[tz] Ethiopia local time

[Sanjeev Gupta]

On Thu, Oct 11, 2018 at 10:49 PM Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu> wrote:

> Are you sure about that? Khalid recently reported here that the practice
> is currently common in Kenya and Somalia as well as in Ethiopia. Also,
> we have good evidence that it was common practice in Jiddah around 1970.
> I would expect that the practice has not entirely stopped there, and
> would not at all surprised to see it done in other countries as well.
>

Last year I was talking to people who had visited Mt Athos, and I
discovered something interesting.

Mt Athos (in NE Greece) starts the calendar day at sunset.
Hours are counted from sunset to sunset, so 0300 is when I go to bed, and
1300 is when I switch off the porch lights
"sunset" is literal sunset; as the watches and clocks tick SI seconds, once
every week or so, they are adjusted.
They cannot really be in the UTC-0400 timezone, because they are also 13(?)
days behind Greece.  I am not sure if the calendar is Julian or Reformed
Julian (or if anyone cares)

They were not really into TZ-nuttery, but I did see some pictures on their
cameras, which were timestamped Greek Time, but had local clocks in the
background.

So far so good?

Then one of them pointed out that there was one(?) monastery which followed
the same system, but counted days from sunrise.  He did not know if they
were ahead or behind in their day count (and he couldn't believe anyone
could care).

Cellphones are not rare on the island, and they (as well as the ferry
schedule) seems to be in Greek civil time.

This issue has been raised before, please see:
https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2007-April/014310.html

PS: Mt Athos' status was carefully negotiated when Greece joined the
EEC/EU, it is exempt from the "free movement of people"/Schengen Area.  EU
(and Greek) citizens need a visa to enter.  No women are permitted, not
even Govt officials.

PPS: The good news is, we will not have a case where the time zone changes
because the President has signed a decree overnight; the Monasteries hold
individual charters over a thousand years old, and will accept (perhaps)
only the authority of an Emperor confirmed by the Senate of the Roman
Empire.

I welcome a discussion on how leap seconds are implemented on Mt Athos.
-- 
Sanjeev Gupta
+65 98551208     http://www.linkedin.com/in/ghane
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