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Saturday, September 30, 2023
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Friday, September 29, 2023
The Allure of Living In Dubai
Dubai is known for its stunning architecture, luxurious shopping malls, and extravagant lifestyle. Over the years, the city has become one of the most sought-after travel destinations in the world. With the influx of entrepreneurs and businesses, the real estate market has been on a steady rise, with luxurious properties becoming increasingly popular.
Al Babari, Dubai. Image: Al Babari
According to data from Knight Frank, the average price per square meter for a luxury property in Dubai increased by 1.5 percent in the first quarter of 2022. This trend is set to continue as more investors flock to the city. Savills, a global real estate service provider, reported that the high-end residential market in Dubai has seen a 5.6 percent growth in the first quarter of 2022 compared to the previous year.
One of the most exclusive properties in Dubai is the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building. The tower boasts over 900 luxury apartments, with prices starting at around USD $1.3 million for a one-bedroom apartment. Jones Lang Lasalle (JLL), a leading professional services firm in the real estate industry, reported that the average sales price for a luxury apartment in Burj Khalifa is around USD $1,500 per square foot. The building’s amenities include a gym, swimming pool, and a private observation deck, making it a highly sought-after address.
Another popular property in Dubai is the Palm Jumeirah, a man-made island in the shape of a palm tree. The island is home to some of the city’s most luxurious villas and apartments, with prices ranging from USD $2 to $20 million. According to JLL, the average sales price for a luxury villa in Palm Jumeirah is around USD $850 per square foot, while the average sales price for a luxury apartment is around USD $700 per square foot.
One of the current additions to Dubai’s luxury property market is the Royal Atlantis Resort and Residences. The property features over 230 luxury apartments, with prices starting at around USD $2.5 million. The Royal Atlantis boasts a private beach, multiple swimming pools, a spa, and a variety of restaurants and bars.
The Burj Khalifa, Dubai. Image: CreativeFamily.
The increasing demand for luxury properties in Dubai has also led to a rise in off-plan developments. These are properties that are still under construction, with buyers purchasing them before they are completed. This has become a popular investment option, with many buyers seeing significant returns on their investments once the properties are completed and ready for occupancy. According to Knight Frank, the off-plan market in Dubai has seen a 50 percent increase in sales in the first quarter of 2022 compared to the previous year.
However, the Covid-19 pandemic has had an impact on Dubai’s luxury property market, with some buyers delaying their purchases due to the uncertainty caused by the pandemic. According to Savills, the pandemic has led to a decline in demand for luxury properties in some areas of the city. However, the market has remained resilient, with investors continuing to show interest in the city’s high-end properties.
In conclusion, Dubai’s luxury property market continues to be one of the most vibrant and sought-after in the world. With increasing demand and a rise in off-plan developments, the market shows no signs of slowing down. While the pandemic has had an impact on the market, the city’s resilient economy and reputation as a global hub for business and leisure make it an attractive investment destination for many.
Al Babari
Enjoy the pool deck views at Al Babari residential project. Image: Al Babari.
The opulent Al Babari building can be found right in the middle of Dubai. It towers over other opulent properties in the city as a masterpiece of modern building and design. The Al Babari property, created by Zaya Group, was introduced in 2019 and has since grown to be one of the most sought-after properties among investors worldwide.
Al Babari provides its inhabitants with a luxurious living environment through its 108 units designed with modern features. The building offers a range of flats, including duplexes, penthouses and apartments with one to four bedrooms. Each apartment has been carefully planned to offer residents the utmost luxury and incorporate the latest smart home technologies. The penthouses come with private pools and roomy terraces, which are ideal for entertaining guests, while the apartments offer breathtaking views of the nearby cityscape.
Al Babari provides a variety of top-notch amenities in addition to its exceptional design and opulent features. A modern fitness centre, a heated pool, a sauna, and a private theatre are available to residents. The property has a children’s play area and beautifully landscaped grounds for those who like to spend time outside.
A further allure for buyers is the location of the house. Al Babari, which is in the thriving area of Business Bay, is close to some of the city’s most well-known attractions, including the Dubai Mall and Burj Khalifa. With simple access to main roads and highways, it is also well connected to other areas of the city.
