clockMy thingy got blocked and so I had to reset it. According to the factory settings, it gives a loud ‘ping’ whenever I receive an e-mail and a similarly loud ‘dring’ when I receive a text message. I haven’t had the time to adjust the settings yet, so this morning it started doing an imitation of Big Ben at six. There were understandable grumbles from the other side of the bed. ‘Who would start sending you e-mails or texts at six in the morning?’ came the demand. The answer is EESC members and, in particular, those in the eight EU member states who are on East European Time (one hour ahead of the Central European Time that Brussels is on). The EU has three time zones altogether, with a two hour difference between West and East. I remembered how the two-hour difference in Moscow had given me a sort of mini jetlag but, then, thought about the United States, which has nine standard time zones, and that led me in turn to remember a portrait somewhere in George Stephanopoulos’s All Too Human of Bill Clinton working the phones to the West Coast in the White House in the middle of the night. But the champion electoral challenge for time zones must be Russia, which has no less than eleven. Imagine working the phones there!