Daylight saving causes confusion !

Daylight saving was supposed to end on Nov 2,2008. I forgot as usual and woke up, extremely perplexed yesterday morning to find my alarm ringing at 8.30 am when I could have sworn I had set it for 9.30 am. Any sharp sound in the morning wakes me up promptly, so it was no use trying to get back to sleep. The damage had been done, I thought. So I grumpily left a very loudly and peacefully snoring K hidden in the depths of the comforter and went to complete my daily bathroom rituals. Preparations for tea and breakfast complete, I was bugged to find that K showed no signs of stirring. Not intending to do double duty for breakfast on a Sunday morning, I tried to make myself (well, 'my muscles' would be a more precise choice of words perhaps) useful by doing some pranayam and freehand exercises. Meanwhile, the grumblings and growlings in my stomach seemed to be getting louder and more insistent although I tried my best to ignore them. I finally decided I had had enough of a patient wait and would at least make tea for myself so that I could have a couple of biscuits at least in order to survive. Playing somewhere at the back of my mind, I secretly have often thought, may also be the fear of reactivating my gastric ulcer symptoms, which landed me in a horrible predicament during my H.S. exams, way back in 2000, but scared me sufficiently to make me never venture out of my home post-that-mishap without at least a small pack of biscuits in my handbag.

Anyways, I had just let the milk boil and was a bit preoccupied with putting sandwich buns to toast in the oven when the sound of blinds being raised made me realise that K had finally had the mercy to wake up and I could now eat. May he snore in peace forever. I took a quick glance at the battery operated alarm clock we had brought from India and noted that it was 11.30 am. Hello, I thought startled, hadn't I seen the wristwatch showing me 10.30 am? I checked and found that my eyes were functioning properly after all. Flummoxed, I pondered. And then realised that it was 2nd Nov today !

Tanima and I have displayed extreme dullness of comprehension by not being able to master the concept of daylight savings, Rony and K assure us. However, I've luckily managed to locate a site or two that is more enlightening in its explanation of the event compared to their obscure outlines of this unnatural state of affairs. Here they are :

http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/daylight_time.php

http://geography.about.com/cs/daylightsavings/a/dst.htm

However, if you are more concerned and curious about how the process of setting clocks ahead of the usual time in summer and putting them back in winter affects the difference in time throughout the rest of the world, I refer you to the following link, which is comprehensive in its data line-up :

http://www.worldtimezone.com/daylight.html

And if my understanding wasn't poor enough already, I had a tough time elaborately enlightening my much-more-obtuse-family-members regarding this whole abstract (to me, for sure !) concept. It all runs in the genes, I suppose. To think that I was supposed to be 'intelligent' when I was young. Sigh !!!