12.12.12; A REMARKABLE DATE

It was 9:10 am on the December, 12, 2012 and I was lying in bed. I was still being lazy after covering the 2012 General Elections for Multimedia as a volunteer. I heard Celine Dion’s So This Is Christmas playing; it is my new ring tone. It was my friend Jonathan calling, the first thing I heard when I answered the call at a snail's pace, was happy 12.12.12.

He started telling me about the sentiments people attach to such days dubbed repeating dates. Probably, the famous repeating date is 8.8.8 (8^th, August, 2008) which was the day the 2008 Beijing Olympics started. Chinese believe eight (8) means prosper and wealth.

The number 8 is viewed as such positive number that even being assigned a number with several eights is considered very lucky china. The opening ceremony of the summer Olympic in Beijing began on 8/8/08 at 8 seconds and 8 minutes past 8 pm local time (UTC+08)  A telephone number  with all digits being eights was sold for USD $270,723 in Chengu, China.

 

Many people across the globe attach certain sentiments to dates that have repetitive figures. Today is 12.12.12 and according to Jonathan, people are calling it the testing microphone day, this is because if someone is testing a microphone what they usually say is “testing mice, one two, one two, mice one two”. This day will be the last repetitive date of our lifetime.

For a lot of people, doing a big life changing thing on such a day is great. For instance people would like to get married, give birth, buy a house or do what they deem to be the most amazing thing in their life. It helps to make it more memorable when it is done on a day such as this one.

For the purpose of knowing sentiments people who have had monumental things happen to them today are attaching to the said happenings in their lives, I went to the Maternity Ward of Korle Bu Teaching Hospital to ask some of the mothers what they think of delivering on such a day. One of them specifically told me that she thinks it is a sign from God telling her that her son will be a great person in future. Before you start giggling you have to realize that the world and over, people are reading strange and weird meanings into this day and Africa has always been a superstitious continent so it will be natural to expect that these believes will be  more here and it will be more creepy. 

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Naa Lomotsoo Botchway, a cousin of mine posted on Facebook that “2day is the day. 12/12/12. N it happens 2 be ma birthday. I feel special bcos God made me so...” but the fact is that she has celebrated her birthday before, so what makes this one so special, is because it is 12.12.12?

Today is a special day and everybody should do something to remember it. Days like this literally come once in a life time. Of course there is something you wished you could do on such a day to realize the full significance of it. For me, I wish that on such a day as this, I would go to launch with Oprah Winfrey, she is a remarkable woman and love her or hater her. She is an unequivocal example of success and the results of hard work.

By: Andrew Tetteh

12.12.12