Source: http://www.worldtimezone.com/

kim_karasu lives in Melbourne, Australia. I'd like to know exactly what time she is at, relative to myself and the rest of the world.

World Time Zones are designated by letters. I think many users follow the US Navy in using the Phonetic Alphabet to designate the zones; this version is recommended by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU.) Anyone who's used a CB radio much would probably know it. Anyway, each letter has a distinctive word in the phonetic alphabet, which was designed to make voice communications unambiguous.

The alphabet goes:
Alfa (or Alpha), Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot,
Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima,
Mike, November, Oscar, Papa,
Quebec (pronounced "Kay-beck"), Romeo, Sierra, Tango,
Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-Ray, Yankee, Zulu

US Navy communications, incidentally, are always dated with Zulu time, to avoid unfortunate misunderstandings. Zulu time is also known as "Greenwich Mean Time," Greenwich being the astronomical observatory in London, England, which is taken as the marker for the Prime Meridian (Longitude 0 degrees.) I first found this out when I was standing watches in Spain; I'd have to log in messages by their Zulu times, which is one hour off the time in Rota, Spain, where I was stationed. Actually Rota is very close to the Prime Meridian and so "Sun" time is really about the same there, but Franco decided to put all of Spain on the same time, a decision which has persisted a quarter-century after the death of the last of the Fascist dictators.

Of course, this makes for some potential confusion. India the country actually uses the "Echo Prime" time zone (offset a bit from an even hour.) Japan is in the "India" time zone but not in the same time zone as India! I think some of the eastern parts of Quebec are actually in the "Quebec" time zone, but most of the province (or nation if you are a Quebecois who sees it that way) uses "Romeo" time, what we call "Eastern" time in the United States. Anyone from Canada who reads this, could you tell me what you call your time zones there? I think "Quebec" is something like "Maritime" time, for the Maritime Provinces, which if any of the geography I learned close to four decades ago is still really in my head would be Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland?