Changing Times: Time Zone Changes in Singapore since 1905

Kenneth
So, you have this case in the mid ‘40s, even under Japanese Occupation, that Singaporeans, or Malayans I should say, or people living in what was once British Malaya, were living in double time. And this I find really interesting, because it took a journalist about two years since the Occupation to come up and say, “Hey, hey, it’s been two years since we came here and you guys are still living in your past time.” 

And interestingly enough, to me at least, you could even ask the question, is this some kind of a subconscious rebellion, or some kind of resistance? Yeah. Weapon of the weak. Because people should also remember that the Japanese Occupation is not just spatial, right? It’s not just the Japanese coming in to say this is now part of the empire. But it’s also temporal as well, because they were imposing for everyone to live in the same time as people living in Tokyo.

So, this was a temporal occupation as well. And one of the best ways perhaps to enact some kind of bodily noncompliance…

 Jimmy
Resistance.

Kenneth
…was to literally live in a different time.

 [Music playing]

 Jimmy
You’re listening to BiblioAsia+, a podcast produced by the National Library of Singapore. At BiblioAsia, we tell stories about Singapore’s past. Some familiar, others forgotten, all fascinating.

Time is one of those funny things. Time can be subjective. On a day when nothing happens, time seems to drag. One hour feels like three days. When you’re having fun though, the opposite happens – time flies. Time, however, is also objective. But that feels like time is dragging. Whether it feels like it’s flying, you can establish the amount of time for this part by checking your watch. Or do you look at your phone? Even though time appears to be an objective truth. Like Singapore is eight hours ahead of GMT. This is something that can be changed by policy. In fact, over the last century, clocks here have been set backwards and forwards at least seven times. The most recent occasion was in 1982, when we advanced by half an hour. 

But at one point, people in Singapore had to advance their clocks by 90 minutes, purely for political reasons. This fascinating topic of Singapore’s shifting time zones is the subject of a BiblioAsia article by Arts Librarian Kenneth Tay. Thanks for joining us in the studio today, Kenneth. How are you? 

Kenneth
I’m good. I woke up this morning. 

Jimmy
At what time? 

Kenneth
At about 8.30 Singapore time. Okay. See, it was standard time, I should add. 

Jimmy
Yeah, yeah.

Kenneth
8.30 thereabouts. I woke up with a slight sinus, as you might be able to tell from my voice, but good. Other than that, I am okay. And thanks for having me on this podcast. 

Jimmy
We’re very excited to have you. I really love the article that you wrote for BiblioAsia. Very, very interesting. I hadn’t known that, you know, our time zones shifted so much. How did you stumble on this idea to write about time zones? 

Kenneth
So, without going into too much about my past life, because that seems like another lifetime ago, I was a curator at the local art museum before joining NLB. And there I was kind of researching the histories and concepts of timekeeping. 

Jimmy
I see, okay.

Kenneth
Because of an artist we were working with. Okay. So, both [the artist] and I became quite interested, actually, in this brief period, in our 20th century, where, because of the Japanese Occupation, much of what we know today as Southeast Asia, the region, was actually synchronised, to Tokyo time, which is GMT+09:00.

So, in the case of Singapore, between 1942 and 1945, when we came under Japanese control, time shifted to Tokyo time. What? You know, the Japanese like to call it Tokyo time. And this really meant a kind of time zone synchronisation across the entire region. So, briefly speaking, before ASEAN was even implemented much later on, you could even say that it was a kind of regional synchronicity that occurred during the Japanese Occupation.

So, it’s really from there that I became interested in the idea that time zones are quite political in nature. And of course, extending that question is what is the history of time zones itself? You know, how did we arrive at this current system that we have, which is centered on the Greenwich Meridian, which gives the name of Greenwich Mean Time, GMT, as you mentioned earlier. But all this is to say that back then, I was also looking at broader concepts of timekeeping, which we can talk about later, if there’s time. 

Jimmy
Yeah, absolutely. There’s always time to talk about time. Let me ask you, we’ve changed our time zones something like seven times in the last century or so. And most recently, as I mentioned earlier, was in 1982. For those of us who are too young like me to have remembered that period, tell us why. What happened in 1982? Why did Singapore advance clocks by half an hour? 

