At the Source Electronics Store in the Sunnybrook Plaza they say it is not uncommon for people, sometimes quite a few, to bring in their clock radios in the Spring and Fall to get an explantion of how to set the time. This insight into the semi-annual clock change may be mildly surprising, but it will be easily understood. Some of the common themes emerging this year during the job of changing the clock to Standard Time were: Symbols: Government forces industry to use symbols instead of English. This is so those who don’t speak English can change the clock too. The reality however is that non-English speakers dont understand the symbols either. The net understanding is zero. What is understood: Engineers imagine that you know what they know. If a clock has a button for “DST” you might know that it means daylight saving time but would you guess that the number which appears on the screen is your international time zone? But of course. The Greenwich minus five thing comes flooding back. Let’s correct the minutes and hours. But wait, there are no hours. Of course not dummy. You roll through the minutes from 0 to 60 to get an hour. There are many other things to know. How? At the electronics store of course. The button that should set the newly chosen time keeps blowing the numbers away. Not if you wait long enough before pushing it silly. It is easy to see why some people leave the clock on EST all year and make the change mentally. And why in China, they just gave up on Daylight Time. It was all too much
