trying to figure out what time it is when none of them match. My watch had run down it’s wind from yesterday a bit, so it was off anyway—it winds itself when I walk, but I hadn’t done enough of that apparently. My mobile hadn’t shifted automatically, as it was supposed to. The laptop did, but offered no explanation.

I have never believed in Daylight Savings Time to begin with, and one day, when I have more power, I will require that my subjects adhere to whatever time is on my watch. Wait, that’s not very nice, is it? I just wish that humans had figured out that if they just shifted their daily patterns rather than shifting our whole time-system everything would run much better.

Indiana figured this out a while back. Part of the state doesn’t shift into DST in the summer. Why, you ask? Because if they shifted, then the chickens wouldn’t know what time to lay eggs, and the cows wouldn’t know what time to give milk.

Way to go Indiana. Good on you. Maybe the rest of the world will follow this shining example someday. We can only hope.