Folks, Here is one way out for those who have tough time remembering their anniversaries..... Mervyn1650Lobo ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Samoa moves back to the future APIA— The Associated Press Samoa plans to leap 24 hours into the future, erasing a day and putting a new kink in the Pacific's jagged international date line so that it can be on the same weekday as Australia, New Zealand and eastern Asia. It'll be Back to the Future for the island nation, offsetting a decision it made 119 years ago to stay behind a day and align itself with U.S. traders based in California. That has meant that when it's dawn Sunday in Samoa, it's already dawn Monday in adjacent Tonga and shortly before dawn Monday in nearby New Zealand, Australia and increasingly prominent eastern Asia trade partners such as China. Samoa has found its interests lying more with the Asia-Pacific region and now wants to switch back to the west side of the line, which separates one calendar day from the next and runs roughly north-to-south through the middle of the Pacific Ocean. “In doing business with New Zealand and Australia, we're losing out on two working days a week,” Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi said in a statement. “While it's Friday here, it's Saturday in New Zealand and when we're at church on Sunday, they're already conducting business in Sydney and Brisbane.” Samoa's change will have a cost: The Polynesian nation has long marketed itself as the last place on Earth to see each day's sunset. “It will be really confusing for us. I just don't see the point, and we don't know the benefits yet,” multimedia company official Laufa Lesa, 30, said in an interview from the Samoan capital Apia. “The government says it's good for the economy, but it's totally fine the way it is now,” he said. The Prime Minister already has a new tourism angle: You can easily celebrate the same day twice, because the next-door U.S. territory of American Samoa will stay on the California side of the date line and remain one day behind. “You can have two birthdays, two weddings and two wedding anniversaries on the same date – on separate days – in less than an hour's flight across [the ocean], without leaving the Samoan chain,” Mr. Tuilaepa said. Mr. Tuilaepa has proposed leaping forward by scratching this year's Dec. 31 from the calendar and holding New Year's celebrations one night early, though the date hasn't been confirmed.
