"Are you going away for the weekend then?"

.... a question I have been asked and have asked several times to several people over the last couple of weeks. It's a very British or even, I daresay, a very English thing.

We do get our weekends here and lots of long ones as well through the spring and the summer starting with the Easter one this weekend. Last Saturday, we met an old friend of dot's, from his IIT days, who is keen to do an MBA and for whom the toss up is between doing it in Europe and doing it in the USA. The fact that we 'got our weekends' away from work was a huge deal to the couple and something we take a little for granted. Dot knows friends in North America who haven't been able to take a weekend off in as long as three months and it's pretty much the same story back home in India. The unfortunate bit is, if you don't do it, someone else will, and that makes people go on and on and on without taking a break. As far as I understand, the quantity of time spent doing a task can never be the sole measure of productivity. But like I said before, it's a vicious cycle with no break in sight.

I do enjoy the weekend, whether it means doing absolutely nothing and lolling about on the pullout sofabed (we've only just discovered that it can actually be pulled out) watching re-runs of Hope and Faith and 8 Simple Rules for Dating my Teenage Daughter on ABC (dot's favourite type of weekend - yes, a lot of American TV never killed anybody) or going shopping (my favourite type of weekend - and whoever said too much shopping killed anybody?!) or taking a bus ride to explore a new place (our favourite type of weekend). It gives us time to relax and recharge. Also, there are always a million things to catch up on in the 'having a life' department that we keep putting off and the weekends force us to tick items off that list. So whether we "go away" or not, I am very grateful for the gift of the weekend.

Besides, last Saturday was a gorgeous Oxford spring day and I do think that tipped the scales more than a little in favour of Europe and may be even Oxford's own Said Business School! Okay, so you haven't heard of it - but who knows when that might all change?!

If my dark blogging frequency past is anything to go by, I might not get back to this for a while. If I don't see you before Sunday, Happy Easter to you and yours.