Working on a Sunday

I wonder how many know what a delight it is to work on a Sunday. There will of course be a nationful of people who will try to shout me down. "Down with that fool who works on Sundays. Down with that spanner-in-the-works who buck the system!"
In my line of work, it actually pays to work on a Sunday. First, it is very quiet at my workplace because three quarters of the editorial staff are away, either still sleeping at 1pm or somewhere window-shopping with their families.
Sundays for most people are sacrosanct. That means it should be left undisturbed, and untouched by management hands.
I prefer to work on Sundays because there is a general absence of distraction. I get work done much faster. I am in a peaceful state of mind. The loudest noise I hear within ear-shot is the click-clacking of computer keyboards. And there is not much of that going on right now.
Very unsurprisingly, I am more alerted in the office on Sundays. The hours passed by much faster and I get to go home that much earlier. The day seems shorter too.
To me, any day is just a matter of light and darkness. However, Sundays can be alluded to being in a ashram retreat. The wind is silently brushing its way across the tree tops, the air is serenly still and the earth seems at peace with itself.
I usually gain a lot from Sunday at work. I think better. I am a much calmer person and I get to email some people who I would otherwise would have forgotten on the weekdays.
Yes, Sundays can also be a time reserved for the family. I am not giving up that time because the hours after I have returned home are enough to take care of the leisure and pleasure activities.
So I calculate along these lines. I work a five-day week. I work on a Sunday which seems to be like a half-day, so in actual fact, I end up working a four and a half-day week. It is a win-win situation.
This evening, I am going mall-crawling with my family. My daughter is attending her friend's wedding at his particular shopping complex. The opportunity arises for me to window-shopping and buy things I generally don't need.
Isn't life great? Not all of us get to derive pleasure from a five-star holiday at Barbados, Seychelles or Maldives. The rest of us ordinary mortals have to make do with very ordinary, mundane activities.
The quality of leisure pleasure, as I would like to phrase it, is often relative. Sure, you can sunbathe on the shores of a mediterannean country, or even ski on the slopes of Aspen but your pleasure and happiness could just be as intense if you are having a marvellous time at the neighbourhood mall.
Now, as I gaze across the wide expanse of my office floor, I see empty tables and empty chairs. I also detect a distinct flavour of tranquillity that's conspicuously absent during the weekdays.
Praise be to Sundays, I say. May some of you realise what you are missing in life. Life can be long or short but what really matters is what you squeeze out of every second of every minute of every hour and everyday.
Think about it. Forget about being unable to be a millionaire at 30 or still smarting over the notion that you have lost your opportunity at being a famous movie star.
There are bigger and more important things in life than these trivia of no significance.

The Floods are here again!

Even as I write these lines, more than 100,000 of my fellow countrymen are languishing down south of Peninsular Malaysia, specifically Johor.
The floods have been merciless this season. Perhaps for the first time in almost a century, the State of Johor is at the mercy of the elements.
Nobody knows when the weather and climate will let up. But right now, what we do know is that tens of thousands of families are staying in evacuation centres. Their homes have been washed out in many instances.
Children are unable to go to school. Workers have forgotten about employment for the time being and local authorities are up to their eyeballs in rescue efforts.
This phenomenon is repeated throughout the world. In other countries, the unpredictable weather comes in the form of blizzards, especially in parts of America.
Over in western Australia, fires recently wiped out thousands of acres of trees. Japan recently experienced earthquakes and mini tsunamis. All these natural happenings do not portend good things ahead.
Perhaps Mother Earth is finally awakening to the fact that man has too long been given free play of her backyard and she's no longer amused. When Earth is viewed as a living entity just like the rest of us, then perhaps the bigger picture can be seen.
There's only so much a planet can take from prolonged periods of abuse and misuse of her resources. Thus, the big quakes, the mounting sea waves, the heat and the blizzards.
Over in Malaysia, we are luckier than most countries. We don't really experience the really big nasty weather reactions. But that doesn't mean we should be smug about the whole situation.
Ultimately, nobody is really isolated from Earth's violent reaction to global heating. And heating up is what it is. The Polar caps are melting at an alarming rate.
The Ozone layer is widening and naturally, when things go amiss there's a chain of events that don't conform to peaceful co-existence between man and nature. These are the beginning of reminders to us all that no matter what we do on earth, we have to be mindful that our basic sciences tell us that there's always a cause and effect.
We have been forewarned in the past. We took no heed. Mother Nature is no longer playing the nice guy.