Kenneth
I think to answer that we first have to understand the situation prior to 1982, which is, in the case of Malaysia as a nation, they had two separate time zones. So, cities like Kuala Lumpur and Penang located on the Western Peninsula, operated at the time zone of GMT+07.30, while others like Kota Kinabalu and Sandakan, located on the eastern territories [operated at the time zone of] GMT+08:00. So, the time zone change in 1982 for the Malaysians was a matter of national synchronisation. You can think of this as both a matter of politics and economics. First, it gives a better sense of an integrated Malaysia, right? Living in the same time zone. And second, it better aligns working hours between East and West Malaysia. And so, this had the benefit of allowing foreign companies looking to invest in Malaysia to have this added convenience of only dealing with one singular time zone and market. 

Jimmy
Yeah, it makes sense, right? Because if people are trying to call, you know, people in Kota Kinabalu – Call me at 9pm, my time, not your time or whatever. So, it makes sense that half an hour is really quite trivial. 

Kenneth
Yes. But now, of course, we can also ask the second question, which is why Malaysia decided to centre its national time zone on GMT+08:00, which is the time zone of its eastern territories rather than the other way round. 

Jimmy
Right? 

Kenneth
Yeah. But I think that’s a question better left to Malaysian researchers. 

Jimmy
Oh. All right. Okay. But maybe you can tell us then why Singapore felt that it needed to follow in Malaysia's footsteps? 

Kenneth
Yeah. So, Singapore follows suit, afterwards. And if you look at the Ministry of Culture’s press release published in December 1981, back then, this was justified on the basis of the close ties and large volume of trade between Singapore and Malaysia. So, this was the official reason given. But I should also bring up this really interesting point. I encountered a story digging through our newspaper archives, because sometime in 1999, someone actually wrote in to the Straits Times, suggesting that Singapore changed its time zone in 1982 to be in the same time zone with Hong Kong, China and Taiwan. This was not the official reason, as we know. But I think because Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and even South Korea came to be known as the four Asian tiger economies. In the ’90s, there was this public perception that Singapore’s time zone change was perhaps aimed at aligning business hours with some of these other Asian tigers. Yeah. 

Jimmy
But I guess it also, I mean, it makes sense, right? It’s again very confusing. You need to know what time you pick up your friend right at the airport. Tell me about not advancing clocks by half an hour so it is relatively easy to understand. But at one point Singapore had daylight savings. Now, how did that work? 

Kenneth
Yeah. So, it really came as a shock to me. You know, between 2017 and 2019, I lived in New York. So, I had the experience of daylight savings. When we had long summer days and long winter nights. So daylight savings really help, in a way, make sure that there is, consistent or fairly consistent amount of sunlight that we get throughout working hours. 

And that is really what the social benefits of daylight savings is, which is to give everyone a certain amount of fun in the sun after work. And so, you never really come to equate Singapore and equatorial countries with the need for daylight savings. Right. But even as early as 1910 – and you can look this up in our newspaper archives – there were already public suggestions made to adjust Singapore’s time zone, so that workers could enjoy a bit of sunlight after work. 

And this was all believed to have health benefits for the working class. And there’s something that is a sentiment shared by the British, who were here, right? Because daylight savings was the idea that was really championed by a gentleman by the name of William Willett, who really wanted some time after work, to go golfing. 

Jimmy
Don’t we all. This is exactly what we all want to do. 

Kenneth
Yeah. So, in the case of Singapore, then, in 1910, there were some rumblings towards the implementation of daylight savings. That never actually happened. In the 1920s, there were some internal discussions within the government to implement daylight savings in Singapore and other Straits Settlements. 

There was this really funny gentleman who suggested that if we ended the day earlier and people actually had the time to go out in the sun, they might get sunstroke. There ’30s, Singapore actually managed to pass the daylight saving ordinance in 1932. This allowed time to be 20 minutes ahead. 

Jimmy
But this daylight savings was very different from, say, the UK or New York where, you know, in summer, you would change time and after that it would go back. So, you spring forward or spring back. Whereas in Singapore it was just like permanently. 

Kenneth
That’s a great point because, in the case of Singapore, like I said, it was all year round. If you want to, think of it as an extra 20 minutes after work to be out there socialising in the sun. 

