This is going to be a short one, a bit of a rant. Time zones suck. They are practical, they make sense, they are annoying. They are especially annoying when you are a big sports fan. The problem with being a sports fan is that the events are live. You either watch them while they are happening, or you accidentally find out about what happen. Watching sports on a delay takes the magic out of it. It takes the communal experience out of fandom. It has been hard adjusting to that while living 7 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time.
This is a predicament I expected and knew was going to happen. However, it is much more stark when you arrive at the same time that the NFL season does. Living in the Middle East also means our work week is Sunday-Thursday instead of the Monday-Friday we have always been accustomed to. So when the NFL games come on during a nice relaxing lazy Sunday afternoon for the east coast of the US, we’re already a day into our work week, and the games start at 8pm. This is kind of cool for the first half of the early games, but if your favorite team plays in California and the game doesn’t start until 1am local time, that’s not so cool. Minor inconvenience, but still an annoying.
However, this past week, my beloved Raiders played the Sunday night game. It was slated to start at 8:30 EST. I usually wake up early for work, sometime around 4:45-5:00 most days. So I figured I would take the opportunity to catch my favorite team on one of the rare instances that I could. So I prepped a whole pot of coffee, got my alarm set, and woke up at 3:00am to watch the game. It was kind of cool. I was watching live, cheering on the events as they happened, halfway across the world. I watched the game in its entirety, finished my coffee, got ready for work, and then left to go teach. My exhaustion set in about halfway through the day. It was inconvenient, but led to a truly unusual and surreal sports watching experience for me. While the time zone difference has been annoying many times, in this case, I was grateful for the peculiar morning. The little things, the subtle differences, are what makes living abroad so interesting.
This is a predicament I expected and knew was going to happen. However, it is much more stark when you arrive at the same time that the NFL season does. Living in the Middle East also means our work week is Sunday-Thursday instead of the Monday-Friday we have always been accustomed to. So when the NFL games come on during a nice relaxing lazy Sunday afternoon for the east coast of the US, we’re already a day into our work week, and the games start at 8pm. This is kind of cool for the first half of the early games, but if your favorite team plays in California and the game doesn’t start until 1am local time, that’s not so cool. Minor inconvenience, but still an annoying.
However, this past week, my beloved Raiders played the Sunday night game. It was slated to start at 8:30 EST. I usually wake up early for work, sometime around 4:45-5:00 most days. So I figured I would take the opportunity to catch my favorite team on one of the rare instances that I could. So I prepped a whole pot of coffee, got my alarm set, and woke up at 3:00am to watch the game. It was kind of cool. I was watching live, cheering on the events as they happened, halfway across the world. I watched the game in its entirety, finished my coffee, got ready for work, and then left to go teach. My exhaustion set in about halfway through the day. It was inconvenient, but led to a truly unusual and surreal sports watching experience for me. While the time zone difference has been annoying many times, in this case, I was grateful for the peculiar morning. The little things, the subtle differences, are what makes living abroad so interesting.
Thats gotta suck man. Hey when your a fan you do what you gotta due dude. Im sure their will be many more of those painfully tired work days when the Sixers make the playoffs! lol
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