How was your weekend?

It was 23rd Oct 2000, my second Monday at my first job. I was in the pantry preparing my Milo and grabbing a few crackers for my breakfast. You know, I was so lowly paid at that time that I can’t even afford a roti canai at the mamak! Just as I was about to leave the pantry, a few of my new colleagues came in and greeted me (very nice of them). Then… they asked me a question that I couldn’t really answer… till at least a year later.

“Hi, how was your weekend?”… seems like a perfectly normal question right? Well, not at that time, so my answer was like…”Errrr, well, it’s normal. Why?” I can still remember the look on their face. Their look reads… “What a stupid young punk this boy is, a normal weekend?” Some didn’t bother to pursue further but others, perhaps trying to be nice, went a step further, “Well, what did you do?”. What the hell, don’t these people ever give up? It’s none of your business! (of course, I didn’t say that)

I was getting irritated but tried very hard to conceal that beneath my face, didn’t wanna piss off any of my new colleagues, some of them being my senior. In my mind, I was thinking, what nosy people this office has, what has my weekend gotta do with you? Of course, I didn’t tell them that.

“Well, hang out with friends, play some sports, the usual stuff, nothing much”, I said.

Now, my irritation went up a notch cause then, they said “oh, ok / oh, normal indeed / etc” with an invisible statement “What a boring weekend!!” tattooed on their forehead.

What the hell! First, they wanna know how was my weekend, then I told them it was normal, they asked more and now I am supposed to feel crap cause my weekend was normal? What is wrong with these people?

Have you ever been in my shoes before? I bet you had (for those who’re working). At that time, think most of us failed to grasp the full value of weekends. When we were a student , everyday seems to be weekend! Nothing special about Saturday or Sunday. In fact, some may even hate weekends, cause during such time, most of our hang out places will be crowded with people. Movie tickets are difficult to obtain, lack of places in our usual eating place and we may even have to pay extra for certain things during weekends. Weekend? Screw weekends!!

I was so tempted to tell all my colleagues that, perhaps even top it up with an aroma of sarcasm, just to make them feel stupid in return, but of course, I didn’t do it. I was a ‘freshie’ in the office, not about to offend any senior of mine.

Now that I have been rat race for a few years, the value of weekends has turned priceless! It’s the only time where we can take a break from our mundane work, no need to face our boss (I hope my boss don’t read this) and best of all, sleep a little longer. To all the working people out there, do I get 3 cheers for that?

To some, we even plan our weekends. We try to insert as many exciting activities into weekends and may even take leave to prolong our weekends. In some extreme cases, we do a countdown, starting as early as Tuesday! If you’re one who starts to think about the weekend even on a Monday, you’re normal, I will most probably join you soon. I am actually looking forward to the coming Friday night already.

So there you go, just like any other thing, we tend to be oblivious to their value until they became scarce, became priceless. Then only we will begin to cherish things. Now, I find myself asking almost all my colleagues the dreaded question every Monday morning, without fail. All the old timers (da*n, I am one of them!) will gladly tell me how interesting their weekends have been. Are you one of them who ask the infamous question?

Speaking of which, how was your weekend?