I do wish us Aussies had a closer affinity to 24-hour time than we do. I was messaging someone about a rendezvous, and he said they were unavailable from 7pm until 4:30pm. I know they weren’t doing something overnight, but was he unavailable from 7 am until 4:30pm, or was he unavailable at both 7pm and 4:30pm?

I was hoping to meet them at 7pm to pick something up, so I did what large organisations tend to do and recommended the less ambiguous time of 6:50pm. He accepted, which cleared the matter up. But what an unnecessary bout of uncertainty. If the response was that he were unavailable from “07:00 until 16:30”, then great! Let’s meet at 19:00. So much clearer.

Ah well.