The Time and Date Conundrum

A few days back when I had to face a mysterious problem at work. For some reason a birthday was shifting by 1 when it was getting printed. Now if you are jumping up and down with your hands up in the air screaming I know! I know!, wait and hold that thought.

I was looking for all possible rational explanations of which day light savings seemed most reasonable. A coworker suggested difference in server times due to day light savings. Well guess what? the servers are in that one state AZ where there is no day light savings. So what else... What seems to be a simple issue in time became complex. After much pondering it happened in a single machine with the same date. No it is not an issue with leap year. It is 11th Oct 1942. What happened on that day you ask, well the world was at war. It was world war II period and for a few years in US they had only a 'war time' throughout the year. This was not the only occurrence of such meddling, there were others before and after this as well. And the software was brilliantly telling that the time component associated with the date was forcing it to believe it was 10th Oct and not 11th.

I was curious after this discovery and went to research more. It appears not just once but many times through out history man has changed the clocks and dates by months to align with calendars and religious dates. He has moved time around as if it were a pawn on the chess board. 

We think we understand Time and we have a feeling it is this one single continuous flow since the big bang. Turns out that is not true. For the way man has meddled with it, who knows we may very well be in 2018 already.

Food and Delivery Bikes

Do you remember the gas man pedaling down the street delivering gas cylinders to every house down the road ? It takes about 10 minutes per house, he delivers them, checks them and takes back the empty cylinder. You sign and pay him with a tip and sometimes tea or coffee or a diwali bonus.

If you grew in South India, you would have heard this every morning when you woke up in the  native language of the place " thakkali, vengayam, ara keerai, mulai keerai..." a repeated poetic sound of the vegetable monger. So many other street vendors also do the same for fruits, candies, ice cream, and any more.. driven in a tri cycle or a four wheeled push cart or some workable version of it.

In the many cities of India you would have seen street carts filled with vendors selling pani puri, dosa, selective foods, fruits, juices and even cosmetics. These are also a modified push cart with 4 wheels. Most of them will be pushed back or driven back (if it is tricycle) home in the night and brought back to the same or different location in the morning for sales once again.

If you have not read the news here it is  NPR Food Bikes News

Reading the news, all of the above came to my mind and it occurred to me, a concept that was there forever in India and many other Asian countries seems to start flourishing in US now. And when it did they write a huge post analyzing the benefits. These carts and bicycles have been saving so much of energy and pollution all these years. They have made it possible for the vendors to door-deliver goods to their customers. Looks like Asia has been having a sophisticated life style by these standards :).