In an archipelago in the middle of the Pacific Ocean they decided to skip a day. The islands are those of Samoa, the date in question is next Friday, the 30th December. The decision was taken by the Government, which candidly subtracted a box from the calendar of its citizens.
This time, however, the dark prophecies related to 2012 have nothing to do with it. The leap in time of the Samoans can be explained by trivial economic reasons: by canceling the day between Thursday and Friday, the country will slide west of the line marking the date change. Placed by convention on the 180th meridian (the last one, starting from Greenwich), this line creates quite a few paradoxes.
To date, clock in hand, Samoa is separated – in time – by 21 hours from New Zealand and 23 from Australia. It is a pity that these are also the two large countries physically closest to the small archipelago, which has the most frequent exchanges with them.
Relations up to now made very complicated by the change of date: think, for example, of the missed exchanges in the periods in which holidays and weekdays do not coincide. All difficulties that the Samoans have finally decided to overcome. Just pretend that next Friday does not exist.
