The most depressing thing about working normal work hours is that your life becomes depressingly like everyone else’s.
Monday to Friday, work your ass off, go home, fall into bed unconscious despite all the wonderful plans you made to bring bike out for a spin, update your blog, install (not even play) your new game, etc.
Saturday, spend half the day asleep trying to catch up on all the sleep you missed out on during the week, rush to do all those crap like check whether your employer has given you your salary yet before the bank closes, do all those government stuff like pay bills (fortunately I don’t have much bills to pay yet), rush to buy all those things and send stuff for repairs from all those weird places that only open on Saturday (and half-day only mind you). Etc etc etc.
Sunday, go do your less important errands, buy groceries, buy whatever crap your home needs like toilet paper, cook, clean house (sometimes only he he he he), exercise (haven’t been doing this for donkey’s years), accompany family members here, accompany family members there, etc etc etc.
And in the rare event you have nothing to do on a Sunday, it probably involves something like this: wow I finally have a weekend where I have nothing to do! Must make the most of it by enjoying myself, firstI’llgotoeastcoastparkandcycleandtheni’llgotoorchardroadandthenandthen….
Probably involves going to east coast park and jostling with everyone and their grandmother who’s decided to go there then coming home and falling into bed in a dead faint and then waking up in a big shit because you overslept and now you can’t carry out the rest of your lovely plans cause it’s too late and you’ll regret it forever cause it’s Monday tomorrow.
The result is, everywhere you go, the whole place is crowded with people with the exact same idea as you.
Go to East Coast Park? Everyone thought of going there already for their weekend family outing and now you have to crawl through crowds and crowds of little kids, their parents, their grandparents, not to mention secondary school students out on class outings, etc. And anyway, the bikes are super expensive to rent on weekends.
Go to the park downstairs to exercise? Sorry, everyone thought of that already. So you have to do your morning run/bike while slaloming through little kids on tricycles, entire families walking stretched out across the path, power-walking aunties, etc.
Go to Orchard road? You probably don’t need me to elaborate on this one… anyway in my humble opinion, Orchard road is only good for buying piles and piles of nice things that you later find out you don’t really need. Things like nice clothes, nice shoes, nice tinkly jewelry bits and nice bikini waxes.
Go to NTUC Xtra Hypermart and buy groceries? Everyone thought of that already too! And now you have to push a shopping trolley loaded precariously with daily necessities while navigating it through some kind of anarchic shopping trolley traffic jam. And don’t get me started on the traffic around that area… a combination of heavy traffic and poor road planning =_=”‘.
Good Lord, give me a break. I’ve been hanging around people for the whole fucking week and now along comes the weekend and I have to hang around with yet more people again?
Normally, I’d choose to do my stuff at strange hours, such as riding my bicycle in the park at night on weekdays, riding my motorcycle in the early mornings or late at night, etc. but the fact is, because of my normal working hours, I get tired at about the same time as everyone else does. Therefore, at night on weekdays I’ve probably already collapsed into bed in a dead faint, in the early mornings I’d still be in lying in bed with my alarm clock turned off by everyone else in the house who kept getting woken up by its snooze alarm, and late at night on weekends I’m already kinda tired and besides, my parents don’t let me step out of the house and when I try they stare at me with this damn angry expression and tell me about rapists and robbers and molesters.
I’m under the impression that it’s not that Singapore is too crowded, it’s just that the crowd isn’t evenly distributed. As in during weekday mornings, you can actually enjoy yourself in a lovely people-sparse environment, and I tell you, jogging or cycling in the empty park with only the monkeys (and an occasional jogger) for company is totally shiok, and so is cycling at East Coast Park (especially if you rode all the way there from your house), and riding your motorcycle through sparse traffic at a time when the sun isn’t out yet is even better. You can actually choose your groceries at leisure without having to grip the trolley like you’re entering a battlefield and having to shove all your opponents out of the way, and even Orchard road is somewhat more relaxing with only tourists and the occasional tai-tai around.
On weekends, it’s like whambamslam everyone out to have a good time, in the same place, at the same time.
For this reason, I find a job with normal working hours pretty unappealing.
I think I’d make a really great gravedigger. Or a night watchman.
SATan's kingdom 