Twenty-Four Hour Loss of Existence

"Each time you fly from North America to Australia, and without anyone asking how you feel about it, a day is taken away from you when you cross the international date line. I left Los Angeles on [February 27th] and arrived in [Melbourne] fourteen hours later on [March 1st]. For me there was no [February 28th]. None at all. Where it went exactly I couldn't tell you. All I know is that for one twenty-four hour period in the history of the earth, it appears I had no being.
I find that a little uncanny, to say the least. I mean to say, if you were browsing through your ticket folder and you saw a notice that said, "Passengers are advised that on some crossings twenty-four-hour loss of existence may occur" (which is, of course, how they would phrase it, as if it happened from time to time), you would probably get up and make inquiries, grab a sleeve, and say "excuse me." There is, it must be said, a certain metaphysical comfort in knowing that you can cease to have material form and it doesn't hurt at all, and, to be fair, they do give you the day back on the return journey when you cross the date line in the opposite direction and thereby manage somehow to arrive in Los Angeles BEFORE you left Sydney, which in its way, of course, is an even neater trick...."
-Bill Bryson - from In A Sunburnt Country