Saudis adjust biological clocks to new weekend

Saudis appear to have enjoyed the new Friday-Saturday weekend, although it will take some of them time to adjust their “biological clocks.”
For some citizens, it gave them more leeway to visit their families in other parts of the Kingdom.
Sultanah Al-Mujarrashi, a public relations worker, said that her company adopted the new weekend schedule this past week. “It gave me more time to finish some family and private commitments, and spend more time with friends and neighbors.”
Psychologist Muhammad Uturji told Arab News: “Saudis will need more time to adapt to the new weekend, especially at the beginning of the academic year, because they have their own vacation rituals, like staying up very late at night and going on trips out of town. In addition, the biological clock needs more time to adjust.”
Private sector employees are now calling on their companies to reach a resolution on a two-day weekend, in line with the government sector.
Hattab Al-Enizi, spokesman for the Ministry of Labor, said the private sector would still have a one-day weekend. “The decision to extend this to a two-day weekend is still under consideration,” he said.
Saudi Arabian Airlines, the only national carrier in the Kingdom, has rescheduled its flights to align with the new timings. They face some difficulties because the change has coincided with a busy time for the airlines because of the holiday season.
Abdullah Al-Ajhar, deputy executive general manager of Saudia, said the airline established a task force to reschedule flights. He said there would be some pressure on flights as Saudis change the start of their weekend traveling from Wednesday to Thursday night, and return home on Saturday evening.
At 10:30 a.m. in Riyadh on Saturday, a well-known cafeteria on King Abdul Aziz Road, normally busy with hundreds of customers from various government departments, was deserted.
Abdul Rasheed, a worker in the cafeteria, found himself staring at empty seats, a sight he has not seen on a Saturday in all his 15 years in the Kingdom.
It appeared that he did not know Saturday was part of the new weekend. After an hour he received a taxi driver who ordered a chapatti. Or maybe Abdul Rasheed did not expect Saudis to spend their first new weekend sleeping.
The new weekend change has seen a flurry of wisecracks and jokes on social networking websites. There were even poems written on the matter. On Twitter, most of the tweets described Saturday as a boring day.
Riyadh’s roads and highways were deathly quiet. It appeared that only taxi drivers had not adjusted to the new weekend. Although later, it seemed many gave up roaming the streets looking for customers and set off for cafes and restaurants to escape the scorching summer sun.
Saudi students abroad spoke to their families on Skype. Mohammad Al-Sufiani, an English language student in Malaysia, spoke to his working parents for the first time on Saturday. “It’s very good that they changed it. We now have more time to speak with our families,” Al-Sufiani said.