I remember the Sultan Abdul Samad building from 1965 onward. Every time the news hour came on TV, the clock would be shown and its signature tune would play, and then the news was read in English. "Good evening... this is the news from Kuala Lumpur. I am ....."
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| The Sultan Abdul Samad building of 1897. Sultan Abdul Samad reigned from 1857 to 1898. The long and symmetrical building has copper domes and a 40-m clock tower. |
When I visited the Big Ben in London in 1980, I was a bit confused because our clock tower in KL and the Big Ben in London looked similar. I couldn't tell if the clock tower on TV was coming from KL or London. That confusion lingered for a long time and almost my entire life. Why did they copy the Big Ben and made it an icon in KL? Why? Our local time is GMT +8.00 hours.
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| The Big Ben in London. Internet pic. |
I then went to visit Greenwich, to see for myself, why we must have this 'plus 8 hours' from Greenwich. Is Greenwich the centre of global time setting - the meridian? I doubt it, maybe because time was researched at Greenwich and therefore time was set there. Why Greenwich?
I was reading the ancient calendars and what happened in our history wrt time and how time was timed. There is the Muslim lunar calendar system and the Julian and Gregorian calendar systems. In the latter 2 calendar systems, the time master had to add 9 years every few years, so that time was properly timed.
When we re-study time, times, calendar system, events and history, we will discover that things that happened in history cannot be exact science. Ancient time and dates and times in history, are never accurate and they don't tell the correct time and date. Therefore, which time and date are correct and should be used for reporting events in history?
I have not looked at how well the Chinese calendar system matches whatever we are accustomed to today. It is interesting that we tend to simply accept reported dates in our history without questioning how time actually affected lives and events, and seasons, and how calendaring was actually done.
If I asked you, 'tell me, what season was it on 25 December 1400?', without specifying which calendar system to refer to, what calendar system would you use to give me an answer? How would you go about finding a plausible answer to that rather vague question?
Don't you think that the Muslim lunar calendar is correct and exact? There is no time correct that I know of or have heard of. Time flows and is recorded without a single add/minus to the time. on the clock faces Time is exact. The only thing that changes in the Muslim world is the direction of Qiblat - time does not need re-timing at all. The seasons change but the months don't. So Aidilfitri can be a dry season or a monsoon season, i.e. seasons change with the times.
We are actually older than we think we are. We are not young. When we sit down and think about it, then I can ask you, 'tell me, how old is a girl aged 9 in our Gregorian calendar'? She is actually 9+9 = 18 years old biologically. Because we are using Gregorian calendar, we are confused about a lot of things in the past. Everything that has to do with time must be backed by the Muslim calendar system which tells exact time, but not the season. That is why when I visited the graves at many locations in Malaysia, I see 2 dates on the headstones - the Muslim date first, followed by the Gregorian date beneath it. I take the Muslim date as the true date of death, not the Gregorian one.
The next time we are asked to reset time, think about this article - think about what time actually means.
