The long weekend starts today for most people working a 5-day work week. For them, the long weekend is a highly anticipated breather granting 3 days of break from the gruelling work life that these poor unfortunate souls of this country suffer from due to weak labour unions and an entrenched work culture of staying back late. Hey, after all, we are still a developing nation where wages are depressed, employers' expectations are stupendously high and hours are long. In Malaysia, unless you work for the public sector, nobody leaves work on time. It's just the work culture here. Leave on time and your peers will perceive you to be lazy. Leave on time and your superiors will think that you do not have enough work and will burden you with additional workload and expect you to finish it within a ridiculously unreasonable time frame. Perhaps it's an Asian thing where the worker who stays back the latest is perceived to be the most hardworking. I remember when I was in Tokyo earlier this year, from my hotel room window I saw a considerable number of people still in the office even at 11pm, and there was still a busy sea of people who had just left the office walking to the subway station to go home.
Does work-life balance really exist in this world or is it only a utopian paradigm?
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