No Such Thing As a Free Day Off

Tomorrow, Saturday, the boys are going to school. Why? Because next week is Moon Festival on Thursday, September 19th, which is a national holiday and their second biggest celebration after Chinese New Year. But why the Saturday school thing, you still ask?

Well, since this year's moon calendar lands this holiday on a Thursday, the Taiwanese are taking advantage of making it into a gloriously long 4-day weekend. The French call this practice "faire le pont" or "to make a bridge." The French have mastered it quite well and they enjoy bridging holidays the fall on Thursdays or Tuesdays into lovely, long weekends. Their automatic 5 weeks of vacation days allow for individuals to do this as they please. Joie de vivre for everyone.

In Taiwan, however, it's absolutely fascinating to see how they manage the same situation. Group unity prevails and businesses and schools get on the same page for taking the Friday "bridge day" off.  Yet work-ethic, holiday time limitations, and who knows what other factors make it so that there's no such thing as a free day off. They pay for it in advance by having this Saturday be a work/school day! The joie de vivre is still in the air though.  People have been borderline giddy as they talk about having 4 days off!  I don't want to burst their bubble by pointing out that its 2, actually, seeing as how the weekend they normally get off...and really, it's only 1 day off when you consider this Saturday being a debit in their holiday ledger. But I won't be the one to dampen anyone's spirit :)

Here are a few sneak previews of moon cakes. More to come on those later.

And here, way at the bottom, I'd like to take just a moment to file a small complaint: Ben's work decided (which we found out a couple days ago) to take advantage of this nations' holiday time to have a couple of days of expat manager meetings. Where are their priorities, I ask?!  Ben responded that their priorities are solidly grounded in business success. Bah humbug, I reply. So Ben will be going to work next Thursday and Friday--but not this Saturday. In a way I guess it took the pressure off me to plan for a get-away weekend to the coast or an island or something--which only would have been stressful as we would have joined the throngs of other holiday travelers. So the boys and I will simply have moon-cake eating fun and "mid-autumn" BBQs locally. We just need to network a few invites first :)