Monday Mourning

It's a familiar scene around the world. Your eyes fly open, you look at the clock. Damn, you've overslept! Fall out of bed, brush, wash, try not to admit you've aged 5 years in the last 2 days, burn off your tonsils with coffee, run a comb through your hair, run out the front door. Yes, it could only be Monday.

History has proved that Monday is just not a good day for, well, anything. It was Monday, October 19th 1987 (now known as Black Monday, no less) when stock markets around the world were hit by one of the biggest losses in recent history; the Dow Jones itself fell by 22%, losing billions. It was a Monday, November 18th 1929 when a devastating undersea earthquake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale struck off the coast of Newfoundland, destroying vital transatlantic underground submarine cables and causing a tsunami that wiped out many communities in the Burin Peninsula. It was November 4th 1957 when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 2 with a dog named Laika on board, becoming the first country to launch a living creature into orbit. Being a Monday however, this story could not have a happy ending; apparently, the capsule was not designed to be retrievable and she died a few hours later from stress and overheating. It was a Monday when God decided "Right, I've had enough of this lot, I'm going to flood this planet and kill off everything. Except for Noah, because he's the only one sober enough to build a boat..."

Yes, we're all familiar with the Monday blues. Unless of course, you live in some Arab emirate, where the week starts on Sunday. How bizarre is that? I wonder if they call it the Sunday blues then. Next thing you know, they'll declare August the first month of the year and call 3 o'clock in the afternoon 'midnight'.

I believe that the degree of depression one feels on a Monday morning is largely dependant on how you spend your weekend. If you've spent a large majority of your Saturday and Sunday unconscious, or better still, in jail ("yesh mishter po-leesh-offisher, I seen the man who hit me car, and hish name be Jack Daniels"), chances are Monday morning will bring the usual vows of eternal sobriety and, along with it, the increased loathing for one's job. Then there are the 'party animals', whose sole purpose is to dislocate every bone in their body by gyrating to some devils orchestra of electronic blips and squeaks (its apparently called music. I call it "listening to Star Wars' R2D2 dialogues in fast forward"). But then Monday comes around, and with it the realisation that you have now lost 25% of your hearing, you have no sensation in your feet anymore, sleeping 6 hours in 48 is not the best way to come to work, and that you're a lot older than you thought you were last night.

Or maybe it's a bit of weed that keeps your weekend spinning. Literally. Yes, what better way to spend one's free time than to light up a joint, listen to Pink Floyd and discuss the utter pointlessness of ones life with your friends, who by this time can only be resolved into foggy little blurs of colour thanks to your drug of choice. I can only imagine the pain of coming down to Earth on Monday. No, you are not a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, you are not floating on a river of love, that epiphany you had over the weekend about saving the world might not pan out after all, and your right ear lobe does not look like the shape of Africa. Ouch, that's gotta hurt.

Yes there is no escaping the Monday blues. Even if you're a student; inevitably you end up spending the wee hours of Monday morning frantically putting together a week's worth of assignments. Who knew there was so much work?! I guess you have no choice but to resort to your tried and tested dog-ate-my-homework excuse. Oh, that's a real winner. Now if only you had a dog...

But then there are the few of you who end up spending your weekends with family, cocooned in a snug blanket of warmth and happy feelings. To you, going to work is a weekly emotional ordeal, a bitter and heart-wrenching experience, as you tearfully wave goodbye in typical hindi-movie-bride style, perhaps with Celine Dion's "My heart will go on" playing in the background. Not that I've ever heard of a hindi-movie with Celine Dion in it, but you get the point.

Me? Oh my weekend has been great. My exams are over (no more business law and economics, thank you very much!), ze Germans have yet to make an attempt at my life (someone actually asked me to write more often. Being a Saturday however, I can only assume he was drunk.), the NBA playoffs have begun in spectacular fashion (a game 1 upset and a double-overtime game in the first two days!), Danica Patrick finally won an Indy race (I can now claim to be a fan of her driving skills and not her, well, err, hmmm..), the Premier League is down to a photo-finish thanks to Manchester United's draw with Blackburn, and the parents are going to Thailand for a week, giving me free reign at home and the oppurtunity to terrorize my brother without restriction.

Yes, life is good!