All in the timing

For whatever reason Bob always sends me my flight times in UTC or Zulu time. So I’ll get a text saying “plane booked at 14:30Z” Then I’ll have to do the quick mental math to figure that out in local time.

I have a suspicion that this started as some kind of joke between us, I don’t recall how exactly. Now, I think Bob does it to try and be funny and it is, albeit in a silly kind of way. Occasionally though my mind does stupid things like take 7 hours off instead of 5 (usually when trying to covert from 24h clock as well as UTC). Leading me to curse out loud “you want me to be there at what time?*

Occasionally it leads to potential misunderstandings, such as last week when we (in what turned out to be a futile gesture) postponed our flight in hopes of higher ceilings, where Bob felt the need to confirm that I understood 18:00 to be 18:00Z and not local.

Seeing as its dark outside by 18:00, I got the general idea!

* I usually tend to be Bob's first student of the day. I don't know if this is because I live locally and can make it early or if I'm the only student he has that is capable of dragging their ass out of bed at the weekend!