It isn't clear to me how your problem hasn't been solved here, sorry. Perhaps you could re-state it in the form of a test so that everyone can see the issue? See How to ask better questions using Test::More and sample data for how to present that. Once we can understand what you are asking we will be better positioned to suggest some solution.

Update: A thought: is it the case that you aren't interested in formatting the time but actually you want to re-format the format? ie. convert from Joda format specifiers to strftime specifiers?