Time-zone conversion is not a trivial problem.
If the from/to timezones are constant and
you don't have any foolishness like "daylight savings
time" to consider you could theoretically do a conversion
by adding or subtracting
hours. However, what if that rolls over
a day boundary? What about month boundaries? You have to consider
years too. You also need to keep track of leap-years to be accurate.
By the time you're done you've impelmented a good portion of
a full calendar system just to do a timezone conversion.
IMHO, much better to use a module.