It takes a typical westerner a long time to become accustomed to the work week here. Sunday is Monday. Tuesday is hump day. Saturday is Sunday.

And for most people working in the Muslim world, the restaurant chain TGI Friday’s really ought to celebrate a day earlier in the week.

The chain’s name came from the expression, popular in America: “Thank God It’s Friday.” Sometimes abbreviated as TGIF.

Friday is the final day of the normal workweek (there is no “normal” at a daily newspaper), stateside, and the weekend beckons. Thus, it is a day welcome at work, because the five-day grind is over. “Thank God,” indeed.

However, if the chain had originated in Arabia it certainly would have been dubbed TGI Thursday’s, because Friday and Saturday are days off here.

(This is particularly disorienting for those of us always aware of the time on the U.S. West Coast. The start of the weekend here corresponds to about 5 a.m. in Los Angeles, which has two work days still to go to exhaust weekdays.)

Sometimes the weekend here begins even earlier. I worked a night shift at The National today, and at 3 p.m. the parking lot I use at Abu Dhabi Media was mostly empty.

You might think I would have dwelt on this before. I like Friday’s (the resto) as much as the next guy. Nice big salads. A fine selection of beers or stronger spirits.

(We have at least two Friday’s in Abu Dhabi; one downtown, one in a newer mall at the other end of the island.)

But I had not thought much of it, until the woman playing music on a Western pop radio station said something like “Happy Thursday!”

Which without saying more means, TGI Thursday — the disc jockey leaving God out of it because it is mildly blasphemous in the West, and more than a little here.

I can assure you that at even given time, those born and bred on the Monday through Friday workweek have a devil of a time remembering what day they are existing in, here. We have actual discussions, in the office. “Monday? Really? Hmm.”

Even those of us entering our fifth year in the region get caught up in that. Sometimes you pick up the sports section from that day and check the folios, to be sure of the day.

The construction of a TGI Thursday or two would help us notice the end of the week. Assuming we heard someone announce it, because we often don’t know when it is Wednesday. No. Really.

TGI … not me responsible for knowing what day it is.