Did you know that here in the UK, we have to change the time on our clocks twice a year? Yes, for countries across Europe and North America, we have two different periods of measuring time throughout the year: on the last Sunday of March, the clocks go forward 1 hour for Daylight Savings Time, and back 1 hour on the last Sunday of October for Standard Time. So twice a year, we are blessed to see Mr Dad go around the house changing the time on all the clocks. And oh boy, it takes quite a while, since he has a large collection of clocks! 😅
So yesterday, on Sunday 25th October, the clocks went back an hour at 2am here. It felt like the longest Sunday ever as we had one extra hour! Now that the times have changed, we have shorter daytimes and longer nighttimes.
But what’s the point of it? Well, it’s all about making the most of daylight hours, since colder months means we get less hours of sun than in the hotter months. Of course, that also means that prayer times will be affected as well - Maghrib prayer at 4:52pm now would have been at 5:56pm the day before the clocks changed. And from now on, instead of being seven hours behind Malaysia, we’ll be 8 hours behind. For example, if you wake up at 6am in Malaysia on Monday morning, here in the UK, we’d be getting ready to go to bed since it’d be 10pm on Sunday night here.
So that’s how we make full use of daylight - we change the clocks so that our productive hours are in daylight hours. If we didn’t change the clocks, our productive hours would still be dark. And in case you’re wondering, that’s a photo of me in the summer…I’m not brave enough to face the autumn UK weather with just a short-sleeved shirt! 🥶
Tick tock,
Mukhtar O. Mukhlis
#theomarmukhtar
#RewindingTheClock 🕰
