Thursday October 2, 2008

DJ writing

We lost a day today! Well that seems impossible and technically it is, but as I write this to you, the time zone I am in is changing very fast because I am traveling in a Jet airplane. I am traveling across so many time zones so fast that by the time I get where I am going the date is a day ahead of what it should be even when I account for how much time I spent on the plane. Yes, that is confusing and somewhat hard to explain. But it is easier to understand when you realize that time is relative to location and to the person in that location. We actually crossed over the international time zone during this flight, but we did not actually lose a day. We just crossed over a point where the day is kept track of with a different number than where we came from. Also when I fly back home to the United States from New Zealand I will actually be ‘gaining’ a day back.

Our plane left Los Angeles at 10 pm Pacific Time on October 1, 2008. We landed in Auckland NZ at approximately 6 am on October 3, 2008 New Zealand time. The actual flight time was about 12 hours. That 12 hours of time added to our depart time would mean we should arrive around 10 am Pacific Time on October 2, 2008. But that time is approximately 20 hours different from our New Zealand arrival time. Is that correct? Lets see… yes, New Zealand is exactly one day ahead and 4 hours behind (20 hours) California Pacific time. This large difference is because New Zealand is on the other side of the world than California and also you must cross the international date line if you fly between the two in a jet plane.

Once nice feature on our plane was that everyone had their own little computer or TV screen. It is located on the back of the headrest of the persons seat in front of you. So everyone could choose their own movies, games or even music channels during the flight. This was really nice and another luxury of flying on long international flights. During the flight one of the TV channels has the location of the plane, the time to arrival, distance till arrival. I took a few photos of this screen and although they turned out a bit unfocused they will get the point across. Most of the time we just passed over the pacific ocean, however the crossing over the international date line is the reason we seemingly ‘lost’ a day. Here are some of the photos I took during the transit.

Image showing our plane cross over the International Date Line

Image showing our location over the pacific ocean during the flight

Image showing our location just east of Australia about 1.30 hours from Auckland

Image showing our location as we approach Auckland