Aerial view of the Al Babari residential project. Image: Al Babari.
Market data shows that Dubai’s market for premium real estate has been expanding recently. A total of more than AED 6 billion (approx. USD 1.60 billion) was spent on luxury real estate in 2021, a 32 percent rise in sales over the previous year. Dubai continues to pull wealthy people from all over the world due to its tax-free status, first-rate infrastructure, and exciting way of life.
Al Babari is a superb option for those looking for an opulent living experience in the centre of Dubai. It provides residents with luxury and ease all thanks to its gorgeous design, first-rate amenities, and prime location. Al Babari is positioned to continue being one of the most desired homes in the city as Dubai’s luxury real estate market expands.
For the latest in luxury property reads, click here.
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Watches & Wonders Shanghai 2023: The Lange 1 Perpetual Calendar
German fine watchmaking stalwart A. Lange & Söhne has been in a platinum state of mind of late, with the new Lange 1 Perpetual Calendar now getting this most opulent of materials too. Well, platinum is simultaneously restrained as well, given that no one can tell it apart from steel, just by looking at it. The perpetual calendar is a great complication that delivers the day, date and month, without fuss or intervention – the complication automatically adjusts for months of all lengths, including February, and is nonplussed by leap years. Like the Lange 1 Perpetual Calendar in platinum, most also offer a moon phase complication as well. The standard for haute horlogerie perpetual calendars is that they will need no corrections until 2100, the next time a leap year will be skipped. The A. Lange & Söhne Lange 1 Perpetual Calendar has fit this criterion since its launch in 2021, and the platinum version is no different.
We will return to the subject of that skipped leap year in a bit, but first a reintroduction for the Lange 1 Perpetual Calendar is in order. It is particularly apt now, although we do wish the Glashütte manufacture would oblige us by making this model in steel or anything just a little less exclusive; A. Lange & Söhne is already extraordinarily exclusive, with a production run of approximately 5,000 watches annually. Happily, the new Lange 1 Perpetual Calendar is not a limited edition, which is extremely surprising and should make you sit up. For reference, the launch model in white gold was limited to just 150 pieces, which was frustrating; it was doubly troubling because this was literally the first time A. Lange & Söhne created a wristwatch that put the perpetual calendar front-and-centre, without any other complication. As A. Lange & Söhne reminds us, there was also the Langematik Perpetual but that was in 2001, and was a beast of a different order. If you have been paying attention, the new Lange 1 Perpetual Calendar in platinum is now one of only two standard production perpetual calendars – without other complications – in the brand’s assortment.
With a black dial crafted in solid silver, the Lange 1 Perpetual Calendar in platinum is what collectors call the Darth (probably due to the red leap year indicator). There is nothing especially threatening about the watch, nor tragic (notwithstanding the many collectors who will want one but be unable to get it) but it does fill us with a certain sense of dread. That is primarily because there are so few perpetual calendars out there, in any price category, that this latest A. Lange & Söhne example offers scant comfort. The watch shares all the same proportions and movement, the manual-winding calibre L021.3, as the existing A. Lange & Söhne Lange 1 perpetual calendar watches. See our story on that white gold model for more details. As for the price, which we somewhat skirted, A. Lange & Söhne says this one is “on application,” which has been the case for a number of pieces recently.
Longtime readers, or those who track WOW, will know that I am a fan of the perpetual calendar. It is a quirky complication that tracks our place in the solar system, trying as best it can to account for all the uncomfortable quirks of our orbit. Traditional mechanical watches are sometimes derided as Rube Goldberg machines, but the Gregorian calendar, which perpetual calendars track, is such a (metaphorical) machine itself. This explains that mess about the skipped leap year, which is the case when any given year is divisible by 100 but not 400. Of course, the Western calendar is simpler to use than many other calendars, whether solar or lunar (or some combination of the two).
For the latest in luxury watch reads,click here.
