Then I got to thinking...Hmmm.....
On my former trips to Mexico - particularly in the larger cities, I remember that just about the whole place shuts down between about 12:30 - 2pm. Our small band of short-term missionaries often took advantage of this phenomenon and found travel easier and lines much shorter at the places we would go sight-seeing. I remember one instance in particular at Chepultepec Castle in Mexico City. It had been very crowded in the Park and our local host said - let's wait a little while, then it will be easy. Sure enough - he was right! Why was everyone gone? Why was it soo deserted? Siesta Time!
Physiologically, it makes sense - we eat a meal (I admit - I usually over-eat), then the blood rushes from our extremities to our stomach to go to work on what we just ate. This causes us to relax a little - and get groggy. I didn't seem to notice it a few years ago, but now that I'm 38 - well, 38 isn't old, but I'm not 20 anymore!
My wife Beth recently read me an excerpt from an article that said in Thailand many employers encourage and allow workers to sleep with their heads on their desks for an hour after lunch. Hmm...
They say it encourages productivity.
Hmmmm....
Maybe we should try to pass a law mandating a siesta in the middle of our work-day! Think about it - perhaps productivity would increase as it appears to have done in Thailand. It could be the answer to the upcoming economic doom-and-gloom everyone is trying to forecast.
BTW: The graphic above was stolen from a website suggesting that very thing (last summer in the U.K. they actually tried it!).
Maybe we could pork-barrel it in with the next version of the war-spending bill to try and buy the hispanic vote...No?
2 comments:
Buy the hispanic vote?? Classy Steve. Thats a sterotype no? I don't actually remember the siesta in my time in Mexico...? Just an hour lunch.. That I usually slept during..
Um,....yes that was s'posed to be a tasteless stereotype - dumb joke. Glad you caught that. At least someones' reading it. The part about the siesta is actually a true story. During our time in Mexico City (and also in Monterrey) there were indeed considerably fewer people out and about between noon and about two in the afternoon.:)
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