David Bowie used to sing about how time can change us, but we can't trace time. This is only half true because we can trace time, particularly when daylight savings kicks in.
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The trick is knowing whether to move forward or back an hour and oftens depend on how nostalgic you get.
Australia marked the end of another time this week with the passing of the "talking clock" on Monday night.
The talking clock was the GO TO reliable means of tracing time for millions of Australians before the invention of the sundial.
Many's the time our family rang 1194 and get the ole "on the third stroke it will be" whatever time it was, and we'd all brief a collective sigh knowing where we stood in the world. With the dinosaurs.
But dinosaurs are extinct and now so is the talking clock. Telstra has called time on that time because evidence of time is everywhere, being updated by everything.
For proof, up in Beijing, another time is unwinding or winding up, depending on how you view China's 70th anniversary celebrations.
The world's most capitalist communist nation, launched by Mao Zedong all those years ago, has outlived its former Soviet patrons. How time flies.
And at the third stroke someone might get nuked if dialogue between the superpowers doesn't tone down.
You'd hate to encourage eco-anxieties but it was a decent display of firepower up there in Tienanmen Square this week from President Xi, pronounced "Jee", as in "Jee you've got a big military."
Who could forget what went down at Tiananmen Square 30 years ago. Kind of makes you think back to another time when a nation, say Britain, could get another nation hooked on opium and bomb the bejesus out of that nation if it dared suggest getting it hooked on opium wasn't a good idea.
Good times. But like sands in the hour glass, those were the days of their lives, given the rate of military expansion going on around the world, don't rule it them being the days of our lives later.
Of course this weekend we enter into even more uncertain times with the switch to Daylight Savings.
At precisely 2am on Sunday, October 6, clocks will be turned forward an hour.
Those concerned this may put the Raiders at a disadvantage in the NRL grand final needn't worry because all the damage will have been done by then and Mad Monday will simply be an hour closer.
Trouble is, I'm never totally confident whether you get more or less sleep with the changeover.
Like, if you go to bed at midnight, and normally get up at 7am, and now 7am is 8am, does that mean you get an extra hour's sleep or an hour less? If you can't work it out, probably best to stay up all night.
Which won't be a problem if your team wins the GF because their time will be now and you'll be able to trace that time for years to come. No changing that.