Job Discussion Forums

[denise]

I've just spent the last hour staring at the blinking lights on my tree and listening to the Julie Andrews Christmas CD. I'm sort of in the holiday mood...

Do you guys have any big plans for the holidays? This year Xmas coincides with a week-long Muslim holiday so I'll get some time off. No big travel plans (saving that for January), but I'm looking forward to a nice Christmas Eve dinner with friends & colleagues and a Secret Santa gift exchange.

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[Otterman Ollie]

Yes Denise ,you're right, the feast of the sacfrice does seem to come at a very advantageous time, been so near to xmas especially if like you I also work in a muslim country. However, unlike you my employer(s) have more of a scrooge mindset and really don't understand why someone who has been living in their country for more years than I care to admit and would like to exploit this rare occurence to the full and be with their family at this time. I see the half arsed and pathetic attempts that the locals call their "Noel" preperations every time I walk around my workplace or venture out into the many westernaised shopping malls. Despite their flaws it makes me even more homesick, I'd hoped that I would be able to go back to the U.K for the duration of the holiday and see xmas with my family and come back the following day ,yes be back in the workplace on the 27th, but somebody somewhere with a lot more clout than me has decided its not on, so much for religious tolerance, coming from a country that has E.U membership high on its agenda. So thank you Denise for reminding me what I shall be missing,I hope you have a good one but mine will be less than festive and whatever spirit I had before has been trampled on.

[denise]

Yikes!! I feel like I've just poured salt in your wounds. Sorry!

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[naturegirl321]

Nothing special. I have to work the 24th and 26th and my husband's on the other side of the world. So I'll be stuck in my flat. I'm homesick and just want to go home. But, I just bought my flight, I leave the 3rd of Feb, so less than two more months to go and back to Lima, and summer

[squindia]

oh the holiday is all I am thinking about right now! I can barely get through my work day

Last year it was too insanely hectic returning to family. This year I am heading to the Andaman Islands off the coast of India for some scuba adventure!

Happy Holidays everyone.

naturegirl - heading to Peru seems a nice consolation for being stuck in your flat. Even if you have to wait a bit...

[mcsam]

Hey
I am in a muslim country too. Luckily for us our mid-semester break has been added onto the Eid celebrations. We are getting just under 3 weeks off. My mother is flying in on Thursday and we are going to celebrate Christmas in Egypt. I'll be floating over the Valley of the Kings, in a hot air balloon, on Christmas morning
A few folks here are sticking around so we are going to celebrate New Year in a hotel. It's important to be being Scottish

[naturegirl321]

[Stephen Jones]

For many of us in Dar al-Islam it is the last time we get Christmas off for the next thirty years or so.

Luckily one of the things I like about Muslim countries is you don't have the awful pre-Christmas build up in the shops. Last Christmas in Lanka the local supermarket dressed all the staff up as Santas elves and played jingle bells incessantly over the musak, in a tropical zone where the temperature never goes below 26C!

[Glenski]

Here in Japan, Xmas is not a national holiday, so many people will be working. Fortunately for me, that week is the start of winter break at my university. Unfortunately, I have not decided what to do. I get 3 paid days off that are not part of my regular holiday time off, but my family and I have not decided when we will go to see her family on the other side of the island (a 4-hour drive away). We certainly won't be flying back to the USA! Prices and my wife's fear of flying hinder that.

We have our plastic tree up (perhaps what Otterman Ollie would call a pathetic attempt at celebrating, but who cares?), and we'll soon have a few other decorations on the walls. Otherwise, Xmas in heathen Japan is only for lovers and the few religious types. We'll have Santa presents for my kid, some kind of special dinner that day (certainly nothing as grandiose as a turkey, not in our tiny microwave), and then relax.

Big thing in Japan is New Year's. We'll visit my in-laws then and eat. Can't really do much this year, though, because of a death in the family. That forces people to not send out traditional NY cards and to not eat such a grand NY meal.

Most of the break I will work in the office, though. Not much choice even with classes out.

[Otterman Ollie]

Don't get me wrong Glenski, I'm all for plastic trees,better than none at all,and I'm happy to hear some of you will be with people close to you at this time of year. Sadly I won't be,and when the semester break comes little chance there as well,what a nice bunch I work for you must think,why don't I quit? Would like to but its the only show in town and they know it too,so we get shafted a little bit more each year,the screw slowly turns and a demanding and challenging line of work just got harder. It seems that they have the idea that teachers worthy of the name grow on trees and they just go and pick a few when we go. I feel very much like an expendable commodity.

[Glenski]

[Otterman Ollie]

You're right of course, in this day and age with my experience etc etc why stay? I'm a free agent, with no emotional ties or strangling debts and Istanbul is a lot more vibrant and in your face type of place than Izmir will ever be. Basically I like the place, not the job, the people who I know and meet outside the workplace, and the stuff I can do here that I can't back at home or in Istanbul,and the fact is that in many respects I'm comfortable, Ijust hate been shafted over holidays that most people get that I don't. Am I been unreasonable?

[spiral78]

Reasonable, Otterman!
Would it be possible to negotiate before signing next year's contract, if not for actual Christmas, at least for some period of time that would allow you to head back to Merry Olde for some nice time period?

Not a solution for the 2007 holiday blues, I realize...

[denise]

Well, my plans may have just changed... the holiday that we thought we were getting that very happily coincided with Xmas is coming earlier and is shorter than listed on our semester calendars. I may end up giving oral exams on Christmas Day.

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[Otterman Ollie]

Well Denise, now you know how I feel ,it seems to me I give and take oral every day of the blessed year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!