SharePoint Alerts

Hopefully simple questions for someone to answer-  we have users that set up their own alerts on demand ----  if you were to look at your list of alerts in Manage My Alerts would it be a one for one that you would get an email (immediately, daily weekly) for each alert...  there is nothing that combines them if you set up an alert on 4 different pieces of content for daily at same time- and all pieces of content triggered an alert- you would get 4 emails at that same time- not one email referencing all 4 alerts

Also- how do you confirm that the choice of time is your same time zone- I set up one and it sent it to me exactly three hours later than I expected...  so appears to be on a different time zone! 

Thanks for any help!