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from LUXUO
Thursday, September 28, 2023
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Wednesday, September 27, 2023
Charlie Paris’ Concordia GMT is a Feat of Contemporary Design and Artisanal Watchmaking
Founded in 2014 by two childhood friends, Ambroise and Adrien, the Parisian watchmaking house, Charlie Paris, will celebrate its 10th anniversary next year. Although new to the watchmaking landscape, it has quickly made a place and a name for itself thanks to contemporary, elegant designs with an eye for detail and quality. Indeed, this brand has the distinction of having all its models designed, assembled and quality-controlled in the heart of Paris, just above their boutique, by in-house watchmakers.
Born of a desire to promote French expertise, Charlie Paris wants to remind the world that France remains the cradle of European watchmaking, and it’s this heritage that the brand wants to highlight. This is why it stands out among artisan watchmakers by promoting “made in France” and offering models with meticulous design and finish.
Charlie Paris also stands out for its philosophy of sobriety, authenticity and sustainability. The founders firmly believe that timeless elegance lies in sobriety, and this is reflected in the design of their watches. Each watch is designed to be an art object in its own right, combining functionality with uncompromising aesthetics. Charlie Paris
Once again, Charlie Paris has managed to surprise us with the launch a few days ago of their new Concordia GMT collection. The automatic Concordia GMT, available in four colors, is a singularly elegant watch with a diameter of 40mm and a thickness of 12.5mm that will fit most wrists.
The case is in 316L stainless steel, with a blend of brushed and polished finishes for an elegant look. The unidirectional rotating bezel with 120 clicks and luminova dot at 12 o’clock gives it the look of a real diver.
To ensure water-resistance, it features a screw-down crown with red tightening indicator and crown protector, making it water-resistant to 300 meters. In terms of visibility, this GMT features a curved, 3mm-thick, anti-reflective sapphire crystal, ideal for observing dial details. On the back, a transparent caseback reveals the mechanism of the Swiss Soprod C125 movement.
Currently available in 4 colors (blue, black, brown and green), the Concordia GMT can also be customized to your taste with three types of strap (leather, nylon and steel). Only available in 50 and 100 pieces for the blue version, this Concordia GMT may well be sold out before the end of the pre-order period. Charlie Paris : Concordia GMT.
Charlie Paris embodies the very essence of modern French watchmaking. With a perfect blend of tradition and innovation, the brand continues to astonish the watchmaking world with its creations. Whether you’re a passionate watch enthusiast or simply in search of a timepiece that combines elegance and sobriety, Charlie Paris offers a range of must-have models that are sure to satisfy. It’s much more than a watch, it’s a piece of French history and culture to wear on your wrist.
For more on the latest in luxury watches, click here.
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WOW Autumn 2023 on Newsstands Now
If you are a fan of the chronograph, this is truly the best of times, with recent years having delivered some sublime examples of this complication. We celebrate the chronograph in the Autumn issue of WOW Singapore, and invite you to join us.
Such a technical story with multiple components has been a mainstay of the Autumn issue since 2013 (with some degree of flexibility with regards to the meaning of the word “technical” there). Now, with Legacy due out roughly a month after Autumn, we split the difference between the two issues; the Breguet Type XX is the Legacy cover and it happens to be an important chronograph this year.
So, the story of the chronograph will continue in the Legacy issue, and is likely to also spill into Festive. On the other hand, all the manufacture stories will now go into Legacy, even though they form the basis of WOW Singapore editor Ashok Soman’s Conversation with WOW Thailand Editor Ruckdee Chotjinda in the Autumn issue. The Legacy issue is the only one of WOW Singapore’s five issues that does not feature a Conversation. This is all to say that the content here and in Legacy are all part of an elaborate scheme. This note is part of that cunning plan too. There are no headless blunders here. Unhappily, this is the Internet so we will hear what you think in the comments.
“Important stories in watchmaking inevitably spill over across multiple issues,” says WOW Singapore Editor-in-Chief Ashok Soman. “Watchmaking cannot be understood as a seasonal affair; it is not even really annual, with developments spread over several years. WOW simply goes where the arrow of time points.”
On that note, do look out for thematic visual unity throughout the Autumn issue, from the cover story spread, featuring the bold Tissot Sideral, and the other spreads. It is honestly not something the team strives to make happen, just as we cannot make the covers and features align most of the time. While thematic threads might only be useful to tradespeople, they are surely something special when they emerge organically; the dive watch spread, for example, was first published in Men’s Folio (June/July issue). Taken together with the chronograph section, this might just be our most colourful and sporty issue in 10 years.
