MY SACRED WEEKENDS
March 8, 2008 by Jan Shim
Every noticed how big, significant words such as SACRED often refer to matters that aren’t necessarily religious but are rather fundamental in its nature?
Weekends [are] sacred as far as I can help it. I left Perth, Western Australia in the summer of ‘91 and headed home to pursue employment. As luck would have it then, I found work within two weeks of my return and raced through 12 years of life in the IT lane! Add 4 years of photography and I’ve lived through 1½ decades of weekends—832 weekends out of which I’ve lost count how many were unpaid hours at the office. But that’s life, isn’t it? As a freelance professional, I tend to and enjoy living each day like a weekend but I also need to sync with my wife’s weekends which are predominantly Saturdays and Sundays.
For the benefit of my international readers, Brunei has two different kinds of weekends—the regular calendar weekends and the Brunei Government weekends—the latter of which are Fridays and Sundays (Saturdays are working days). Depending on whether you’re in the private or public sector, your weekends may very well be ENDed before it even began!
So what’s my typical weekend like and why is it so sacred? Take today for instance, an uncharacteristically foggy morning, I brought along my EOS 5D/70-200mm f2.8 lens to my kids’ school knowing that on assembly day there would be plenty of intersting moments with the kids. Being a regular pillar at the school, I think people have gotten used to what I do so it’s fairly easy getting these candids.
© Jan Shim Photography
You gotta love this pic—at 7-ish AM many wish they were still in bed especially on an overcast morning! Others students have their respective duty such as getting the national and school flags ready for hoisting. Elsewhere in the compound, kids left to their own device showcases their playful antics.
© Jan Shim Photography
© Jan Shim Photography
Saturday is also the day my wife and I do our grocery shopping at the open market right after school assembly and before breakfast. The morning market is where these FARM FRESH GREENS are sold and there’s really just a few places we have our Sat morning breakfast routinely, the House of Noodles (culinary couture) or Soi Heng Fried Kway Teow.
© Jan Shim Photography
Now, these delicious and popular rice dumplings that are also sold at the open market can be bought every week and also sold at other locations each evening. The dumplings are such a part of the Chinese tradition that you don’t need to wait for the annual Dumpling Festival to enjoy them. My personal favourite are the curry flavoured ones.
© Jan Shim Photography
I have turned down jobs simply because I want to spend the first and only morning of the week with my wife even though much of what we do the entire day is routine such as kids at school, tuition, piano lessons and occasionally followed by dinner outside. Which leaves us, the working parents, just the Sunday we call the weekend! It doesn’t matter that I’m not out out shooting a wedding couple’s big day or a corporate event. What matters is I’m entitled to have my weekend with the family—life may be short but it needn’t be complicated.
Jan,
Being able to be in control of your working and resting day is good. Due to my job requirement and also being single, I hardly get to be off on weekend (Friday and Sunday), public holidays as well as school holidays. These type of privileges are given to the married staffs normally unless we have specific reasons to be off.
Well sometimes I do enjoy being able to run errands on weekdays. Still sometimes feeling down that have to work on days where others are off.
I think the same can be said for shift workers who live in a topsy-turvy world where coffee becomes their best friend at night and the bed their sanctuary during their day.
lol Jan waking up that early on weekends would be hell for me. but i see where you are getting at. i guess when i get to be in your situation where having a family is concerned, i would resort to making every second of my weekends count. i must say though those photos in the market spoke for themselves, really impressive. And i don’t blame the yawning child, i would have done just that if i was in his position. nice blog Jan, i especially like that lil quote ” life may be short but it needn’t be complicated”. i believe if we all lived by that philosophy, the world would be a better place.
Freelancing has its ups and also its downs. The phrase nothing is what it seems holds true. When the kids were just toddlers, they would wake up at 5am everyday and I would take them out of the room just so their mom could sleep in an hour more. This lasted for 3 years before the kids settled into a more comfortable routine but waking became a habit that stayed with me for many more years later.
I would stay up late till midnight sometimes 1-2 AM and then I would get up at 6 AM and after a while you get used to this too. I was running an internet business distributing turbochargers to clients across USA and I was in the topsy-turvy world for a couple of years dealing with clients in a different timezone, 12 hours apart to be exact.
Today, I’m more inclined to sleep earlier to catch up on sleep I’ve not had for many years quite literary! I’ve been taking the quiet moments reflecting and thinking about what I could do to get away from the clutches of photography full time.
Hey. I think you live what most other people would only dream–or dare–doing. Let me congratulate you for a job well done. And I love your photographs. I dabble in that too, but I think my skills need an upgrade. And I have to get out of the house more.
Cheers,
Tiffany
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