Leap year-born people celebrate b-day today

MANILA, Philippines – For only the 11th time since she was born, Nida Mangalindan celebrates the day she was born – Feb. 29.

Being “only 11 years old,” she is “younger” than two of her four children – an 18-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy.  She also has two very young children – a girl, aged five, and another girl, born four months ago.

Mangalindan, an accountant who turns 44 today, says that when it’s not a leap year, she celebrates her birthday “the day after,” or March 1.

It’s not easy to come up with an accurate figure on how many Filipinos are born on Feb. 29. But consider that in the Philippines today, four Filipinos are born every minute. Therefore, there are about 240 born in an hour, or 5,760 every day, which means that there are about 5,760 Filipinos born every leap year.

In a population of 85 million, that’s not a big number.

This writer found Mangalindan after calling up several academic and research institutions in Los Baños, Laguna looking for a Feb. 29 baby.

Since childhood, Mangalindan has been teased about her natal day. But her parents advised her to just “live with the reality of her birthday.” Her colleagues now at the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry, and Natural Resources Research and Development are much kinder. – Rudy A. Fernandez