Today is not a regular, boring Wednesday. Not the most hopeless of all the weekdays with the spell that makes us workers feel so wretched for realising we're only halfway through the week. Out of about 16 public holidays Thailand gets in a year, today is one of them. But today is Aug 12, and not just some meaningless public holiday that the people of Bangkok like to take for granted with a good drive to Hua Hin or Pattaya.
Most Thais, if not all, but definitely young schoolchildren, are supposed to recall the date automatically.
But if you have arrived at this page of the paper and are reading this without acknowledging that today is Mother's Day, then I suppose there is something very interesting or very wrong about you. Anyway, happy Mother's Day.
What are people doing with their mothers today apart from using them as a prop to get some discounts at a department store or a ride on the Skytrain for free? I sure can make a few guesses
First of all, one of the places that Mother's Day gets celebrated is of course in school. Based on my own experience, the usual beautiful ceremony was that mothers were invited to come and sit down on cheap blue plastic chairs in an auditorium with their children sitting on the floor with legs tucked to one side.
Listening to a never-ending speech made by the school principal telling you the pain your mother endured the day she gave birth to you, you started to sense a pain too, but only from your awkward sitting posture. At some schools, only the mother of a handpicked student, who may have the best grade point average, represented other mothers. The ceremony was then topped off with awkward moments of children giving jasmine garlands to their mothers and kissing them on the cheeks.
That was the kind of Mother's Day I grew up with. However, the time of Mother's Day being simple and straightforward, albeit forced, is over. This is 2015 we are talking about. Things have got more interesting, and more mysterious.
It's because some people seem to be very fond of trying so hard to relate everything to the day. There is a university inviting students to sow rice, a zoo inviting guests to witness the new baby koala, a supermarket franchise releasing a commercial about a taxi driver mother, as well as the Ministry of Science and Technology inviting people to watch the Perseid meteor shower. All to celebrate Mother's Day.
However, the biggest event of Mother's Day this year will happen on Aug 16. Don't be surprised if roads are blocked. There will be people on bikes occupying the roads nationwide.
We've heard the jingle from its promotional video repeatedly on television for months leading up to the event. The jingle goes, "Ride a bicycle, let's go ride a bicycle together". Drawing an estimated 300,000 participants, according to the number of signups on the "Bike for Mom" campaign website, there's surely something amazing about the biggest event of this year's Mother's Day.
But I'm also a little curious. So do I need to bring my mum along with me if I ever want to participate? Is that part of the requirement? And will my mum actually pull through such a competitive distance? Or is it something that I should exclude my mother from joining in the first place? The title suggests that we bike for her, in lieu of riding with her. Then how am I supposed to send my love to her when I'm melting in the heat? Perhaps using telepathy? If so, I wonder when the purpose of Mother's Day was that a mother and a child are better off not spending time together?
Truth is today is a good day, as mothers and children live through the day together, no matter how they choose to do it. Mother's Day in Thailand can sometimes be full of things that make no sense, but its core is nevertheless fixed on celebrating mothers. It's the kind of Wednesday where I'll doing everything to make sure that each hour lasts a little longer.
Duangphat Sitthipat is a feature writer for the Life section of the Bangkok Post.