If it is conversations you hanker for, you will be spoilt for choice given that we have engaged with the top brass at Cartier, Bulgari, Panerai, IWC, Parmigiani Fleurier, Grand Seiko, A. Lange & Sohne, Roger Dubuis and Bell & Ross. Happily for you, everything made it in, or will do when Legacy (see the point on manufactures) and Festive roll around. That said, pick up a copy of the Autumn issue now, and bear in mind that everything remains a work in progress.
For more watch reads, click here.
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from LUXUO
Azimut Debuts Fly 72 With Fantolino Interior
Azimut has continued to upgrade its flybridge line with the new Fly 72, which features an exterior by Alberto Mancini and an interior by architect Fabio Fantolino, making his design debut in the yachting world.
The yacht had its debut at the Cannes Yachting Festival – along with the Magellano 60 and Verve 48 – and was also on display at the Genoa International Boat Show, where Azimut had another strong display.
The Fly 72 features a new hull design, while Mancini continues to rework the flybridge line, having also designed the 53 and 68. Mancini has also designed many recent Grande and S models including the S7 that debuted at Boot Dusseldorf in January and exhibited at Cannes and Genoa in September.
The Fly 72 has an overall length of 74ft 1in and a beam of 18ft 5in, while two 1,400mhp MAN CR V12 engines give a top speed up to 31 knots and a cruising speed of 26. The cockpit features a C-shaped sofa with adjustable table, while the foredeck also has a C-shaped sofa as well as a large, flexible sunpad.
The flybridge features lounging areas on the port side, starting with chaise longues aft, a C-shaped dinette midships, and more sunbathing space forward, by the twin-seat helm. To starboard is an L-shaped wet bar with the option of a lift TV. All the yacht’s outdoor areas feature sofas with thick, rounded cushions.
Fantolino, who specialises in residences and hospitality, and has studios in Turin and Milan, has created a warm, soft interior with textured fabrics and leather and earthy tones like brown and tan, along with precious materials such as bronze and glossy lacquers for contrast.
The interior starts with the saloon, with an L-shaped sofa to port and a two-seat settee to starboard. The dining table is midships to starboard, beside a comprehensive galley to port that can be enclosed or open. Forward is a twin-seat helm to starboard, while to port is a raised dinette with facing sofas.
The lower deck has four en-suite guest cabins comprising a full-beam master midships, VIP in the bow, a twin to starboard and double to port, while there’s also crew accommodation for two aft. Marine Italia represents Azimut in Hong Kong, Macau, Guangdong, Taiwan and Singapore.
www.azimutyachts.com
www.marineitalia.asia
This article was first published on yachtstyle.co
For more the latest in luxury yachting stories, click here.
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from LUXUO
Tuesday, September 26, 2023
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LUXUO Review: What Happened Milan Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2024
From Bottega Veneta’s Matthieu Blazy receiving rave reviews on his Summer ’24 collection that explores the notion of travel, to the jump of Kering shares after Sabato De Sarno’s debut at Gucci, LUXUO gives an insight into the recently-concluded Milan Fashion Week.
(Image courtesy of Vogue)
Bottega Veneta: The house received rave reviews in a collection that explored the notion of travel
(Image courtesy of Vogue)
Bottega’s Summer 24 collection explored the notion of travel. Models traversed across “continents and oceans” that lay before them, morphing from knitted swim costumes to tailored suiting with strong, constructed shoulders featuring the house’s signature oversized, basket-woven intrecciato bags and vast duffles they have become famously associated with. According to creative director Matthieu Blazy, the showcase was “a connection to who you once were, who you would like to be and where you want to go. The odyssey is both external and internal, physical and through the imagination, a journey of transformation and escape”. Ingenuity was at the forefront of the collection, particularly with the accessories as leather newspapers from around the world morphed into Foulard bags; shoes, skirts and bags were created from tropical leaf in highly crafted leathers, raffia and rope, each exquisite and far from disposable. The collection also played up on the notion of the nomadic traveller, from the corporate commuter to the the free-spirited holiday-goer.
