Just because...

...it is not their religious holiday, we need to go back to school the day after the Winter Solstice celebration when families get together to mark one month before the Chinese New Year. How are we supposed to have reunions in peace knowing that school begins the next day and most of us have to travel for hours to get to school? Because of that, myself and my friends are celebrating the festival a day earlier so that we can take the next day to do our traveling and settling in before classes commence.

Fine, maybe it is not THAT important a holiday to warrant such complaints although they do get other religious holidays interspersed between. What about x'mas then? Our classes start 3 days before x'mas and the norm is to have a holiday only on x'mas day itself. Every year, students either have to sacrifice celebrating this holiday with their family or take their 'own holiday'. Keep in mind that not everyone can do that as some students have to fly across seas to get home. Why can't they just begin lessons a week later? Wouldn't that be so much easier for everyone else?

Last year, exams were even scheduled on Deepavali. After much furore did they postpone the exams on that day. Maybe they didn't realise it was a religious holiday when they set the dates. Does this show some sort of insensitivity? They had the courtesy to postpone exams on that particular date but did not bother to give an extra day of holiday for students to return to their hometowns. Not enough, I say. No wonder a movement had to be formed to protect their rights.

For Hari Raya this year, we had a whole extra week of holidays for the festivities. Yay! I was genuinely happy. Who doesn't love holidays? Everyone gets more time to spend time with their friends and family, eating kuih raya and collecting duit raya... but shouldn't there be some sort of equality here?