Thursday, November 5, 2009

What Time Is It?

Thanks to Sweden, I can't tell time anymore.

No, seriously.

In so many different ways.

Let's start with daylight savings.  Or lack thereof.  We set the clocks back earlier than the US, which means winter hours started even sooner here.  Now that the clocks have set back, the sun officially sets before 4 pm these days.

3:56 pm today, to be precise.

In one month, it will be setting at 3 pm.  And it won't rise again until almost 9 am.

Right now, it gets pitch black by 4:30.  It's lunchtime here and I only have a few hours of sunlight left in the day.

My body clock refuses to catch up.  I can't tell what time of day it is anymore.  I look around in the dark, swear it must be almost midnight, and look at a clock only to discover it's dinnertime.

And the dates?  Just one more thing...

I grew up with the American system, which - no surprise - is different than how everyone else in the world does it.  Today is November 5, 2009 or 11/05/09.  But not here.  It's 5 November 2009.  Or 05/11/09.  Or maybe 09/11/05.  If you ask someone to write the month and day, you get day and month.  But when they ask for your birth date on a form, you write year then month then day.  I start getting lost in it all.  Every time I see a number, I first see it with 27 years of American eyes, then try to correct it for the new system... usually incorrectly.

I can't tell whether our milk expires next week or already did sometime in last year.

I can't wait for October 10 of next year, when I can once again be guaranteed that I won't screw up writing the date.

And then there's actually asking or telling the time, which I try to avoid like the plague.  I have successfully avoided learning this so far when studying Swedish with Jenny.  It seems silly to me, so my brain tries to shut it out.  But now we're studying it in Swedish class.  So I have to.

Ask me what time it is when I'm in the US and you get a nice, simple, straightforward and efficient answer.

12:35.  Twelve thirty-five.  Three words.  Two numbers.  Easy.

Here?  No such luck.

Fem över halv ett.

Translation: Five past half of one.

Eh?

Everything else is quarter past or five til or ten of...

And this doesn't even begin to address my brain's half-second that it needs every time it sees military time because everything here is on the 24-hour clock.

And there's still my constant thinking in terms of time zones whether I am thinking of Illinois, where my family and most friends are (7 hours behind), or San Francisco, where other friends are (9 hours behind), or New York and the east coast (6 hours behind) or Denver, where my brother lives (8 hours behind).

Of course, until the clocks rolled back in the US last weekend, there were a few weeks where I had to retrain myself to think of things in terms of 6, 8, 5, and 7 hours behind, respectfully.

Oh, and let's not forget the times of the day as well.

If it is 7 am, officially morgon or "morning," I would say godmorgon or "good morning."  So, then i morgon, which literally means "in the morning", must mean "in the morning", right?

Wrong.

It means "tomorrow."

And then there's middag, commonly known as "noon" in the US.  That word has two meanings as well.  It's also a meal.

Oh, so it must mean "lunch", right?

No, silly.  It means "dinner".  Lunch means "lunch".

Which is pronounced "loonch".  Or loon/sj/, which is a sound I can't properly type out on this American keyboard and also can't properly make with these American lips.  It's kind of like the noise you would make if you were blowing out a candle while also throwing in a quiet "H" and "W".

So, just to clarify, you eat lunch at middag which is followed by the time known as eftermiddag which is immediately followed by eating middag.

My brain hurts.

I'm gonna take a nap.

Wake me up...

...

...whenever.

2 comments:

Ninja Mike said...

does that mean "hammer-time" comes before "prime-time"? What about leap year? is it at the beginning of Feb. or do the Sweedes just skip full years? imagine if you traveled back in time, and the it was said "halfway backwards plus minus five minutes of one".
No wonder the sweedes look and feel so young, no one can tell what their age is, so they just continually underestimate.


P.S. - ask tom to send you a picture of my halloween costume! I rule!

The queen of filth
-Ninja Mike-

Unknown said...

all i know is that its this time:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsC9gJz4JoM&feature=fvw

 
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