I believe the correct answer for “what time is it?” … no matter where you are on the globe is …

“Later than you think.”

But sometimes we’re not looking for philosophical/big-picture answers to questions, are we, smart guy.

We just want to know what the hour on the clock is, so we don’t miss the bus. So we’re not late for work. We just want to know the time wherever it is we’re going, or have been.  Or where we might know someone.

So, the time in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates?

GST+4.

That is,  Greenwich Standard Time … but four hours ahead of it.

Meaning we here in Abu Dhabi are four hours ahead of London. Three hours ahead of most of Western Europe. Nine hours ahead of New York.

And an even 12 hours ahead of all of you back in California.

Isn’t that tidy? When it’s noon in Los Angeles, it’s midnight here, and when it’s midnight here … you got it.

We were 11 hours ahead of California until Sunday. Then you went off daylight savings, there. (We never go on daylight savings, here. When you’re this close to the tropics, and we can almost spit across the Tropic of Cancer … you don’t do daylight savings.)

But now that the USA is off daylight savings for, what, four months … California is exactly upside down from Abu Dhabi.

Turns out, we’re in something of an orphan time zone.

We’re ahead of all of Africa. And somehow nearly all of Asia evades this time zone, as well. (Was it something we said?)

Here are the countries I can find that are on GST+4: The UAE, Oman (right next door, to the east) … then we jump up into the Caucausus Mountains and Armenia and Georgia are with us! … but then we’re about done. Two little spots in Russia are GST+4. To wit: Samara Oblast (capital city, Samara, in Russia, on the lower Volga) … and Kirov Oblast (capital city, Kirov).  Check the time-zone map of Russia. See those two little green blotches? Same time we are.

And that’s it.  Except for Mauritius, a speck of an island country down there off the coast of Madagascar. (Madagascar,  meanwhile, is an hour behind us.)

You’d think Iran would be on the same time zone we are, sitting just north of us, but Tehran is a half-hour behind us. And Afghanistan? A half-hour ahead of us. (This half-hour stuff is just goofy, and pertains to those two countries and to India, too.)

Anyway, it’s easy, for now. Hello, California. You are exactly half a day behind us, all day, every day. Until you fiddle with your clocks again.