To everything there is a season

Tonight I could smell winter in the air.

Autumn has fallen here, and I am reminded of how everything is relative.

My friends in PA are getting excited that the "warm weather" has begun.

Meanwhile, here in Melbourne, where it is 5 degrees C warmer, we're starting to complain about the "freezing" 18 C (65F) high temps these days.

In our defense, though, last weekend it was 30 C and I was swimming at the beach, and then, only 5 days later, we lit a fire:



Also, this weekend is the end of Daylight Savings time here in Melbourne* and the beginning of Daylight Savings in the U.S. This has caused much confusion, for no real good reason. First I couldn't remember whether I should set the clocks forward or back.

Me: "Do we set the clocks forward or back, then?"
Labmate: "We gain an hour"
Me: "So do we set the clocks forward or back?"
Labmate: "I don't know, all I know is that we gain an hour."

I had no idea what she meant by "gain", did it mean that we set the clocks back and have an extra hour, or that we must make the clock gain an hour and set it forward? I was confused, as was she. Then I reckoned that it was March and so Spring and so we should Spring forward 1 hour.

FOUR HOURS LATER, (see how my brain is addled by daylight savings time) I realized that
a) It is, in fact, autumn here, NOT spring. So
b) We would FALL BACK and turn the clocks back one 1 hour, and
c) I am an idiot.

But wait, there's more!

Today I spent the better part of twenty minutes trying to figure out what it would do to the time difference between me and my U.S.-based friends. At this moment, my time zone is 16 hours later than the East Coast U.S., and 19 hours later than the West Coast. I started thinking, if I go back an hour and they go forward an hour, are we then even further apart? I pondered and pondered this until did the GMT math (cause we are not actually moving closer or further from each other, but closer and further from GMT). Right now I am in GMT +11 and New York is GMT -5, a differnce of 16 hours. Next week, I will be GMT +10 and NY will be GMT -4.

I really shouldn't worry my pretty little head about these things.

* It was actually meant to be LAST weekend, but since the Aussies don't take daylight savings time all that seriously, they delayed it a week to accomodate the Commonwealth Games. DELAYING the time change? I had never heard of that before!