Wednesday, June 18, 2008

One nation in need of a vacation

As my own vacation to India looms around the corner, this article I was reading in VIA mag couldn't have come at a better time.

Its going to be close to 3 years since I last took a long vacation. I think the longer the gap between your vacations, the more the depression sets in and more the craving increases to get as far away as possible. That may be the reason I'm litrally counting days to jet set and be as far away as possible from my home/work/and familiar surroundings. Escapism, you may say. but hey everybody needs it!!

I have always been appalled at the paltry 15-20 days of vacation time offered here in the US. (we still don't take that little vacation we are offered) Acc. to the article on an avg we use only 11 days of the annual allotment.

Even Japanese have an avg of 17.5 per year. The french who gave us the word leisure - get 36 days and take 94 percent of them. In England you get 24 days vacation time.
Acc. to the researchers at NYSU, guys who took annual vacations reduced their risk of death due to heart disease by 30 percent. And women who vacation at least twice a year are less depressed than women who vacation every year. and why wouldn't they be. Studies have also shown that Americans would be more productive with the increased time off. In fact now some companies are mandating that their employees take the annual vacation.

I guess the article made a strong case. i'm def. going to stick to once in 2years trip to India and every other year in between plan a vacation close by.

In short it is not just our right to annually abdicate duty. Its our duty.

3 comments:

Laksh said...

LOL! Have fun :)

Anonymous said...

Have fun :) True, people who don't make their work their life definitely lead better lives! :D

Anonymous said...

just an after thought, wondering how much vacation people working in Indian s/w companies need?!?