Jimmy
At my first job, I would go back at like 8 pm or something. And when I left that job and went to another job, and when I went home and I could see the sun, it was amazing. It was like, oh my God, I’m leaving the office and it’s not dark. It really does make a difference. But anyway, enough about my tragic life. You were talking earlier about the Japanese Occupation, and you were saying that the Japanese announced that, you know, not just British Malaya, but occupied Southeast Asia had to follow Tokyo time, which was at that point 1.5 hours, 90 minutes, ahead of the time in Singapore. How did people react to this? 

Kenneth
I wish I had the opportunity to go back in time. But the best I could do is to dig through our archives, which is a great resource. And I actually found this article, published in the Shonan Shimbun, which is essentially, the Straits Times rebranded, under Japanese. So, this article was published in 1944. And so, to keep it in context. This is two years after, you know, the Japanese occupied Singapore and this journalist was actually complaining to the public that there were still people, locals presumably, living in Malaya who were living in Malayan time, which is, of course, 1.5 hours behind Tokyo time. 

And this, he complained, was really inconveniencing a lot of people who were living in Tokyo time. So, you have this case in the mid-’40s, even under Japanese Occupation, that Singaporeans or Malaysians, or, I should say, people living in what was once British Malaya? We were living in double time. And this I find really interesting because it took a journalist about two years since the occupation to come up and say, hey, hey, it’s been two years since we came here and you guys are still living in your past. 

And interestingly enough, to me at least, you could even ask the question, is this some kind of subconscious rebellion or some kind of resistance? Weapon of the weak because people should also remember that the Japanese Occupation is not just spatial, right? It’s not just the Japanese coming in to say this is not part of the empire, but it’s also temporal as well, because they were imposing for everyone to live at the same time as people living in Tokyo. Right. So, this was a temporal occupation as well. And one of the best ways perhaps to annex some kind of bodily noncompliance. 

Jimmy
Resistance. 

Kenneth
Was to literally live in a different time. Wow. To reject this notion that this is the time of the Japanese Empire, but rather, this is my time, my body. And I am insisting on being late, to the inconvenience of the Japanese administrators, I’m sure. So, this is a fascinating, I think, period that I wish [I had] more time to dig into and find some kind of anecdotal stories about this whole thing. This period of double time, this, this really interesting, ambiguity. 

Jimmy
Did people complain when Japan surrendered, and Mountbatten, you know, marches through the streets and all those people, do you read about anyone complaining that, oh my God, we have to change times yet again? If we go back to you, we go back an hour and a half, right? So, did anybody complain? 

Kenneth
They didn’t manage to find any particular sort of record that shows, like anyone bemoaning the fact that, oh, it's time to adjust my watch again. 

Jimmy
Yet again. 

Kenneth
Yet again. But I think it’s also interesting to note that one of the first things the British did when they got Singapore back was to announce that Japanese time, Tokyo Time, was no longer in implementation, and it was now back to time, as it were. 

Jimmy
Re-colonising the time then. 

Kenneth
Yeah, exactly. So in a way, you could even argue that Singapore went through two different temporal occupations, right? In that brief period of time. 

Jimmy
Okay. So, this is a bit complex, to me, because I am not very bright, but, you know, tell us about, you know, we talk about the Greenwich Mean Time. How did that come about? And, you know, how did that standard become a worldwide standard and how does that actually compare with, you know, we talk about Singapore having changed time zones many times, but what really is the time now in Singapore? And is that related to Greenwich Mean Time? 

Kenneth
That’s a really complicated question even for me to answer, even as someone who has done some kind of reading up on this topic and I'll try my best to break it down. But first, I think we can talk about Greenwich Mean Time, and where the name comes from, essentially, because it does reference the Greenwich Meridian, which is quite literally an imaginary line. 

You know, there’s no such line on earth on the surface of the Earth, but [it is] generally [a] line or longitude in that case, which runs along the surface of the Earth, centered on the location of the Greenwich Observatory in London. Just outside of London. It has, since 1884, been designated as the prime meridian for the entire world. And what this means is that it is the zero degree of longitude. So, all other places on Earth take longitudinal positions from it. And Singapore. 

Jimmy
Longitude. Exactly. 

Kenneth
I was getting to that. Singapore, for example, [lies] in the 103rd longitude east of the Greenwich Meridian. So, in all fairness, if we really look at it, there’s no inherent reason why Greenwich Meridian should be the primary or the longitudinal centre of the Earth. It’s important to have a central reference so that we can all keep track of the Earth's rotation about its own axis. 

