We can’t take a full two-day weekend off because some of our customers get Thu/Fri off, while others take Fri/Sat off, so we have to work 5½ days, having only Thursday afternoon and Friday off. A happy medium we think. We can’t touch Friday because it’s the “holy” day although I remember when I was younger I worked at various places for 6½ days a week, only getting Friday afternoon off.
The Thursday and Friday weekend, even with only a half day off, is actually a drag when I need to contact our suppliers or vice-versa as almost all of them are Europe/States-based, so at the moment I actually have to work 7 days a week to cover the intersection of weekends, but fortunately that work is not continuous, sometimes it’s just a phone call or a couple of emails etc. So it’s not a big deal to me. What is the big deal however is the banks close on Saturday so we can’t do any wire transfers etc to our suppliers on that day.
Now imagine if a parent works in a bank, and another in government or private sector. Add to that the fact that schools take Thursday and Friday off and you might well get the situation where parents themselves and children are completely out of sync.
We therefore end up in a mess of weekends. Thankfully, there seems to be a gathering momentum to sort this out, once again spearheaded by the Economic Development Board (which is looking more an more like a shadow cabinet!) to change the weekend globally to Friday and Saturday.
This is excellent, for other than increasing our communication capability with the rest of the world by 33% (changing the effective work week without so much of an adverse overlap with the rest of the world) I’ll get more time to do the gardening and doing stuff with the family!
Comments
Weekend intersections
I always felt special for having saturday off… looks like that is gone…. Another benefit that wasn’t taken into consideration in the study is holiday in saudi is thursday and friday… so the streets in Bahrain are jammed wednesdays and thursday nights… if we move the bahrain weekend.. we might have a steady flow of traffic on friday and saturday and the saudis can roam around easily wednesdays and thursdays.
The Joker
Weekend intersections
Mahmood, what do you mean that the EDB is “a shadow cabinet”?
Re: Weekend intersections
The EDB has been given its mandate direct by the king.
The EDB has the same weight and sometimes more than a minister.
The EDB has taken on everything that hurts this country and its residents and are actively and transparently working to eradicate those problems. Unemployment, education, economy…
The EDB is answerable only to the king and the crown prince.
The Prime Minister MUST work with the EDB.
The EDB is small and flexible organisation built on transparency and accountability, they even had their own public elections a few days ago!
The EDB recruits those which proven track records and are assessed on their contribution to the team.
The EDB engages directly with decision makers in the community, be those businessmen or educators or the unemployed.
In effect, the EDB is everything that the government SHOULD be but can’t. The government is old, fat and inflexible. The EDB is young, dynamic and very flexible.
And when you look at the politics: the EDB inspires the ministry of commerce to drop the registration fees and opens up business registration to all small investors, the ministry of labour then demands bank guarantees to allow these very same small investors to get the labour force they require! This is just one example, I’m sure if you have been reading the papers you would have noticed quite a number of diametrically opposite stances by the government against the EDB.
The EDB doesn’t have a “majlis” for crowds to show their allegiance day in day out, but quite the opposite, its CEO personally attends various functions and forums. I’m quite sure that his children and wife misses him since he took on this job! Just look at the events page in every paper and you’ll see him participating in sometimes daily activities. We don’t see that from the “real” government, just fanfare and pomp and ceremony.
That’s why I think the EDB is the shadow government. It runs on business principles and is judged on results.
Weekend intersections
The Thu-Fri weekend is a real pain in the arse, when I was in Riyadh there was no way you could ever, EVER have two days off in a row, unless you fled to Dubai or Bahrein without your mobile (favourite tactic).
Cheers,
mac
http://re-immigration.blogspot.com/
Re(1): The EDB as shadow government?
I was thinking about this issue a bit more and came to the conclusion that the EDB cannot be regarded as a shadow government because it does have executive power. It’s decisions and instructions are binding on the government whether they like it or not.
Therefore, to me one can regard it as the “real” government (doing all of this in a very short space of time and with staff of probably less than 100!) or even more appropriate it’s the “government trouble-shooter and fixer-upper!”