A country behind the times

I'm talking with my friend Flavio over tea today after lunch, and another guy sits down with us. I don't remember his name, if we've been introduced, and I hate acknowledging that so I didn't ask. We get to talking about the differences between different countries, especially the weather. The other guy, lets call him Jim, says that he's supposed to be going to Ethiopia for work soon, but that it's difficult to get things done with the Ethiopian projects. Why's that, we ask. And he looks at his watch and says, 'well for example, its 7:30 there.' It was about 13:30 Syrian time, and Ethiopia is at most one or two time zones away, so of course this is strange. Apparently, they count the time of the day starting from sunrise, instead of midnight. Logical, if you ask me, and since sunrise is typically around 6am, they are 6 hours behind us. Also, he says, they use a different calendar, so it is the year 2001 there and they are always seven years behind. He goes on to complain that the paperwork is a hassle since his superiors always want to know why he's filing old reports.

He turns to Flavio and tries to convince him that he should work in Ethiopia. Flavio is a barley geneticist, and apparently they have some of the most interesting barely varieties. I couldn't help but comment that he should take the job, it would add years to his life.

Oh, and one more quirk (well, I'm sure there are many more, but thats the joy of culture) is that they have a different system for months as well. Thirteen months, to be exact. Twelve months of 30 days, and one month of 5 days. No more counting your knuckles to figure out how many days are in June.