But it could easily have been an observatory in Paris. Or an observatory in New York or even Singapore, right? You just need a central reference line. But to understand why Greenwich became the centre, we have to situate this decision in the 1884 Prime Meridian Conference, which was held in Washington, DC, where delegates from all over the world came together and they decided that, hey, you know, in terms of, some kind of international system, we need to decide, on a line somewhere. 

Jimmy
And they had to draw a line. 

Kenneth
Yeah, we have to draw a line. Now, of course you should. We should also add this caveat that when I say delegates all over the world, this mostly meant people who were in power. You know, there was no representative from Singapore, for instance, going to that meeting, in fact, the only Asian sort of representative was a physicist, a mathematician from Japan, representing the Japanese Empire. But I would say, largely, forces in the Northern hemisphere, coming together to decide where the centre of the Earth should be. And so longitude and Greenwich. 

Jimmy
Were there any candidates besides the Greenwich Observatory? 

Kenneth
Yes. There were, actually. So Paris, as I mentioned, was one of them, Cadiz in Spain, was also considered, but Greenwich won over everyone else because of the relative strength of the British Empire at that time, and a lot of people doing maritime navigation [then relied] on maps, that was centred on the Greenwich Meridian already. 

So, on that basis, I guess the British won out over everyone else. And what’s interesting to note is that with the centering of the Greenwich Meridian, any point east of the observatory, Greenwich Observatory, became known as “time in advance”. Right. And this is my own theory, by the way. 

Jimmy
Okay. 

Kenneth
I have no sources to back this up, but I’d like to push it out there in the public. It's interesting to me because it seems like anywhere East of London, essentially, became seen as time before. And this to me is quite interesting because it almost has a kind of civilisational overtone. I’ll explain this in a bit, because any point west of London you think of New York, Washington. 

So basically the new world, so to speak, they’re a bit behind us and then anywhere, I guess, in the Far East, if you want to think about it, whether we’re talking about, or anywhere East, really, whether we'’re talking about Athens, which a lot of people see as a civilisation or origin of Europe, or the Middle East, you know, if we want to go into Abrahamic faiths, or even the Far East, which is, you know, all the Oriental as some people would call it, like representing this kind of ancient wisdom. 

Jimmy
How does that work on the ground, though? At a point where, you know, London was, ground zero, not ground zero, but zero degrees and Singapore was at 103.

Where did that put us literally, compared to where we are now? 

Kenneth
Yes. I forgot to address that because I got so excited. You know, pushing on my theory. 

Jimmy
But it is a good theory. 

Kenneth
That someone actually goes on to prove it, but, if you think about the Earth, as you know, this is this fairly rounded object, 360 degrees around, divide it across 24. Hourly segments. That means that on average, we can say about every 15 degrees longitude represents an hour. Okay. A way or before, you know, zero degrees on his ship. So in the case of Singapore being 103 degrees east of Greenwich, that roughly equates to about, seven hours ahead. 

Jimmy
Strictly speaking, we should be seven hours ahead of London. 

Kenneth
I guess the simplest answer to that is yes. If we subscribed to this fairly mathematical system of saying that. Oh, you know, if it’s 103 degrees, it’s roughly within the range of the, the 105th, I would say one of fifth, one of five degrees, designates roughly seven hours. 

And so 103rd is roughly in that range. But of course, the world is not so cleanly divided along straight lines, right? If you look at the political map of the world. Right, national boundaries are never straight. They're not straight down vertically. So even for certain places that fall outside of this supposedly longitudinal position, they occupy a time zone that seems to confuse people. So, take for instance, the best example I can give is China. Okay. China, as we know, is quite a large country. 

Jimmy
In theory, a few time zones.

Kenneth
Exactly. So, you would think that by that system, it should have a few time zones. Yes. Right. If you are thinking about places as far west as Xinjiang, for instance, and places as far east as, say, Beijing. These should be, theoretically speaking… 

Jimmy
Several hours. 

Kenneth
Several hours apart. But because China insists on a national time zone, the entire country operates on one single time zone, based on Beijing's longitude and or position. Right. So it’s kind of like, okay, there is that fundamental mathematics that you can do, which is that you take a longitude position and you calculate it. But this is also kind of complicated by political realities. And in the case of Singapore, yeah, we are about 103.8 degrees. So, I may be wrong, don’t quote me on this, but it’s roughly 103. Google. Yeah, East of Greenwich. And so that puts us about just under seven minutes. Seven hours, sorry, I should say, ahead of Greenwich Meridian. 

