If it's noon in London it must be 8pm in Kuala Lumpur. Yes, to the world Malaysian time is GMT +0800 … but to locals and seasoned visitors, "Malaysian time" takes on a whole different meaning.

It can be said with some certainty that Malaysian time is plus but never minus - i.e., expect things to generally start a little past their scheduled time, or people to get to an appointment just a teensy bit late.

How little and how teensy depend on many factors - mood and traffic among them. "Early" is for the birds, and worms are not on our list of favourite foodstuff around here anyway.

Fifteen minutes to half an hour is the generally accepted "plus factor" in calculating Malaysian time, although if it's a Chinese wedding dinner then you can add another hour to that. In fact, it's generally thought that the time stated on the wedding invitation is actually the time guests should leave their respective homes for wherever the dinner is being held.

Malaysian timing is one reason why we always seem to be driving in a hurry. Face it, if we all left 15 minutes earlier than we usually do for our appointments, we'd not only get there on time, but there'd be fewer "beasts" on the road too.

People have tried to beat the system by scheduling their events half an hour earlier than the desired start time, so that people will arrive just in time. It works … some of the time.