Time

I hate watches and timepieces and timetables and routines. If I have to go to work at a particular time, it's a combination of pure chance and resentment that brings me to a workplace "on time." In Japan, I was routinely tongue-lashed (nowhere near as pleasant as it sounds) by our kindergarten principal for lateness. I also hate being told off for anything, particularly "lateness". My worst offence was to daydream past my stop and arrive ten minutes late WITHOUT A PHONE CALL. In the verbal flaying that followed, the principal - usually a kindly, learned man - lashed me mercilessly with cultural guilt. Apparently, if you have a job in Japan that starts at 9am , you are expected to be there at 8.30, preparing for the day. This went against my deepest sense of fairness, having caught 4 seperate trains to be there roughly "on time," still a full hour before the kids arrived. I must confess, I was not a good assimilee, bringing up a number of points I thought pertinent only to be told that "this is Japan." I had a killer counterpoint - "but I am Australian." He had a better countercounterpoint - but this is Japan. A country where the trains run on time and thirty seconds late is a lifetime. A country where lateness is an affront. I am not unhappy to be free of that aspect of my life in Japan.

I blame my relaxed sense of time on my father, who was brought up in the dying days of the British Empire, Malaysian sector. The Malays have a delightful saying - "jam karet," or "time is rubber," brought into my house and personified by my father who only occasionally touches base with timepieces or starting times for Appointments or Social Occasions, to the eternal exasperation of my mother, who has developed a keen sense of timeliness which I find hard to understand. This piece of cultural detritus has somehow ended up in me. I live watch-free, meaning that I am always asking strangers for the time, a time-bum, scavenging information. I prefer this method, as it means that knowledge of the time comes to me when I want it, not during pauses in conversation or as a means to ascertain whether the end of the night has come.

In fact, I really dislike the contemporary concept of time. Back when we grubbed out a life from the soil, time came from the sun and was measured only by what could be achieved between sunup and sundown. Then came clockwork and town clocks and machinery and personal timepieces and awareness of time passing. Contemporary moderns fit more into their lives than ever before, but the constant awareness of time slipping past, used or unused, means that it is more difficult to enjoy the present. It's kinda ironic, in that consumer-centric economies mean that needs and desires can be satiated quicker than ever, and that "now" is now the most important moment, but awareness of time saturates life.

I started thinking about this after I found myself watching a wallclock with a kind of wary horror. This was not a normal wallclock. Normal wallclocks have second hands which pause for a fraction of a second on every tick. This horrible clock didn't pause at all. Time flowed from it seamlessly, faster than ever before. A minute was gone in a flash. I felt this strange, rising sense of concern, watching my life flow past me so smoothly, so quickly. Rabbit in the headlights, I watched the clock in a trance for five minutes before shuddering, wrenching myself away from this kind of knowledge of the passage of time.