Jimmy
When did the Straits Settlements and the Federated and Non-Federated Malay States all then decide to coalesce around a particular time? 

Kenneth
For this question, we kind of have to go back to 1905. 

Jimmy
Okay. What happened in 1905? 

Kenneth
So, 1905 was the period in which the British administrators essentially decided to standardise time across the entire Malay Peninsula. And what I mean by that is that, prior to 1905, different towns or cities kept their own local time. And this was really based on their own longitudinal position on Earth. And just to give a better illustration, what I really mean by this is that time was kept locally based on observations of the sun. 

So, noon as we know, 12 p.m., is really defined as when the sun is at its highest point, right? As observed from a particular place in time, right? So, in the case of cities like Penang and Singapore, there is a longitudinal difference between them and so local times [can be] different by more than 10 minutes. 

Okay. Between Penang and Singapore. This was kind of complicated. When you have to commute between these two places, I think for most local residents of these towns and cities, they have no problem, right? Unless, you know, they take the odd journey out. But for the British administrators, this was a time where the railway system was well in place. 

If you imagine in 1905, or prior to that, you had to travel between Penang and Singapore. You would essentially have to look at the railway schedule, timetable and be aware of the time of arrival and time of departure between these two places. You’d have to factor in the local time differences, so that could get quite confusing, I would say, and even harder for those who were trying to manage these time schedules across these railways. 

And, so, in 1905, what the British did was to standardise everyone in the Malay peninsula, centered on the 150 degree longitude. So that really puts us squarely, within the seven-hour mark. And so, the whole of the Malay Peninsula was, in one word, synchronised, to the same time. And this was really a sign of modernity, right? Everyone living to the same, imperial heartbeat. Right? 

Jimmy
Right. 

Kenneth
GMT +07:00. 

Jimmy
Okay, now I’m going to ask you a very hard question. I know it’s hard because I spent 10 minutes on Google trying to understand it. What if we use the term Greenwich Mean Time, but we also use the term almost interchangeably, universal UTC – universal coordinated time. And these, we use them synonymously, but they’re not actually the same thing. So please explain this to me, since I have you here in front of me, because Google has failed me. 

Kenneth
Okay. This is probably the hardest question in the whole podcast, I would think to answer, I’m probably not the best person to do it. And, you know, I left my A-level physics 20 years behind already. But I’m sure listeners of this podcast would, you know, or people who are more equipped with this knowledge will be able to correct me after this, but I’ll do my best. 

So, if we begin with Greenwich Mean Time, GMT, it’s really the mean solar time. Observe at the Greenwich Observatory, located along the Greenwich Meridian, which, as I mentioned, has been designated as the Prime Meridian. So, if you look at the name, it’s our meantime, right? It’s based on observations of the sun’s movement across the sky from a specific location on Earth. Greenwich, right? So, the location is indicated in the name Greenwich Mean Time. But ultimately, as a timekeeping system it is dependent on the rotation of the Earth. That’s how you observe the sun moving. So, the Earth turning about its own axis, right, is how we really experience night and day. Right. 

Jimmy
Right behind you. 

Kenneth
Yes. That’s the easy part. Okay. This is also how we are able to keep track of solar noon repeating across the days. But here’s the kicker. The Earth is not rotating at a uniform or regular speed. 

Jimmy
Oh. 

Kenneth
So if you think about it, the length of day really varies, right? Because of this irregularity, there’s been phases where the Earth is found to be speeding up. But there are also periods in which the Earth is slowing down. What this means is that solar time in general is not a very precise way of keeping time. 

Because while we can definitely observe the occurrence of noon repeating and using that as a reference with time, it is also kind of irregular. But I should add here that we’re not talking about large variations. We’re not saying that these irregularities happen on the scale of minutes or hours. It’s not, it’s really more on the scale of milliseconds. 

Jimmy
Oh, okay. 

Kenneth
Right, over long periods of time. And I imagine that for most of us, going about our everyday lives. These irregularities and differences cannot really be felt, like it really feels like one millisecond. And for a large part of the 19th and 20th centuries, GMT or solar time in general was good enough for a timekeeping system. 

