Over & Out: Time differences a headache
With each new assignment as a military family, you make new friends, some locals and some fellow military families – and many of those move on to continue their Air Force journey. Since arriving to England, we haven’t had to say goodbye to any of the friends we have made here, but the time is approaching fast as one of our neighbors prepares to pack up and move on this June.
Their new assignment might just give us a reason to visit Montana next time we are in the U.S., though, and it will give us another reason to add a new time zone to our repertoire of knowledge of time differences between England and the places our friends call home.
It is amazing how spread out you can become from the friends you make along your Air Force journey. As each of you move on, the time difference can make staying linked complicated, such as our friends’ recent move to an assignment in Alaska.
I am always struggling to remember how many hours ahead or behind us someone happens to be. Luckily for me, though, we live in an age where an Internet search can provide me the present time anywhere in the world. But regardless of this modern convenience, there is one thing that has made staying connected more complicated recently – the U.S. leaped to daylight saving time March 14.
We were left with new temporary time differences because England wasn’t due to make the switch for another two weeks. And an hour may not seem like much, but it can mean the difference between saying good morning and waking someone up 30 minutes before their alarm clock – not a pretty picture when some of our friends aren’t morning people.
The extra complications of turning our clocks are short lived, though, as England begins the daylight savings time regimen today. So hopefully by the time you read this, I won’t have forgotten to double check the time difference, leaving me to grovel for forgiveness for such an offense of phone etiquette.
It isn’t just the friends we’ve made along our way as part of our Air Force journey that we have a hard time keeping up with. Those who’ve remained close to home have a hard time getting their head around the time difference between us, which means they have been guilty of a few phone blunders, too. One of my closest friends from back home, Stacey, says she yearns for a day when we are in the same time zone, because she can never seem to make a phone call at a decent hour here in England.
But the six hours between us most of the time is nothing compared to the difference between me and my brother Chris, who recently moved to Hawaii, which by the way skips the whole daylight saving routine, leaving us with a 11-hour-gap that makes it nearly impossible to reach one another at a rational hour. I find myself setting my alarm clock a few hours early just to call him at a reasonable time.
Amanda Creel, who was a staff writer at the Robins Rev-Up newspaper on Robins Air Force Base, is married to Staff Sgt. Justin Creel, stationed at Royal Air Force Mildenhall in Suffolk, England. Contact her at .
Amanda Creel – Over & Out/Telegraph column