“I have all the time in the world,” thinks an 18 year old. Thinking about my career options, so did I when I was 18! Now that I am old, I can almost laugh when I hear someone asking a kid, “What would you want to become?”. In this respect, I can relate to most of what is written in this blog Why Career Planning Is Time Wasted except the one below.

The experiment outlined in the blog says the test group that got to choose a week in advance, different sandwiches for each day of the coming week turned out to be unhappy with their choices vis-a-vis the other group that chose spontaneously what they want each day as the day rolled in. The interesting thing is that the latter group chose to stay with their familiar sandwich for each day of the week. The point of this exercise was to prove the futility of making a choice in advance and the lesser likelihood that we would enjoy what we choose: it may as simple as ordering a sandwich or as big as making a career move.


My personal experience with sandwiches goes even further to prove the above theory (Miswanting). Being a strict vegetarian, by design, I can choose only type of sandwich at my favourite Subway restaurant viz. Veggie Delite. So that means turkey, tuna, egg, ham, roast beef etc are out. Restricted to just one type of sandwich, I should be happy with my choice isn’t it? Not really. Given the bewildering array of sandwich components offered, I have to carefully navigate my way to building my sandwich. Else I would definitely be feeling something is wanting. As tempting as it may be, it is treacherous to stray the course.

“Oh God! Why did I make this change today?” is often my response to any adventurous detour in the menu offered. I am not exaggerating. If you see the following conversation I have with the waitress at the Subway restaurant you will see why.

Waitress: What would you like to have?
Me: Veggie Sandwich
Waitress: Footlong or 6″ ?
Me: Footlong please.
Waitress: Brown bread or white ?
Me: White.
Waitress: Which bread would like to have ? (She points to a board with life size images of 4 or 5 different types of bread)
Me: Parmesan Oregano
Waitress: With or without cheese?
Me: With cheese.
Waitress: Which one – cheddar or mozzarella ?
Me: I point to the one I am more familiar with.
Waitress: Toasted?
Me: Yes please.
Waitress: Now choose your vegetables (She points to the neatly arranged bowls of fresh vegetables behind the glass partition: lettuce, tomatoes, green peppers, onions, olives, pickles and more )
Me: Everything except Jalapeno. ( I want value for money, you know)
Waitress: What kind of sauce you want? (She again points to an array of sauces on display)
Me: Southwest sauce
Waitress: Anything else?
Me: A little bit of mustard would do.
Waitress: Is that all?
Me: Can you please top it up with some salt and pepper?
Waitress: Is it for here or to go?
Me: To go.
Waitress: Would like to make it as combo with a drink and a cookie or chips ?
Me: No just the sandwich would do.

By now, you are exhausted, right? So am I, at the end of my transaction. Believe me, any misstep along this maze of choices, I would have come out feeling miserable about my investment (!!) in sandwich.

This is just ordering a sandwich. Imagine how much more complex is planning a career move and your probability of liking it.


So, “What do we do? you may ask. Honestly I don’t have an answer other than to reproduce verbatim the conclusion in the blog:

“The best strategy for career planning is this: make your best guess, try it out and don’t be surprised if you don’t like it. But for heaven’s sake don’t mention this in your interviews.”

“Always Collect”, screams one collector card advertisement. “Every time you swipe your card you collect valuable reward points,” says another ad at a gas station. “Make your dream vacation come true sooner with our miles card’ beacons the bill board at the intersection. Then this ‘this week only offer’ from another chain store “Swap your in-store loyalty points with your collector card points or the other”. “Open a new bank account or switch to another for 500 or 1000 points on your collector card,” is an enticing offer from a bank! Never mind you have money in neither.


My wallet is bulging and is heavy not with cash but with umpteen cards that reward my loyalty to this product or that service. Those are in addition to the numerous credit cards in my wallet; to buy on credit, such products and services, just so I can collect some points.

There was a time when I was an avid collector of points, stamps etc to cross out one item off my wish list and to proceed to the next. All that has changed now. While I have not become old enough to preach, “We are not our possessions”, I am getting a little wiser to suggest that the journey is more pleasant if we travel light in our life. Imagine our difficulty in letting go of things we collected in the past when we move our place of dwelling. I should know, for I have moved to a new country nearly 7,800 miles away from my home town.

This blog is an offshoot of what I read in another titled “Shedding Possessions“. Though it is lengthy, it is worthwhile to read it to the end.