But sometime in the 1970s, scientists around the world decided that there needed to be a more precise way of keeping time. And that solely relying on the Earth’s rotation about its own axis was perhaps not the most precise way, because it’s very irregular, and therefore slightly unpredictable. So, we needed a much more, precise and predictable, way of keeping time. 

And that’s where Coordinated Universal Time came in. It’s also quite interesting, because it’s quite confusing. It’s called Coordinated Universal Time, which, if you think about it in English, should be CUT, but it’s abbreviated as UTC because of French. 

Jimmy
I was going to say I always knew it as UTC, but I knew what it meant. 

Kenneth
Yeah. So, that’s it. 

Jimmy
Really, how do you see it? 

Kenneth
French? I will not try because I don’t speak French at all, and someone’s going to complain. But anyway, so speaking UTC, coordinates at Universal time, unlike GMT, it’s not built on solar observations, and therefore not entirely dependent on the Earth’s irregular rotations. Its foundation is the atomic clock, which keeps time based not on the solar rhythm, but, as the name suggests, on the stable oscillations of a Cesium atom. Cesium one, two, three atoms at rest and at a temperature of zero Kelvin, which is roughly about negative. 

Jimmy
Two seven three. 

Kenneth
273.15 degrees Celsius. So, a cesium 133 atom is found to oscillate about 9 billion times a second. Right, to put it in other words, a second was now not so much one out of 86400 of a day. One second is no longer defined as a fraction of a day, which is again, like I said, irregular, but rather measured and defined now as 9,192,631,770 oscillations of a Cesium atom at rest and at zero Kelvin. 

Jimmy
Is there like one atomic clock in the whole world? 

Kenneth
That’s a really interesting question. There are, in fact, over 400. I may be wrong about this. There’s about over 400 atomic clocks distributed around the Earth. 

Jimmy
Are there any in Singapore? Where is it? 

Kenneth
There is one. So, this is public knowledge and so people can look this up. We actually have it at the National Metrology Centre. 

Jimmy
Right. 

Kenneth
An atomic clock that’s being kept by scientists here. So that they can correspond with the rest of the atomic clocks around the world to make sure that they’re always kind of in sync with each other. And what UTC does is to average out the time recorded across these atomic clocks distributed around the world. Of course, Japan has a few. Singapore has one. 

Jimmy
That’s just mind blowing. 

Kenneth
So, UTC keeps time based on this new atomic standard. But what is interesting to me is when there’s a difference between the so-called atomic time and GMT or solar time, when the difference between these gets larger or close to one second. UTC will actually compromise UTC. Well, at what we call a leap second. 

Okay. We can think of this as a kind of a compromise, because what it’s trying to do is that UTC is still kept fairly in line with our experience of solar time, which is really experience and lift. Right? I think few of us can actually say that we experience atomic time at a bodily level, but we do. 

We can experience solar time at a time every day. Yeah. So, UTC is not pure atomic time built on that. This foundation, this atomic standards of timekeeping. Broadly speaking, it’s kind of modified, so that it has some relationship, I would say, to the natural rhythms that we can experience. 

I often imagine UTC as a kind of patch or upgrade to GMT because as our economy and the world comes to depend more and more on precise time signals to function, we can think here, broadly of, satellite communications using GPS. 

But what actually needs time signals, precise time signals to triangulate positions on Earth, or even to more, I guess, more, yeah, prosaic things like high-speed frequency algorithms in stock trading. You know, those definitely require more precise time signals, right? Because these are computers or computer programmes trading at the level of microseconds. 

So, any sort of imprecision would cause it to malfunction. So, if you think about our economy and world today, it’s easy to understand why there was a need to patch GMT solar time to UTC. But of course, these days, at a local level, most people tend to use GMT and UTC quite interchangeably, because essentially they keep at the level of our everyday life. So, it’s also easy to understand that once you disregard the millisecond discrepancy between GMT and UTC, they pretty much show you the same time. 

Jimmy
On an everyday level, it doesn’t make a difference. But clearly, for scientists, for astronomers, and for – 

Kenneth
Speculative traders, speculative. 

Jimmy
Traders, it makes a difference. Okay. We wouldn’t want those speculative traders to lose money. So, you studied Singapore’s changing times. You’ve obviously studied, spent a lot of time thinking about time. What then does this say about the nature of time? Is it objective or is it subjective? Time will tell. 

Kenneth
Oh, we’re getting into philosophy, I guess. 

Jimmy
I think so. 

