What a day!

Today was the craziest day I've had in a while. All I know is I woke up at 7:45 AM, and next thing I know, I look at my watch and it's 5:30PM!

It was supposed to be much more relaxed given that my clients had the day off today, and that I had already caught up on a lot of my work yesterday...but it wasn't. I will desperately need the few days off I have taken between Christmas and New Year's. Although my latest holiday was less than 3 months ago, the past few weeks have been so exhausting in terms of work, I feel like I haven't had time off in a year! I wish I could be lying on a beach in Mexico again.

I could have desperately enjoyed a long weekend. As mentioned in a previous post, the private sector did not get any time off for National Day, whereas the public sector got 3 days off. Some private sector companies did end up getting either Thursday or Sunday off (like my clients for example), but we did not for some reason. The government really should do something about this. It's just not right.

I also hate the fact that we usually only find out at the last minute whether we are getting a day off or not. In Montreal, we used to get a list of holidays at the beginning of the year. So we knew how to plan our long weekends months in advance.

In the UAE, we often find out a couple of days before the actual holiday whether we actually will get some off or not. This is because we need to wait until the government declares how many days off the public sector is getting, and how many the private sector is getting (if any). This is just absolutely frustrating, especially for those who like to take full advantage of their long weekends, by going on a road trip, planning a camping weekend, or going back home to visit their families.

All this to say, I am just frustrated at the lack of regulation when it comes to the time off that we get here. This has been going on for years now (ever since I used to live here more than a decade ago). I have not heard of such a discrepancy in any other country in the world. If the UAE truly wants to live up to the expectation of being a modern country, then it should abolish its old-fashioned regulations and treat all its residents equally.