For Samoa: Friday 30 December 2011 will simply not
exist!
APIA: 30
December 2011 --
It is once in a lifetime we can bring you a news item like
this! For
Samoa's 186,000 citizens, and that includes not a few
Salesians, anyone
born on December 30th will see their birthday cancelled. It's
thought
there are about 755 of them involved. What's worse is that
employers
will have to pay workers for a day that did not exist, but on
the
bright side, hotel guests will not be charged for an extra
night. Why
all this kerfuffle? At midnight tonight, Samoa and Tokelau
switch to
the other side of the dateline. Samoa, currently 11 hours
behind GMT,
21 hours behind Eastern Australia and a further two hours
behind New
Zealand, will be one hour ahead of Wellington and three hours
ahead of
Sydney after the switch. The final hour of Thursday 29
December will
see carols, prayers and a speech from Prime Minister Tuilaepa
Sailele
Malielegaoi as the nation prepares to jump straight to New
Year's Eve.
So let's hear from Fr Nick Castelijns, a long-time Salesian
missionary
in these islands. Nick has been quiet for a year - they made
him Rector
and that seems to have slowed him down :-), but he has 'opped
up' again
and is again writing in his inimitable style. We might
even run the
rest of his newsy letter later this week, but for now, let's
hear him
out on what a small island can do with time....
"Daylight
saving - ever heard of daylight saving in the Tropics? (only
in Samoa
….) was supposed to end on Sunday April 2nd, but we were
surprised to
hear on Saturday April 1st that we were back to normal time.
And it was
not an April joke either (only in Samoa ….). Everyone was
quite happy
to see the end of it, quietly wishing it would go away and die
a quiet
death. But NO, daylight saving returned in September. It seems
to take
the Samoan body clock about a month to get used to it,
especially in the morning, when it comes to buses travelling
to Apia
from the country villages. A much bolder move was the Act of
Parliament
to move Samoa to the Western hemisphere, to the other side of
the date
line. Instead of being 21 hrs behind Australia we will then be
3 hrs
ahead and the day starts with us! It makes eminent business
sense, as
Samoa loses about three business days a week over the weekend.
We will be on the same day as our trading partners Australia,
New Zealand, Tonga, Fiji – and don’t forget CHINA! -
When will it happen? On the 29 December (actually on 30th
December
02.00 hrs). We will skip Friday 30th and go straight into the
31st. So
In Samoa the last week of the year will have only 6 days, the
month of
December 30 days, and 2011 364 days.
And don’t ring or email us on the 30th: we won’t be there!
Like the
road switch two years ago it is well publicised, and apart
from those
having a birthday on the 30th there will be few disturbance.
Banks have let their clients know that they will not be
disadvantaged".
And then a little Christmas cheer from Nick:
"Somehow
the 23rd of October is etched in my mind. It was the day the
rainy
season started – a few weeks late – and the beginning of the
Christmas
season according to Mr Business. The first Christmas songs
belted out
in the market and in the supermarkets. Not the kind of
music I like.
Jingle bells, the drummer boy, I’ll be home for Christmas, we
wish you
a merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad, etc in any rhythm and beat
and boom
boom boom – and you can hear the cash registers ringing in the
background! Fortunately the churches provide a more spiritual
and
serene preparation befitting the upcoming Feast".
