timezones and timescapes...

i just realized my email account had been set to central pacific, pacific ocean that is, time for who knows how long. it's funny how disconcerting that can be, especially on a grey day like today when looking out the window doesnt necessarily help much in trying to figure out the time. but it is kind of cool too. somehow, for a second at least, just seeing i could set my account to for example Rarotonga time makes that side of the world feel a bit more tangible, as if i had a kind of a connection to there. Appadurai talks about ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes as alternatives to geographically constructed cultural spheres. It makes me wonder if we could talk about time in the same terms? Even though timezones technically are connected to particular geographical areas, our location doesnt have to stop us from abiding by another time zone. Stock brokers do this all the time, as do call centers in India. And I have to only think about the surreal experience of crossing the border from Kazakstan to Western China a few years back with the first country taking its lead from Moscow time and the latter Beijing. An enactment of Bourdieu's embodied symbolic power at its clearest.