(Image courtesy of Vogue)
Gucci: Sabato De Sarno’s debuts his first Gucci collection
Going in, Sabato De Sarno already had large shoes to fill. His predecessor Alessandro Michele had entered Gucci into a new era of genderless modernity. The previous Gucci collection was the first in Michele’s absence and saw Gucci’s creative team take the reigns to mixed reviews. While the prevoius collection was indeed beautiful with stand-out pieces, some critics noted on a lack of a central theme or thread that ran through the collection. The same was not said for Gucci’s Summer 2024 collection which was grounded in rich storytelling. With credentials that are not to be dismissed (having previously worked at Valentino, Prada and Dolce & Gabbana), there was a sense of refinement alongside playing up to Gucci’s roots from ornamental embellishments to monogrammed outerwear and a playful inclusion of fringe. The front row was packed shoulder to shoulder with celebrities and fans of the brand including Paul Mescal, Julia Garner, Julia Roberts, as well as Troye Sivan, Halle Bailey, Ryan Gosling, Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny each appearing to come out in celebration for Sarno’s debut. Kering shares increase by four percent immediately after Sabato De Sarno’s Gucci debut.
Prada: Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons Redefine Industrial Workwear
While slime oozing from the ceiling may have made a return, the Prada Spring 2024 women’s collection saw Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons sucessfully joined forces to deliver a showcase steeped in details and exquisite feminity. Perhaps sophisticatication was the word of the day, as the duo continue to “challenge the language of classic tailoring”. Translucent scarves or “fragments of dresses” crafted from ethereal, diaphanous georgette was juxtasposed with the collection’s focus tailored sihlouettes. Bags and shoes were embelished with precious leathers while the pieces each reimaged architectural forms.
For the lastest in fashion news, click here.
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from LUXUO
Monday, September 25, 2023
World Of Watches: Across the World One Time Zone at a Time
In the world of physics, there are only two sorts of time, the relativistic sort that makes up one part of the fourth dimension, as described by Einstein, and the arow of time that moves in the direction of entropy. In the world of technology, commerce, health, culture and politics there are multiple times – and, it seems, often a complete lack of logic to underpin them. While anyone who has had to catch a plane, or make an international phone call, knows how tricksy time zones can be – and for all that they just seem part of the fabric of global living – next year marks what is only their 140th anniversary. The idea of time zones is young. It is also in flux.
“The whole issue of time zones is simple in essence but a complex problem in reality,” as Emily Akkermans puts it. She is the fantastically-titled Curator of Time at the Greenwich Royal Observatory in London (“I haven’t managed to bend time to my will yet,” she jokes). “We meddle with time zones around the world and make changes all the time. Whether those reasons are good ones depends on what side of the fence you’re sitting.”
Greenwich is where, for reasons of its history in pioneering navigation at sea, there is a literal line in the ground that, since 1884, has demarcated point zero for global time zones. This remains a fact even if improved measurements of our planetary globe afforded by satellites has meant that, since the mid-1980s, the line has actually moved about 100m eastwards.
Necessary Exposition
by the Patek Philippe Ref. 5224R, works best when navigating
universal time
Indeed, arguably it was the advance of technology – steam and electricity – that first promulgated the notion of rationalising time zones in the first place. If, for most of human history, time was a local affair – roughly understood by villagers who rarely strayed far from home ground, and not least of all because for most of human history most people did not have time-keeping devices. The coming of international sea trade in the Middle Ages and the later emergence of the telegraph and railways in the post- Industrial Revolution era changed all that.
Since this magazine is about wristwatches and timekeeping, broadly speaking, none of you, dear readers, will be surprised by a connection between timekeeping and longitude. Some of you will even recall that a 15 degree shift in any direction corresponds to a one-hour difference in local time. This idea first took hold for the editors (across many years) in the physicist and watchmaker Ludwig Oeschlin’s observation that you can watch the earth turn on its axis by looking at the movement of the hands on your dial. If you have a 24-hour dial, as Patek Philippe demonstrates with Ref. 5224R, you have all 24 time zones – although as you will see this is a bit more involved. This number is a convenient one based on there being 24 hours in the day, and 360 degrees in a sphere – so there are 360 longitudes.
