AT LAST, after years of searching for a cure for jetlag, Backchat has stumbled across the answer – recreate time so that it is the same, no matter where you are in the world.
Flicking through Swissair’s on-board duty free magazine, Backchat was intrigued by the new concept, created by another Swiss organisation, Swatch. Swatch wants to scrap the 24hr day and replace it with 1,000 Swatch beats, each representing one minute 26.4 seconds.
So, instead of saying it’s 6am in NewYork, 9pm in Tokyo and 4.30am in Bombay, all three destinations will now be known as “@500 Swatch beats”.
As if that wasn’t enough, here’s something to make every Anglophile’s skin crawl – Swatch also wants to get rid of our beloved Greenwich Mean Time and replace it with BMT- Biel Mean Time.
Biel, which Swatch wants to be known as the new zero Meridian, is where the company is actually based.
Swatch’s sales pitch for the watches, called Swatch.beat, goes like this:”Time zones and geographical borders no longer exist. In their place is a new dimension of freedom.
“Everyone has the same time, without daytime or nightime and without being influenced by the sun.The era of time zones has passed.”
Sounds as if the Swiss have been paying a little bit too much attention to their older type of clocks and have all gone a bit cuckoo.
Swatch is sure the new watches will be big sellers, but Backchat remains to be convinced. There wasn’t a mad scramble for Swatch.beat among the passengers of that particular Swissair flight. Still, if anyone’s interested, the price of these Swatch.beat watches is not too bad.A snip at 95 Swiss francs – that’s about £40 to you!