Sunday, October 31, 2004

Fall back, but don't retreat

Its that time of the year. Daylight savings. The clocks get set one hour back this morning. A lot of people feel good about it. The underlying logic is that they have gained an extra hour of sleep, added a modicum of seconds to their time-cramped lives. I disagree. It makes me sad. Let me explain. I am a very light sleeper. If someone three miles away were to drop a plastic spoon on a carpetted floor, it would wake me up. It is a slight exaggaration ... the spoon could be metal as well, but you get the picture. I got up at 9 am today, despite sleeping close to 2 while watching 'The Last Samurai'. I tried to conjure up the fatigue of the week, the thought of going to office tomorrow, the dullness of the weather outside to stay in bed just a little longer. Nothing worked. Here I am, sleeping 6-7 hours on a Saturday night despite not wanting to get up. Didn't add an hour to my life, I ended up subtracting it. It is only 8, thanks to the adjustment. Now, not only have I slept very little and am feeling very groggy, I am also suffering the ignominy of getting up at 8 on a Sunday morning. I thought that was reserved only for festivals where your parents would expect you to get up early, take a shower and get dressed, so that they can tick those items off their to-do list.

Anyway, it is just a few hours to go for my cricket match. I play for the American Recreational Cricket League (www.arcl.org) Funnily enough, there are no Americans playing in the league. Only people from the Asian subcontinent and a few Brits and Aussies. It is a must-win match for us, so I hope everything goes well. I am also enjoying my shift from being an all-rounder to a wicket-keeper. The in-house joke is that because of my name and my capacity to fumble catches, I am best suited for the job. (For those who don't follow Indian cricket, the ex-wicketkeeper is a kid name Parthiv Patel who has the same initials as me, is a left-handed batsman and is a Gujarati)

While it started as a joke, I got really irritated with all those shaadi.com daily mails about good matches for me (or my name twin). I am really not interested in 'gujjugrl', so I went ahead and changed the e-mail id to a blackhole. Too bad for the blackh0le.

Done with morning miscellany. Let me get back and do something more fruitful with the 'extra hour' that I have earned.

6 comments:

phucker said...

That is a borrowed hour, sir. You will have to give it back in Spring! And you squandered it! GAH! I've always found the daylight saving times thing a little odd. One has to wonder if it really does save the country lots of money, I mean you have to incorporate the the time-change into so many different systems... hmmm. Ah well, timezones are all messed up - I think India is the only country to be on a half-hour timezone!

Parth said...

Gee thanks Mufasa! I am glad this blog has become a welcome part of your daily routine.

This time adjustment won't help my cricket practice much. It will become dark by 4.30-5 in the evening. I agree with Tarun when he says that there are a huge amount of logistics involved in dealing with time-zones. However, countries like the US don't have much choice. I think India should stick to what they are doing. I don't think the daylight savings is going to affect the babu sitting in the govermnent office. He isn't going to get any work done anyway :-)

For those interested, my team won the match yesterday. I didn't fumble any catches (yay) and top-scored in the run-chase. I am really glad that we have made it to the quarter finals. There is another league match next weekend that we can use for trying our bench strength (I sound suspiciously like the Australians :-))

Avinash said...

I never cud get this american system of daylight savings. It makes u feel good for one day in oct just to make u feel bad for one day in april! BTW did u kno that now for the next 6 months, we will be in sync with the GMT.

phucker said...

Hey Parth, good to see you won! Doing better than another Cricket team I know... :-(
Hey Mufasa this Link should help you out.

Akruti said...

Hi Parth, congratsssss, wow, so another match next week, all the best, i am checking u r blog everyday now, nice one here,keep going.

RadioActive Ray said...
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