Kenneth
Thankfully, or unfortunately, I’m not. I’m not a philosopher. But I suppose the most immediate conclusion you can draw from this, really, is time is somewhat arbitrary. And by that I mean that there’s no real inherent reason. For example, why does 11am. in Singapore needs to be 11am. in Singapore. It could easily be 2pm. 

It depends on what we define 11pm to be, or “am” to be. In the most general sense and maybe people out there already know this, but “am” means ante meridiem and PM means post meridiem. So, it’s really in reference to noon, really, where the sun is supposedly at its highest. Because of this definition itself, that’s why 12pm is 12pm and 11pm is 11pm, because you define noon as that highest point in the sky where the sun is the highest point in the sky. So, it’s arbitrary in the same way that there is no inherent reason why the Greenwich Meridian should be the centre of the Earth’s longitude, right? 

To measure time, all we really need is a repeating pattern, right? It can be the sun’s cycle of rising and falling across the sky. You know, you just need a point in a cycle to be used as a reference point, right? So, like we mentioned several times, noon, defined as the point at which you can observe the sun to be at its highest. 

And on the same note, if time is arbitrary, right. But we have to pick and choose a centre as our reference, right? Then who or what or where we choose becomes a matter of politics, right? So I think that is the question. That is the area I’m trying to lean towards because, I mean, it’s hard to sit in a room as we are, waxing lyrical about time’s elusiveness.

I mean, we can do that. I’m sure I would enjoy an entire afternoon philosophising about that. And what time is, but, you know, at the heart of it, if we accept that time is arbitrary and somewhat arbitrary, then it’s political, right? How you choose to define it, the terms in which the language used to define it. 

Right. As we mentioned back in 1884, there’s no real inherent reason why Greenwich Meridian was chosen as the prime Meridian. It could have easily been the Paris Meridian. Right. But because of politics, right at that point in time in history. So that’s really my maybe kind of a cop out answer. But I think to answer your question, time is arbitrary, but therefore it is political. 

Jimmy
kay. So now we’re going to talk about Einstein’s theory of relativity and how as you approach the speed of light, time slows down. How can you explain that to us? 

Kenneth
No, I go into time dilation. 

Jimmy
Okay. I’m joking. And I will not put you through this. That was a joke. But it’s now time to move to lighter topics. How did this research change your notion of time? 

Kenneth
Oh, for me? Oh, it’s really mind-blowing in the sense that, you know, we wear watches. 

Jimmy
No, no, some younger people don’t wear watches. They just use their phones. 

Kenneth
Yeah, I guess, but we have some kind of timekeeping device on us. And, in fact, I would even go to say that, the oldest timekeeping device to me, personally, is your own heart. And the funny thing about time is that you never really know when your time is up. But there is nonetheless something inside of us keeping time. 

When I think about all this research and thoughts about time from a point of view here in Singapore, it’s really quite fascinating to think about how such a seemingly mundane topic really opens up all of these histories and archival records of how time has changed. 

And you really start to get a sense of how arbitrary time is also, in the sense I don’t have the fortune of living in a different time zone. I was born after 1982. So I’ve only lived in one time zone in Singapore, but I imagine that I don’t know, for some of us, who have lived through these time zone changes, it is interesting to find interviews or records that really sort of zooms in on how this changes, actually affects – 

Jimmy
Daily life. 

Kenneth
Daily lives, daily rhythms, but also their perception of time like, oh no, we have to have it out again. Like, why? Who’s idea was this? 

Jimmy
Whose dumb idea was it? I’m too young, obviously, to remember this traumatic period in Singapore’s history. You are a librarian at National Library Singapore and you’re an Arts in General Reference librarian. 

Kenneth
I mean, I take care of the Arts Reference collection at the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library. Specifically, I’m in charge of titles pertaining to graphic arts, photography and cinema. So, it’s really my job as a librarian to keep up with developments in these areas. And to make sure that what we have at the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library or at the National Library at large is sufficiently representative. 

And of course, my job is made a lot easier because of the wonderful work that my predecessors have done. I should also give a shout out that if you’re coming to the National Library and specifically, the Lee Kong China Reference Library up on Level 8, if you come to the Arts Reference section, we have a wonderful, wonderful collection of photography, textiles... And I’m not just talking about photobooks, of, like, photo masters, but actual photographic theory. 

