Happy Holidays!

The office was closed today, for the second time in two weeks, and we still have Good Friday yet to come this week. Let's hear it for diversity!

We have celebrated the following holidays this month:
Nyepi (Balinese Hindu) March 30. Balinese Hindus celebrate the coming of the new year with meditation. No activities are allowed to take place. These mandatory religious prohibitions include no pleasure (amati lelangon), no traffic (amati lelungan), no fire (amati geni) and no work (amati karya). Everybody has to stay in their individual houses. No lights in the house, no sounds of radio or entertainment of any kind, just complete silence. Even the airport and ferry service is closed for 24 hours. We celebrated this holiday by visiting the Buddhist Temple at Borobudur. No sense going to Bali, since the airport was closed.
Mawlid al-Nabi (Islam) April 10. This is the celebration of the birth of the prophet Mohammed. The most noticeable effect of the holiday for us was the absence of traffic and the unusually loud early morning call to prayer at 4:30 this morning.
Good Friday (Christian) April 14. This one you know about. We will celebrate this holiday by visiting Bali, where we will have a mini-Nyepi: No work, and maybe just a little entertainment.

If we throw in a Passover seder observance on Thursday night, we can observe each of the major world religions in this two week span - Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity and Judaism.