If you can read this, so far so good, we seem to have survived yet another apocalypse. Congratulations.
Not that I ever lost any sleep over it, but my concerns about this day were first aroused in December 1989, when I received for my birthday a book about the Mayan prophecies.
Back then December 21, 2012, was so far away that only Mel Gibson and the truly paranoid thought about Mayan warnings. Closer at hand were more pressing matters, such as living in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, whether that nice Mr Mandela would be let of out jail and whether the Springboks would get to play in the 1995 Rugby World Cup.
What truly impresses me about reaching this day, however, is not dodging a bullet that the Mayans saw coming, but the fact that it is my father's 85th birthday.
Seven years ago, unlike the Mayan apocalypse, this was not something we would have predicted witnessing, thanks to an alarming medical diagnosis. On hearing the news I rushed back home, to play what I thought would be my last round of golf with the old man, and returned to this city bummed out and wondering about a looming abyss of sadness.
It turned out that the diagnosis was pessimistic, if not alarmist. To this day my father is still out there on the fairways, shooting birdies twice a week and racking up the holes-in-one. He is now the oldest member of a club which he joined as the youngest so long ago that it was in pre-Mayan times.