"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

Part of my childhood memories go back to digging ambitiously in sandy backyards for what could possibly be a dinosaur fossil. “Paliyentologist” – because that is how I spelt it – was what I wanted to be. Even before the advent of the magical World Wide Web, I took recourse in newspapers and Science magazines to find out just how many teeth the T-Rex actually had and why the Brontosaurus had sworn to be a vegetarian. Their gigantic size and the serious mystery shrouding their existence have never failed to amaze me. Back then of course, it did not really matter if the pay would be good enough or if I would ever get an insurance cover for working on fossilized remains of the largest reptiles that walked on earth – it was fun! …While it lasted. On one of my expeditions in uncovering the true reason behind their extinction, I came across the ill-fated asteroid that crash landed on earth – creating a storm that wiped out sunlight for years – blocking every ray of hope for the living. Amazing – not the theory (which I rubbished) – but the Asteroid with a life of its own! My idea of amazing moved from over-sized lonely dinosaurs rampaging across the isolated planet to crazed asteroids shooting themselves from one point in the universe to another… When my idea of becoming an astronaut popped up in my head, I vehemently pursued it. Walk into my house today, and you will still see the radium stars peeking down at you from my ceiling, shining in the dark. I built a space suit I could wear and did some intense workouts on the merry-go-round to simulate as much take-off pressure as I could. I practiced the entire speech to be given right before my space shuttle would be lifted off closer to the heavens. I knew exactly why cracked tiles would allow extremely hot foam to seep through and blow up the entire space-craft if they had not been finished properly. No stone was left unturned in mentally preparing for this future of mine. Zero gravity was also on my list… unfortunately the sponsors were not. Moreover, even though the career was a lot more lucrative than grave-digging in the middle of Dinoland without a medical insurance, I had to give up because I could never continue with Science as a textbook story written and dictated by a bunch of brains. While their findings feed the discoveries we make today, I could not digest the idea of passing exams because I could find the distance between your house and my house when we walked at a speed of x kms per second for n number of hours. Commerce – I landed in the beautiful world of Commerce. It was an accident. It was just an escape from Science and an upgrade on Arts. I wanted to lie somewhere in between and get lost in the crowd. When Economics first hit me, I was stunned by the sheer amount of time I wasted in understanding just how one cross on that workbook sheet was a description of the entire market in the world! The subjects faded in and out until I finally stepped into my major in Finance… The experience was life-changing. Wealth maximization was a matter of personal pride to me. I thought I had read every word in the book and knew just how to turn cents into dollars and dollars into more dollars. When I graduated with a distinction, it was pretty obvious what I was going to do for the rest of my life… Shipping… hmm… my first and hopefully only occupation is miles and acres apart from all of the above. Container transportation and logistics, demand and supply, markets and consumers, seasons and trends, regulations and free trade, weather disruptions and crisis management… As a trainee on an international shipping education programme with fellowships from hundreds of countries, my career spans the globe as I learn from cultures and apply business practices. My eyes are always open for a new language for a new personality that I may encounter unexpectedly. The option (d) in the career list that never was, is now my bread and butter. It is no surprise however, as to why I have ended up in a brand new world of opportunities… My profession has never really changed. True, I was amazed by the mystery of the dinosaurs and where the asteroids emerge from eluded me – And yes, I wanted to know why money made the world go round when it was the world that created it… My quest for these answers was a quest for knowledge. I dug deeper, I thought further, I read far too much and I have traveled long enough only to realize that all I have done, all that I do and all that I will ever do for the rest of my life… is explore.

Overdriven

The only quality that can explain my knack for so regularly updating the blog can be termed as consistency - not the lack of it, but consistency. I prefer variety in everything I do. So why spare the blog? It was then unimaginable that only a few months after boasting tall and short about my Peugeot, the only blog entries I typed (and scrapped) were about my Peugeot. I seem to have been possessed by the little devil. So well, close to losing my account for inactivity, I thought I'd save some face and be a tad bit inconsistent - go ahead and give some more wise talk to aspiring fellow drivers of Dubai. To start with, "Why don't you all just disappear and let me drive in peace?" I would have liked to abuse in the heat of this moment, but... consistency remember? So here I am, parking in and out of a parking lot everyday, paying the meagre 160 dhs a month, when this freak decides to play games with my darling... puncture her tyres, or spit on the windshield as and when his distorted brain can think of doing bad things to good people. And of the 500 cars in the parking lot, mine is the only one he can find. So I book him in with the cops and zoom out of the parking lot saying, "I can fit this tiny power-pack anywhere you jerk!" Before I know it, I have circled my building for the millionth time, in search of the tiny spot that will fit my power-pack. Eventually, I succumb to the 2500 dhs a year parking card that should let me park freely anywhere on the roads of the city, as long as I can find a spot. I am still circling around my building, only less worried when I get a paid parking spot. If I were to list out the innumerous mishaps my poor Peugeot went through in the months gone by, I could never stop. But it is a learning curve for her and me. I mean, nothing can be brand new for too long can it? The bumps and scratches oughta' show. How else can she prove where she's been? Besides the irregular pedaling of my accelerator and brake, and the occassional spurt into racing against cabbies with an overtly ambitious plan of overtaking them on Shaikh Zayed Road, I am alive and she's running all right. I used to be the salient types who stuck to the third lane. But what could possibly drive a 5 month old driver insane? Just one thing - The Traffic. But look at me, positivity on the peak! Since I cannot ram my car into the insane Prado - Tercel maniacs, I choose to do the next obvious thing. Curse them. But just as my car gets older and I talk less and less about her with every person I meet, just as I become the usual abusive, outrageous reckless woman on the highway, out comes the icing on the cake. I tune into 104.4 FM and tell myself, "See, this can get worse...!"