Time

I miss my cell phone as a timepiece. I stopped wearing a watch years ago, but I’m used to always being in proximity to a wall clock or someone else wearing a watch. It seems these days I only know what time it is when I’m in the house, and even then only certain rooms. I don’t mind though, since I really don’t have much of a schedule, and I get home when I get home (it’s really not usually in my control). My first week here I had to buy a cheap little clock with an alarm because I was completely without a timepiece. (Have you ever seen that scene in the movie IQ, where for a psychology experiment a guy is locked in a room without a watch and is just screaming with the torture of it?)

In case you might think that Brazil uses a looser sense of time than the United States, you’d be wrong, as I was. Unfortunately, I am still late for every event. When my hosts say 10am, they mean 10:00am. Ah… but I’m learning.

But there are alternative means of time-keeping. For instance, last year I had my browser home page set on the hunger site, which every time you visit that site and click a button companies donate one cup of food. And then after clicking, it says how many cups of food have been ‘clicked’ that day. So even without looking at the time I could know roughly where in the day I was, based on how many cups had been given.

My shampoo bottle is also being a good alternative time-keeper. I am one-third through my time here, and interestingly (I didn’t try for this) my shampoo is one-third gone. And it’s a pretty orange in a clear bottle, so it’s like a sandglass or one of those thermometers and I can sort of count down to coming home. Pretty cool, huh?


Oh, and by the way, speaking of time, I am now 5 hours ahead of the west coast rather than 4, and 2 ahead of the east coast. Brazil does practice Daylight Savings Time, but not in the Sertão as there is no farming and really no point.