after hours

It's after 5:30 pm and I'm sitting here..still at work.. no idea when I'll be able to leave. It's soooooo frustrating! Mind you, it's one of those weeks anyway where everything is frustrating but this staying after hours is truly frustrating. It's just gotten me thinking, I've never really worked anywhere but in London and I wonder what the work-life balance situation is in different cities across the world?
Work-Life balance is something I've been thinking about a lot over the past few months (see previous post). All my friends who've worked in India say there is NO such thing as work-life balance there. Most people work on Saturdays, it's common enough to bring work home and work over the weekends. And here's the funny thing, apparently most people don't mind! Really?
Hmmm..now in the UK, Londoners are amongst the hardest workers with us working approximately 33% longer hours than the rest of the UK. Plus add to that the higher number of hours involved in travelling to work and it all adds up to insane hours (FYI, I spend two hours a day travelling..and I think that deserves a whole new post of its own). But even then, we're apparently on holiday compared to the intense work hours that my friends tell me people put in in India. Which is why weekends are sacred here. In fact, barely anybody gets any work done on a Friday evening and most people are out of the office by 4ish.
Which is all well and good, except for the fact that none of it really helps my current situation. I.want.to.go.home. Aaaaaaarrrggghhhh!
Plus I really really wanted to go to the gym today! And it frustrates me that I have to sit here watching my fat cells multiply and my cellulite wobble. I wonder if there's any legal loophole where I can sue my employer for making me fat? And then they'd have to pay for my plastic surgery!And then I could get the body I always wanted! Ah fantasyland!
Growing up in India, the 'work hard, play not so hard' discipline was always grilled into us. Everybody like everybody works hard there which means in order to get ahead in the rat race, people start staying late at work or working weekends, but then everybody else also starts staying late or working weekends, then a whole new way of 'i-am-a-harder-worker-than-thou'has to be invented. It's a vicious cycle this one-upmanship. Which is not to say it doesn't happen here in London. It definitely does, and I for one, am no longer interested in playing the game any longer.
Actually that's a lie.
I'm fairly ambitious and know that I won't get anywhere in life if I don't play the game at least a little bit. But can I step off the field for just a little bit? I think I have a part-hippy gene which consistently collides with my Type-A gene which is why I constantly oscillate between two states of being. Which is fine. It all adds to my rather charming allure I think. No?
Anyway, it is now 6:05 pm and there is no sign of the brand consultant I'm supposed to be meet... Oh..hang on..right! he's here. Gotta go guys!

Update: I finally escaped at 7:15pm(after a surprisingly fruitful meeting), after which I did make it to the gym (yay me!) till the cleaner finally kicked me out (true story!) whereupon I went home and had a meal worthy of someone who's been starving for five days (again, true story). A day well spent!