? It's About Time
Set your clocks to get up early, because we're going to be racing around the world on a journey through time this week!
International Date Line & Fiji
We're starting our journey in Fiji, a very interesting example of how geography and time play well (or don't) together. Fiji spans the 180th meridian, which is, in a theoretical sense, where the International Date line lies. Cross it going west, add 24 hours to the time on your watch (or phone). Cross it going east, subtract 24.
But the International Date line makes a lot of zigs and zags in order to accommodate nations and convenience for trade and administration. The line makes a sharp zag to the east around Fiji, Tonga, Kiribati, and the Line Islands in order to keep things running smoothly in those island chains.
While we're in Fiji marveling at the wonders of time and how humans make convenient adjustments to it, let's stop by the Fijian Government, Fiji Airways, Tourism Fiji, and The University of the South Pacific pages here on LinkedIn. All have wonderful pages, posting regularly. I want to put special emphasis though on The University of the South Pacific as I was fascinated by how it is structured. From their page:
Established in 1968, USP is one of only two universities of its type in the world. It is jointly owned by the governments of 12 member countries. The University has campuses in all member countries. The main campus, Laucala, is in Fiji. The Alafua Campus in Samoa is where the School of Agriculture and Food Technology is situated, and the Emalus Campus in Vanuatu is the location for the School of Law
Those countries span a huge geographic range across the Pacific:
What an amazing educational enterprise, to collectively serve the needs of these island nations, spread over a very large expanse, with different schools based in different countries! Super cool. From here, we set our sights west, chasing the Sun while we continue to explore time together.
Australia
And we arrive on the shores of Australia, where we're stopping to reflect on the Aboriginal worldview of Dreamtime or The Dreaming (as it has been translated into English) which "existed before the life of the individual begins, and continues to exist when the life of the individual ends."
From Wikipedia:
"The concept of the Dreaming is inadequately explained by English terms, and difficult to explain in terms of non-Aboriginal cultures. It has been described as "an all-embracing concept that provides rules for living, a moral code, as well as rules for interacting with the natural environment ... [it] provides for a total, integrated way of life ... a lived daily reality. It embraces past, present and future."
Here on LinkedIn, you can find many organizations and people that focus their work on the prosperity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait people and on Australian reconciliation. I'm sure my list is far from comprehensive, but Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation, Indigenous Business Australia, National Centre of Indigenous Excellence (NCIE), Reconciliation Australia, Supply Nation, and Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) are all standout pages to me, posting frequently about their work and highlighting Aboriginal past, present, and future. Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation's post from a couple months ago is indicative of the amazing work and stories they are sharing.
领英推荐
And with that, we're rushing west again, still chasing the Sun as we continue to keep an eye on the cock!
Switzerland
Next stop in our time tour is Biel, Switzerland, home of Swatch Group. Swatch Group is the world’s largest watch company, boasting sales over $7 Billion in 2021. Including their entire family of brands, they have hundreds of thousands, possibly over a million, followers on LinkedIn and each of the company pages post regularly and often have some really great jobs open across all their brands.
Brands in the Swatch Group family include OMEGA SA, Longines Watch Co. Francillon Ltd., and Tissot SA, which are known for provide timing services for sporting events such as Formula One, Olympic Games, and Tour de France. One of the cool features of LinkedIn is that the Swatch Group family of brands can all be found linked directly off of their company page as affiliated pages (check out the module on the right of the page).
While in Switzerland, we're also swinging by Geneva to visit ROLEX, the major player in the luxury watch market. Rolex is the top spender in advertising and marketing in the watch industry and has been a consistent innovator throughout its history, including the development of the first waterproof wristwatch. It's probably also the world leader in over-the-top, glossy, glamorous, cinematic watch reveals... like the one in this post.
From here we're heading across the meridian into UTC- time rocketing back towards the Date Line... but we have one more special place to stop:
Galápagos Islands, Ecuador
For our final stop on our global tour of time we're pausing in the Galápagos Islands to visit some of the oldest creatures on earth and spend a while taking a deep look backward in time via Darwin's breakthroughs on evolution that were sparked by his visit there.
From Wikipedia:
Towards the end of the voyage, Darwin speculated that the distribution of the mockingbirds and the tortoises might "undermine the stability of Species". When specimens of birds were analyzed on his return to England, it was found that many apparently different kinds of birds were species of finches, which were unique to islands. These facts were crucial in Darwin's development of his theory of natural selection explaining evolution, which was presented in On the Origin of Species.
While here, we're checking out the Charles Darwin Foundation for the Galapagos Islands page. The foundation is "a nonprofit organization and scientific advisor to the Ecuadorian government for the protection of the Islands" and they have a clearly defined mission that is focused on the continued health of this special place:
The mission of the Charles Darwin Foundation and its Research Station is to provide knowledge and assistance through scientific research and complementary action to ensure the conservation of the environment and biodiversity in the Galapagos Archipelago.
Recently, they shared a very cool post that linked to an incredible story map telling the story of how all the islands in the chain got their names. All of their posts, which they write in Spanish and English, are great windows into their work and all they do to preserve and provide scientific and educational access to the islands.
And, with that, we push off again sailing west, back toward the International Date Line and Fiji where we started. It's been a whirlwind tour, and I think my jet lag is really about to catch up to me ??. Hope you enjoyed the exploration, and looking forward to seeing you next week!