Time

The sun rises far too early for my liking here—around 4-5AM! It sets early too by my standards at around 7PM. Ah well… it’s probably due to India not having Daylight Savings Time, in addition to it simply being too big for the 1 time zone that encompasses all of it. Funnily enough, the time zone maps are nearly horizontal at the India-Nepal border because Nepal wanted to have its own time zone.

This slightly skewed schedule, along with the ~10 hour time zone difference from the US is what let India’s IT/Telecom sector prosper so much recently. Just as American workers are leaving the office at 5PM US Time, Indian workers are coming into the office to continue projects and maintain services while their American counterparts sleep. In theory, anyway…

My cousins who work in the IT sector (seems like pretty much everybody about to go into college earlier this decade was studying computer science or information systems or something of the sort—4 of my cousins work in the industry, along with the 2 spouses that exist so far and 2 of the spouses’ siblings in that age group!) say it’s a pretty grueling lifestyle, but at the time was one of the best areas to go into for jobs at the time. Apparently, the IT sector already has peaked; now people are starting to shun it studying it for electrical, civil, and mechanical engineering and communications technology. I wouldn’t start short selling the IT firms anytime soon, but it might be a good idea to diversify your Indian Foreign Investment, folks.