What's with the Date?

One thing that has baffled me for a long time is how obsessed Singaporeans are with dates! I have witnessed relatives, friends, neighbours and strangers booking their wedding dinners, solemenisation ceremonies, commencement of businesses or even the delivery dates of their newborn on such *special* dates. At least that's what they think. These dates can be:-

• Strategic. Public holidays are often chosen to make it easy for everybody. No issues with people making lame excuses that they cannot take time off from work. The usual suspects: Hari Raya, Deepavali, Labour Day. ; or

• Convenient. Singaporeans may have the highest university graduates per capita in the world, but many chose to have dates that are easy to remember for wedding anniversaries or wedding proposal. Some would even go to the extent of inducing birth of their babies to grant them a lucky date of birth. Very strange parents indeed. Convenient dates are often confusing and look like binary codes - 09.09.09, 10.01.10, 10. 10.10. *Enough, I am seeing stars already*; or

• Economic. The local TV company is the primarily responsible for stirring the interest of sponsors that hope to gain some media mileage. It has almost become an unspoken rule that the first baby borned at each New Year Day, National Day or 1st day of Lunar New Year will be showered with media interviews and generous gifts. Not a bad idea when life is tough.

• Auspicious. Huat ah! This is almost the most common reason. Think of Lunar calendar 8 August or 9 September. Anyway, being typical kiasu Singaporeans, we always like to err on the conservative side. Most of us take no chances in refering to the 通书 (Chinese traditional alamnac calendar) to select a lucky date for important affairs - move house, start business and of course getting married.

Sometimes, spontanenity is probably a better idea.