Interesting quotes on time from Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain:

"...we say a thing is "brought about" by time. What sort of thing? Change?"

"Only in time was there progress; in eternity there was none, nor any politics or eloquence either"?

I have never really pondered on the idea of time in the raw too much. I suppose in a way memory, hindsight, foresight, planning, etc are all a function of time? If I am looking back, I am pondering on time? If I am thinking about the future, I am pondering on time? But what I mean is, these things relate to time when one is inside of time but how would one think about time from outside of it, as a concept? I wonder if we did not have bodies that showed the ongoing marks of time, would time matter to us the same way? We keep count of our time so to speak with birthdays, new year's, etc, but why really, or would we if we did not have finite lives? An achievement of sorts... to win time, buy time, overcome time... 

I want to chew on all this a bit more but it's one of those odd nights for me, strangely, when I am in something of a cusp of both time and space... Tonight I am in one place, tomorrow I will be in another, and day after I will be in Dubai—4 hours behind in time. In the middle of all this I will be experiencing a space, this hotel at Beijing airport for a bit. Have you ever had a meal or a dish at some place you were just passing by and thought about it fondly, wished you could go back in time or visit it again in the future, and have it? So last year when I stopped over at this hotel, I ordered a mushroom soup. I loved it so much, I ordered the soup again... hehe! and ever since then, I have wanted to try this soup again. Should we say time brings about some things after all ;)