Amnesia of the world's educated class

The buzzword in last weekend's China Daily was "vacation amnesia". It refers to a situation in which a person who returns to work after a vacation seems to forget what he/she had been doing before going on leave. Things that a person cannot remember could include the project he/she had been working on, the papers he/she needs to finish and who deputed for him/her when he/she was away.

Going by the examples cited in the news clipping, it seems "vacation amnesia" is a condition exclusively associated with white-collar workers. But that is beside the point, for blue-collar workers, even the skilled ones, across the world hardly get enough holidays to forget what they have been doing their entire working life. It's backbreaking work they are used to and forced to believe in.

It may be difficult for educated office-goers, including many in the profession of journalism, to fathom the difficulties manual workers face just to overcome their daily grind. Even their vacations are like work. For most of them, holidays mean family reunion or traveling hundreds of kilometers just to meet their loved ones.