08/08/08

5 Hrs from the Beijing 2008 will start. Any Olympics is special but this one has the world watching it closely and eagerly as it takes place in China.

As the world turns its gaze to Beijing for Friday's opening ceremony of the Olympic Games - set to begin on 8/8/08 at 8:08 p.m. - a record throng of 9,000 Chinese couples also will be lining up to get married. It's no coincidence that the world's athletes will be marching into the Olympic stadium at the same time that history's biggest bridal registry becomes the great wall of wedding china.

It's all about the power of 8.

The number is viewed as so "auspicious" among many Asian cultures, and has become so entwined in native superstitions, that Friday's collision of those figure-8/8/8s is expected to reverberate all the way from Shanghai to Silicon Valley.

Among the qualities that made 8/8/08 so attractive to Chinese Olympic officials is the numeral's perfect symmetry: it's the only number that can be sliced in half, horizontally or vertically, with each half mirroring the other.

I do believe this as a lucky date. 20 years back on 8/8/88, I was inducted into Rotaract - the youth wing of Rotary. My days in Rotaract were a wonderful training ground for me to prepare for my life ahead. I learnt to work and live in community. Rotaract helped me develop myself professionally while doing community service. I recollect our trip to our adopted village Ramnagar near Purulia every weekend for adult education, free health checkup camp, tree plantation, polio vaccination etc. We used to go from house to house to collect unused medicines and toys and then distribute it. As the chairman of the Rotaract District Conference in 1992 "Sampark" - we hosted more than 500 visiting Rotaractors from all across Bengal, Nepal & Andaman. In 1993 I was elected as District Rotaract Representative of RI Dist 3290 (now 3291) for the year 1994-95. My trainings took me to Kathmandu and Agra. At Agra I was also declared as the best DRR of South East Asia. I went as a trainer for new DRR's at Mysore. As a DRR I travelled to more than 70 clubs from interior Nepal to Sunderbans to Calcutta. I interacted with people from different societies, culture and have done some of the most proactive community service. As the period I was in Rotaract had more highs than lows I count the date 8/8/88 as very lucky and I am sure August 08 will bring lot of luck to me.