And so we come to the matter of longitude, which is actually not what this story is about. It is worth bearing in mind that knowing one’s precise location at sea was what the longitude game was all about, and that an English carpenter and clockmaker named John Harrison played pivotal role here. Countless accidents at sea occurred because sailors could not derive their precise location, and thus the location of hazards. The emergence of the marine chronometer was one of the things that changed all that. The wireless telegraph (with the advent of radio) helped with this, and timekeepers on land also benefitted, as demonstrated by the iron horses of the railway. You might think the story remains in the past, what with satellites and GPS, but it continues to inform the crux of this tale – time as defined by national, political and economic interests – Ed.
Universally Uncoordinated Time
Given that you only have to travel east or west, say, a couple of hundred miles for solar time to have changed, in order to regulate the running of the trains either a national time zone – for a smaller territory – or system of regional times zones – for a larger territory – was required. But this soon got very clunky – in 1870 the US had 75 different railway times coast to coast, and these may have been at odds with the local time passengers had always known. Small wonder that it was a railway engineer, by the name of Sandford Fleming, who first proposed a global system of time zones, linked to the Greenwich Meridian – or Greenwich Mean Time, GMT. That is the system we still use today, and is why one 15 degree segment of the globe represents one hour.
Well, kind of. That clunkiness has not exactly gone away. Logic might dictate that there be 24 one-hour time zones – picture the Earth as an orange made up of time zone segments – but, in fact, there are 38. And that is only the start of the confusion. Russia, for example, is so vast it has 11 time zones, but sometimes only adheres to nine. Conversely, the similarly vast China spans five time zones but has only one. Some countries dip in and out of zones – in 2019 Morocco put its clock back for just a month during Ramadan. NASA and the European Space Agency are even talking now of creating a time zone for the moon. That is intriguing because time on the moon actually moves faster – around 56 micro-seconds a day faster – than that on Earth, enough to mess up your navigation systems. This is because of our old friend relativity, which is another story.
And then there is daylight savings time – not all countries embrace this yearning for more evening light, and of those that do, not all embrace it at the same time. Or there is the fact that time zones do not even operate in whole hours. India and its neighbour Nepal, for example, are just 15 minutes apart. There are other perplexing disparities too: Eucla in southern Australia is eight hours and 45 minutes ahead of UTC, or Coordinated Universal Time – technically the successor to GMT – though the Northern Territory is nine-and-a-half hours ahead.
Less Is More?
makes your day longer or shorter, the Chanel Spatiotemporal
watches are excellent
Would it be better to cut back on the number of time zones? That, it has been argued, would at least bring economic benefits – Indonesia, for example, has discussed cutting back its zones from three to two, because it figures it will be better for business. But why just cut them back? Why not just do away with all time zones, and have one global time?
That is the contention of Steve Hanke, professor of applied economics at The John Hopkins University, Baltimore, together with colleague Richard Henry, professor of astronomy. They argue that this would make communications, finance, logistics and trade smoother – that is why, for instance, American Samoa jumped across the international dateline in 2011, thus officially never seeing December 30th of that year, so it could be better in synch with its biggest trading partners, Australia and New Zealand.
Furthermore, they say that, like the railways before, now, thanks to the internet, satellites and jet aircraft, the speed of global communications demands a single zone. Some frequent travellers already think this way: since the early 1970s airline pilots have used Universal Time wherever they are in flight.
“Time zones are a function of distance, of moving slowly between one point and another,” explains Hanke. “But we argue that with the rapid movement of people and communications, local time zones became obsolete. We once had hundreds of thousands of time zones around the world, and then we had 38. Our proposal is simply to go from 38 to one, and for the same logical reason. This is a small world.”
