In recent Malaysian news...

The PM has agreed to a 5-day work week for civil servants, as well as the re-introduction of the Cost of Living Allowance (Cola - for lack of a better, 'grander', name).

This means, less working hours for my daddy. He will be called on to spend more time at the golf course with Rafidah Aziz, yes? Oh, so much for spending family quality time.
Perhaps I kid you.
Perhaps it means my mum can now give my daddy the task of doing more Saturday morning errands. He shouldn't be playing golf anyway, with his bad back.

And on behalf of a legion of scouts, guides and rangers and other uniformed groups, I am bemoaning the 5 day work week. It was bad enough when they cut the working week to allow civil servants to take the 1st and 3rd Saturday of the month off. All of a sudden, Saturdays - which were usually meant for earning our guiding badges or ranks and taking tests and planning hiking or cooking activities were limited to 2 Saturdays a month. Because teachers weren't available on the 1st and 3rd Saturday. Such an encouragement to character building through healthy, organised, activities. And it wasn't just the uniformed groups that were hit by this. As Interactors, who try our best to hold our charity events and activities outside of school hours - Saturdays became a headache for us as we fought for venues in school with other societies and the school authorities who were themselves limited to holding school functions on those precious, precious Saturdays.

Now with the greenlight to get rid of Saturdays for civil servants altogether, we can say farewell to our brother scouts and sister guides (and aunty rangers). All the talk about the need for National Service, about the wasted youth and their incorrigible activities, about the lack of patriotism or the motivation - is really such utter rubbish if you can't see for yourself what is being done (or rather not being done) in our National schools. As it is, my sister has to attend guiding activities during that small 1 hour window on Fridays, when the seniors in the morning session can meet the juniors in the afternoon session to take their tests and hold important events like installations or inaugarations - events which are supposedly landmarks in a guide's life, hastily squashed into a one hour period. My sister has yet to learn how to pitch a tent or do any nature tests. There hasn't been a Saturday where a teacher is willing to spend time to supervise these girls. And with the new proposal it looks like there won't be, for a long time!