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Friday, August 23, 2024

A phone call to Vienna, or "Time Zones—boy, I dunno..."

Alexander enjoys calling people (on Discord), but he can sometimes be a little persistent if no one answers him, calling over and over again on repeat. 

Vienna is 6 hours ahead of us, so fortunately our lunch time is only Uncle Patrick's dinner time (or thereabouts), and lunchtime is often when Alexander thinks to call, but there are other times that's worse for Alexander to call (like at our dinner time, for example, which is bedtime for Uncle Patrick).

I've explained phone etiquette to Alexander, telling him that he needs to arrange phone calls beforehand (especially with people who live far away in different time zones) and I thought he understood that, but the other day he started calling Uncle Patrick again (and again and again).

Uncle Patrick tried to be polite about it. He explained again to Alexander that he should send a message beforehand, to which Alexander replied that he did (because he had messaged "call" two seconds before calling...not much of a head's up). Uncle Patrick tried to give him an example, telling him that he could call him in a bit and talk for five minutes or so. 

Alexander interpreted that to mean that Uncle Patrick would be calling him in five minutes, so he set a five-minute timer so he wouldn't forget when he needed to be by his phone. 

I texted Patrick to tell him how excited Alex was and he was like, “Oh, then I’d better call him! I was going to call him after I had dinner…” 

So, Uncle Patrick called and the first thing Alexander said was, “I set a timer on my phone for five minutes, but it seems like Vienna has a different time zone even for minutes because you called me and it hasn’t even been five minutes here!!”

They spoke for a few minutes (mostly about what everyone was having for lunch and/or dinner) and then hung up and Alexander exclaimed, "Time really must be different in Vienna because Uncle Patrick said he could talk for five minutes but the phone call duration was seven minutes!!"



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