When I first came to Dubai in 1999 I was relieved to
see that I didn’t have to make drastic changes to my life-style. Wherever I went
I was surrounded by my country-men; Indian food was available everywhere,
Indian clothes were prominently displayed in shop windows. Except for poppy seeds[khus-khus]
everything else is sold openly [anybody found carrying or selling Khus-khus will
face imprisonment upto 20 yrs because it comes under the drugs category].
I’m digressing here;-P. Coming back to the subject, there
was one thing out here in the Middle East which took some getting used to.
The weekends.
Weekends originally fell on Thursday and Friday. I
used to find it so different initially. Then around 7 yrs back the authorities
changed it to Friday and Saturday. And so it has remained till today. It still
took some getting used to.
When one has been going to church on Sundays all
their lives, dressing up in Sunday best on Fridays took some getting used to.
Children go to Sunday school on FridaysJ.
Actually I’m even prepared to overlook this but can you
just imagine getting up early on a Sunday to go to work. That’s right, Sundays
are working days out here. Adults get up early to get ready to go to work and
children to school. I still haven’t gotten used to this. Even now when I wake
up early Sunday morning I think wryly “Poor kids, imagine going to school on a Sunday;-)”
Easter Sunday is a holiday which is taken for granted
everywhere else in the world but out here in the Middle East it is a working
day. We need to apply for leave to spend time with family on this day.
Some interesting facts about Sunday:
Sunday
is observed as a day for worship of God and rest, as the belief among Christians is that it is Lord's
Day, the day of Christ's resurrection.
Sunday
is a day of rest in most Western countries, part of 'the weekend'.
In
most Muslim countries, and Israel,
Sunday is a working day.
According
to the Hebrew calendars and
traditional Christian calendars, Sunday is the first day of the week.
According
to the International Organization for Standardization ISO
8601 Sunday is the seventh and last day of the week.
In Russian the word for
Sunday is Воскресенье (Voskreseniye) which means "Resurrection".
In other Slavic languages the word
means "no work", for example Polish: Niedziela, Belorussian: Нядзеля,
Croatian: Nedjelja, Serbian and Slovenian: Nedelja, Czech: Neděle,Bulgarian:
Неделя.
In
the United States and Canada, government buildings are closed on Sunday, with a
lesser number being closed on Saturday as well.
National
and regional elections in Belgium and Peru are always on Sunday, because voting is mandatory.
Sunday is associated with the Sun and symbolized by its
symbol ☉.
In Puritan times, to be born on a Sunday was
interpreted as a sign of great sin. Puritans believed that children born on the
Sabbath Day were conceived on this sacred day. Sexual intercourse on Sundays
was a sacrilege in this austere society. As a result, Benjamin Franklin's birth
on Sunday, January 6, 1706, had the potential to cause the young Franklin
ignominious shame for life. To remove suspicion and eschew the scandal of
having a "child of the Devil", Josiah, Benjamin's father, had
Franklin quickly baptized on the same day of his birth.
Months that begin on a
Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th."
The term “Black Sunday” is used to refer to
historical events which occurred on a Sunday, or the names of several creative
works.
"Cold Sunday" was a meteorological event which took place on January 17, 1982, when
unprecedentedly cold air swept down fromCanada and plunged
temperatures across much of the United States far below existing all-time record lows.
And
a fun fact…
A sundae is called a
sundae because long ago, religious laws of Illinois banned Sunday consumption of Ice Cream/Ice
Cream sodas; it was stated these ice cream sodas were too "sinful" to
be eaten on a Sunday. So the spelling was changed to sundae to avoid offending
religious conventions;-D.
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