Oh, yeah. Because one of the things that is interesting to know is that there are a lot of images and photographs being taken today, and many of them are taken by non-humans, by surveillance cameras. Drones. And what do you think about photography away from human rights? Because a lot of photographic talk has been centered on the artists or the photographer as an author, you know, about having that human eye? Yes, for the human condition. But what’s happening now is that images are being made and circulated and operationalised or utilised or used to enact certain effects on our bodies. And when we think about surveillance cameras, for instance, surveillance systems, camera traps. Camera traps. Yes, exactly. So, what do you think about photography beyond human rights, which is where we are today, essentially where the majority of images are not produced by humans anymore? 

Jimmy
I disagree because if you look at Instagram, you know, the majority of photos are of humans and largely selfies. 

Kenneth
So, it’s interesting that you should bring up Instagram on social media, when you’re just browsing through social media, you have that impression, of course, that there’s copious amounts of images being produced by – I guess we have to call them opinion leaders. 

Jimmy
Oh, okay. Influencers. I think that’s humans. 

Kenneth
Humans? Yeah. Humans mostly. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. And this is where I would like to point that there are things that you can search easily on the web or worldwide web, but the internet is much larger than that. And the Internet of Things is even larger than that. 

Jimmy
Yes. Of course. 

Kenneth
So, there are there are surveillance cameras talking to each other, without any sort of human… 

Jimmy
Intervention. 

Kenneth
Intervention. That’s right. So, there’s this set of images that we never get to see. But they are effectively part of our everyday fabric, right? Because they determine, let’s say, who, in certain places gets the social credit that they need to purchase certain things because, photographic evidence. And things like that – all this is to say, please come [to the library] because there’s a lot of titles in our collection that really encourages this kind of thinking about photography. And, if you’re not interested in photography, we also have a wonderful collection of donations by local artists. 

Jimmy
Photographers and artists. 

Kenneth
Yeah. And visual artists. And these are mostly [donated] documents that relate to their practice. So, for example, sketches, invitation cards, posters, exhibition catalogues and exhibition photographs. And these materials are often understudied or underrepresented when researching on Singapore’s art history. So as an arts librarian, we’re very glad to be a custodian of these donated materials, which you can [peruse at] the National Library. And lastly, as you mentioned, few people know this, but here at the National Library, we have an art collection. We have a modest collection, by most museum standards, just over 500. 

Jimmy
But 500. 

Kenneth
Over 500.

Jimmy
Wow, that I did not know. 

Kenneth
And together with my team, we help take care of this collection and sometimes, you know, part of this collection gets loaned out to museums. Sometimes we display them within our own building. So, that’s part of it. So, I deal with the reference titles. I also work with local artists in terms of donations. 

Jimmy
All right. Okay. 

Kenneth
And, together with my team, of course, we take care of them. 

Jimmy
Okay. Related to the fact that you’re a librarian and unrelated to the art side, please explain Stephen Hawking’s A Brief Theory of Time to me. Please summarise it so I don’t have to read it. 

Kenneth
I should probably just play back like ChatGPT. 

Jimmy
I think so, yeah. Okay. Well, complete a sentence. Okay. “Time is...?” 

Kenneth
11:34, Singapore Standard time. 

Jimmy
I think that this is the time to wrap up. Thank you very much for coming on the show. I had a wonderful time talking to you. You have to read Kenneth’s essay on “Daylight Robbery: Singapore’s Shifting Time Zones”. You can find it on BiblioAsia.nlb.gov.sg. 

Jimmy
Kenneth, thank you once again. It was great having you. 

Kenneth
Thank you. Jimmy. It’s a wonderful time, as you said. I always have time to talk about time. 

[Music playing]

Jimmy
If you’ve enjoyed this episode, subscribe to this podcast and the BiblioAsia newsletter. Thanks for joining us on BiblioAsia+.

Kenneth Tay, “Daylight Robbery: Singapore’s Shifting Time Zones,” BiblioAsia 21, no.3 (October–December 2025).

This episode of BiblioAsia Podcast was hosted by Jimmy Yap and produced by Soh Gek Han. Sound engineering was done by Nookcha Films. The background music "Di Tanjong Katong" was composed by Ahmad Patek and performed by Chords Haven. Special thanks to Kenneth for coming on the show.

The BiblioAsia Podcast by the National Library Singapore tells stories about Singapore history.