Long weekend

Today marks the 47th Anniversary of the formation of the Royal Brunei Malay Regiment, which is now known as Royal Brunei Armed Forces. That means it is a long weekend!

The quirky thing about this long weekend is, depending on who you work for, your long weekend may not quite the same as your spouse's. For those working for the government, where the normal working days are Monday to Thursday and Saturday, their long weekend begun on Friday, as their long weekend consists of Friday, Saturday and Sunday. For those working in the private sector, like myself, where our normal working days are Monday to Friday, our long weekend has only just started, as the long weekends consist of Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Monday is our company's holiday in lieu of Saturday. There are also some people who work a five-and-a-half-day week and their long weekend consists of Saturday and Sunday.

Apart from the Jerudong International School and the Panaga School (and perhaps some other private schools), school days follow the government working days, i.e. Monday to Thursday and Saturday. So their long weekend runs from Friday to Sunday.

If both the husband and wife work for the government and the children go to schools that follow the government working days, it would not pose any problem, as they all have the same long weekend.

However, if, let say, the husband works for a private company, then he would have different long weekend from everyone else in the family. I would imagine it would be quite difficult to make plans to spend the long weekend with the whole family. Either one of the husband-and-wife would probably need to take an extra day off work. For those working for the government, taking a day off may not be quite easy. Because of the restrictions with taking day off where one would have to wait for a month to have lapsed before taking another set of off days, it would make better sense for the one working for the private company to take the day off.

I would actually prefer it if the company that I work for changes the in lieu rule. If a public holiday falls on a Saturday, the company should bring the company holiday forward to the preceeding Friday. It would allow everyone to have the same long weekend. This would make it much easier to plan for the long weekend and it would allow the family to spend time together more effectively. Petronas actually does this and everyone is a winner.

So what do you think?

Anyway,