Seriously numerically challenged!

Yesterday was my day on duty at Lisgar Gardens. It being the end of daylight saving, at midday I put my clock forward and dashed off to take over from Max at 1pm.  He's Japanese, and I'd planned to do some Japanese study so had taken some of my books.  He was too polite to mention for the first hour or so that I had arrived at 11am, TWO HOURS early!!!  How putting one's clock forward instead of back (as it should have been) makes a difference of two hours is completely beyond my understanding.  Anyway, instead of being on duty for three hours, it turned out I was there for five!!!  Oh, silly, sillly me.


Not to worry, I enjoyed talking to Max and getting some pointers from him as he (though retired now) is a trained Japanese teacher.  When Hira, my afternoon companion, arrived at 1 o'clock, we had lots to talk about as she is from Indonesia and such an interesting person.  Later, one of the visitors chatted to us and - would you believe - we had so much in common.  We'd both been to Salatiga in Central Java on a study tour many years ago, though not at the same time.  (I'd studied Indonesian at Sydney Uni in 1967,68.)  He'd had the same doctor as me in a country town years ago and I was able to update him with the info that said doctor had been killed in a car accident.  And so on...6 degrees of separation...