I just want to give you guys the heads-up that December 30 is Rizal Day, a regular holiday in the Philippines.
This day falls on a Saturday. This won’t affect you if your OFS has weekends off.
But for those of you who have OFS that work on Saturday, they might ask to take a leave on this day. New Year’s Eve and New Year are regular holidays, so they might also want to take a long weekend.
Here’s a bit of Rizal trivia from Julia.
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Jose Rizal is the Philippines’ national hero. He’s best known for his novels and writings, which helped inspire Filipinos to revolt against the Spanish. We study about him in school from pre-school all the way to college. That’s why, for some Filipinos, it has become a tradition to visit Rizal Park (there’s one in almost every province in the Philippines, and there are also monuments and busts of Jose Rizal around the world, including several in the USA). We bring flowers or have picnics there if the park is nice enough.
But what most people really think of when they talk about Rizal Park is Luneta Park, a historic urban park located in Manila.
Rizal or Luneta Park, is one of the oldest parks in the Philippines. It was first built as a town center during the Spanish colonial period, then called “Bagumbayan” (New Borough), where it became a notorious spot for public executions of revolutionaries. Rizal was one of them.
When the Americans came, they developed the park, and the American government (through the United States Philippine Commission) built the Rizal monument to commemorate Rizal’s heroism.
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It’s interesting to note that the Philippines government decided a couple years ago that if a holiday falls on a weekend, too bad. They don’t make it up by shifting the holiday to Friday or Monday. They used to do this, but because the Philippines has so many holidays they stopped the practice. That doesn’t mean they won’t start doing it again at some point in the future.
John