Doing the Time Warp, or: How not to design a watch

After my last night on the Routeburn, I was scheduled to meet a
shuttle to the Milford Sound at 7:45 at the end of the trail. This
simply meant that I would have to get an early start (by 6:45), about
a half hour before first light and a good hour before sunrise.

Like most digital watches, mine has an alarm feature (actually, it
allows you to set TWO separate alarms, should you need them). I've
used it to wake me up it the past, so it was with confidence that I
set my alarm and headed to bed around 10 p.m.

I was so confident, in fact, that I told the couple that was staying
in the hut with me that night that I would wake them up when I headed
out, since they wanted to wake up at 6:45.

Of course, as tends to happen when I'm sleeping in a hut of tent or
when I need to get up early for an important occasion, I woke up
several times during the night and checked the time just in case my
alarm hadn't gone off for some reason. Each time I turned on its
backlight. 3 AM, 4 AM, 5 AM... until eventually my alarm did go off
and it was time to get ready.

I breakfasted, went to the bathroom, packed up all of my things... As
might be expected, I was still half-asleep in the dark hut and it took
a while to get ready.

One of the last things I did before I took off was take a pill, and I
checked the day of the pill against the day of
the week on my watch. Oddly, they didn't match. It was supposed to be
Friday, but my watch said Thursday... March 10. (It was actually the
20th). Somehow I had switched to the alternate time zone on my watch
in the middle of the night!

It was with a sinking feeling that I switched back to the correct time
zone. Shite. Instead of 6:30, the time was actually 3:30. Time to
unpack everything again an attempt to get a couple more hours of
shuteye. I could hear that couple trying to figure out why I had
gotten up so ridiculously early.

Here's the thing: this problem is almost designed to happen with my
watch! (Thanks, Nike!) Just one 2-second press on the lower-right-
hand button will switch time zones for you. I had taken off my watch
and when I went to turn on the backlight, I had accidentally been
holding the watch upside-down. So when I pressed what I thought was
the upper-left-hand button (the backlight) I was actually switching
time zones! Argh!

Things definitely could have been worse: the alternate time zone could
have been three hours in the other direction!

And now I have a new interview question!