I have a meeting online on zoom today. with a club called Empire I note in my diary the Preparation time listed. The program sheet has not told me the location of the organizers nor the time zone. I suddenly think, where are these people? When I check, I find they are in another city, Jakarta.
But what is the time zone? I find a new time converter website. I have attended club meetings across the globe, from Canada and the USA, the UK and Europe, including Greece and Jerusalem and callers from Switzerland, and Asia and Australia.
The USA has more than one time zone. China is all the same, and the same as Hong Kong and Singapore.
Indonesia has several time zones. So does Australia.
The meeting is an hour later than I thought. I thought they were in Singapore. Jakarta is one hour later than Singapore. This is good news. I can do a committee meeting in Singapore with a club I am coaching in advance - but only if I get going fast.
A check of the program reveals that I do not have ten minutes to speak, but four of us speak in a five minute slot. This gives me one minute to tell them one happy thought and the link to my slides on the language used in the meeting.
When is the next meeting? It is not on the program. Now I have lots to say to the club I am coaching. But I need to look at their last program.
My last time check was to compare Singapore and London. Meetings can take place in the afternoon and evening. I wrote the comparison down on the front cover of my diary for quick refence.
If there is a time change seasonally, note that.
I used to keep this information on the back page of the notebook I was using. But I kept going into new notebooks. If I write in my diary, the information is with me when I am travelling, the diary is small enough to always be to hands. At the end of the year I can copy the vital information into the new diary from the old one. Or photograph it and print if and stick it in the new diary.
Want to know who started time zones? It s in Wikivoyage.
Useful Websites
http://www.timebie.com/index.php
My favourite is the website below which displays all the time zones in both countries so you can see the meeting times of a two hour meeting at a glance.
Here is the London to Singapore conversion and back, without having to keep changing to convert from one direction to the other.
https://24timezones.com/difference/london/singapore
https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Time_zones#Q12143
About the Author
Angela Lansbury is a travel writer and photographer, author ans speaker.
Angela Lansbury is teacher of English. (Advanced English and English as a Second Language or English as a Foreign Language, French and other languages, an aspiring polyglot.)
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