Playing with Time
makes telling the time anywhere in the world a
no-brainer
Certainly time zones have long been politicised, at local, national and geo-political levels. “In GMT noon is approximately 12 o’clock, and that’s when the sun is at its highest in the sky and that’s an idea we’ve grown used to [wherever we are]. You don’t want noon o’clock straying too far from the noon sun,” suggests Akkermans. “In a global arrangement, who gets to ‘own’ noon at midday? There’s no right or wrong answer, but it’s easy to see how the application would not be easy [politically].“
It should be remembered that states play with time all the time. When, in 2007, Venezuela decided to put its clocks back 30 mins from standardised time – making it one of a handful of nations out of synch, among them Iran and Afghanistan – it was maybe making some kind of statement about its national self-determination. Calls for the EU to ditch its three time zones and embrace just one are, arguably, about underscoring the ideology of the super-state as much as they are to make trade easier. Spain, far out west on the European continent and in line with GMT, is still stuck in the ‘wrong’ time zone – in line with that of Poland and Hungary, way out in far eastern Europe – because its former dictator General Franco imposed that as an indicator of its fealty to Nazi Germany. When Russia invaded Crimea in 2011 it imposed a Russian time zone on the occupied territory. And so on…
That is the macro level. But the impact of toying with time zones is very much felt at the micro level. That is why a UK campaign to drop Daylight Savings Time and so put the country in the same time zone as the rest of the European continent, just 34 kms away at its nearest point, was rebuffed by the Scottish Parliament. It would mean that, in the north of the UK, the mornings would not be light until 10am during the winter.
As Akkermans puts it, “we tend to think about time zones as being about east and west, but they can also have influence north to south. And then, because of the impact on daylight, that’s when time zones become really important.”
Circadian Matters
best flexibility for adaptation to standardised time, as the Tissot PRX
Powermatic 80 demonstrates
It is human biology that we wake or sleep according to our circadian rhythms, which in turn are managed by our exposure to daylight; that is, the rising and setting of the sun. The more one is forced to live by a less localised time zone, it is argued, the bigger the impact on the quality of our sleep – which has a knock-on effect for health, education, productivity and, all told, national well-being. That is also leading to a demand in some parts of the world that more time zones be introduced.
The example of India makes clear why that might be desirable. Stretching 2,933 kms east to west, the sun rises in the east almost two hours earlier than in the west, and yet the country nonetheless has one Indian Standard Time. With so many hundreds of millions of people in the west of India starting their day in darkness, there is not just a huge pull on electricity consumption. It means that schoolchildren who experience lighter evenings invariably have a longer waking day. And that means they get less sleep – and studies suggest these children are less likely to complete primary and middle school. Proposals to split India into two time zones have so far been rejected by government – because it would cause too much confusion for the railway system.
Hanke argues that a single time zone would not affect local time at all. “We’d still live by our natural rhythms – a single time zone wouldn’t do away with the circadian clock we’re all hard-wired with,” says Hanke – a universal time might even spark renewed respect for our biological clocks. “It just means that everyone’s watch would show the same position on the dial.”
One Standard for All
Such is our attachment to ordering our lives, our habits and our activities by local time that it sounds positively weird that, under the single global time proposal, the working day on the east coast of the United States, for example, would start at 1400 hours and end around 2200 hours; in Australia the day would begin at 0100 hours. But, Hanke says, the working day would still be conducted throughout the local period of daylight – its hours just would not be called the same.
The single global time zone is, he says, really little more than a return to the way local matters were handled before the railways, with the addition of a world clock ensuring that international affairs continue unheeded: there would be working time and there would be universal time. This is pretty much what already happens in China, Hanke suggests. Although, officially, its single national time zone means some institutions and businesses, and so people, have to operate at odd hours, unofficially many Chinese set their daily schedules by something approximating solar time and overlook the state-sanctioned time until it is needed.
“Just because there’s a single global unified time zone doesn’t mean there isn’t scope for complete diversity at the local level,” argues Hanke. “People will still get up when the sun comes up and still go to bed at night. [But] there’s just no point tinkering with the messy current time zone arrangements any more. We should just go for it and make the change now.”
Clock time may be arbitrary – it is whatever we in our circle agree it is – and yet it has never seemed more relative. Will the change Hanke proposes come? Will, most importantly of all, we finally be free from the ritual of having to wind our watches back or forth whenever we touch down at some faraway airport? Or will we need watches with two time displays – universal and solar – more than ever?
“[In the end] it’s usage that’s going to call the tune on this issue,” Hanke says. “Things are ordered spontaneously, by human actions, because they’re desirable or useful. There was no centralised design for language, money or markets either. They came about because they make sense. And the same is true of universal time.”
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