Every time I move, I ponder such questions as, “Do I take this with me or leave behind? What if I need it at some later date? Oh, I love this one, can’t I take this with me?, Imagine the difficulty I went through collecting this” and so on. Luckily time and space constraints put an end to our agony. We move on with whatever we think are valuable at that point of time, only to find those to be excess baggage at a later date.

Even so some businesses dangle this ‘1$/month storage for the first 6 months’ offer enticing us to move our stuff to their ‘climate controlled’ storage shelves. Does it make sense to move our excess baggage to some self storage facility 10 miles away from home or perhaps in another city? What are the chances of our needing them if we can keep them that far away?

If I have not convinced you against collecting things as a maniac, I suggest you listen to George Carlin’s stand up comedy on ‘stuff’. I assure you, even if you don’t become a convert, you will have a good time listening to him.

Remember the movie Superbad where Jonah Hill (Seth in the movie) was compromised and captured with the stain on his thigh. Though it was fictional it reminds us that we are under surveillance wherever we go. A camera phone did the damage.

I use my cell phone for one and only purpose: i.e. to make and receive calls, though it has many bells and whistles. To be frank with you, even to this day, I don’t know all the features offered in my two year old cell phone. Just when I thought I am becoming dumb in this techno savvy world, I read this article from Telegraph / UK where it states an over reliance on technology makes our society dumb and dumber.

Though personally it comforts me, I may not agree with its findings. For the simple reason gadget hungry consumers are fast to assimilate information though their critical thinking ability may become a casualty in their pursuit. They look for patterns and differences between their current and new tech toys and are soon at home with their new ones. They can’t be faulted too much. Because today it matters little what you know already, compared to how fast you can learn.

I can expect that you opened your new cell phone package right in the shopping mall where you bought it. Removed the battery, assembled the SIM card & battery while simultaneously telling your friend as to what you are up to with your old cell phone. You can’t wait to get home to put it on charge. While on charge, you try to transfer songs, address book to your new blue tooth enabled device. And you go crazy clicking with your cell phone camera whatever comes into your view.

This blog is just about your last activity. While it empowers you to click on anything you fancy and keep the image for posterity, I think we should use some discretion before doing so. I vividly remember the day I saw the Air France A340 airliner (Flight 358 from Paris) overshooting the runaway at Pearson International Airport because I was driving beside the runway on Highway 401 just at that moment. I remembered many guys getting off their cars, running towards the fence to take a close look at the accident and some furiously taking pictures with their camera enabled cell phones.

May be they want to share their curiosity with their friends and family members or put it on YouTube. While the merit of such actions is debatable, I definitely am not for capturing human misery or misfortune on camera. While it may be fun for us to capture someone in a compromised position in our cell phone camera, it is a permanent embarrassment for the victim on camera.

If we are on the other side of the camera, it may not always be possible to restrain a shutterbug, in capturing us in an embarrassing situation. For we don’t know on whose cross wires we are on at any moment. When in public we should not let our guard down, but act civil at all times. Lest we may find ourselves on YouTube.

I am sorry if I had you drawn into reading this blog with a shocking title. Though I wish it were to be true, there is not yet a total ban on smoking cigarettes. But I believe we are going in the right direction. I am referring to a news article which states that soon there is going to be a ban on cigarette display in convenient stores in the province of Ontario. It might appear to be funny to see a transaction go through in a hush-hush manner while buying just a pack of cigarettes. But it is required.

I would even recommend that cigarettes be sold in specific outlets like the ones for buying liquor. And also restrict their sale at specific time of the day and some days of the week. The idea is not only to keep it away from the curious eyes of kids/youngsters but also to make it inconvenient for smokers who may otherwise pick it up from ‘convenience’ stores. I wouldn’t buy the argument that this will result in the loss of jobs. If you consider the cost to individuals themselves who smoke and the social cost incurred by the rest of us by way of increased medical attention given to smokers in the later years, these are small prices to pay.

In so far cigarette companies continue to make healthy profits even if their patrons tend to become unhealthy in the process, they will do all that they can to oppose such moves as outlined above. So we (smokers and non-smokers alike) should do all that we can to attach a stigma to cigarette smoking. Youngsters tend to pick up the habit of smoking at parties and told by their friends that to smoke a cigarette is a cool-thing to do. They should be made to realize that their identity or self worth is not derived in holding a roll of tobacco between their fingers.

I very much look forward to the time (I don’t know if it will happen in my lifetime) when cigarettes are no longer sold in convenience stores or gas stations or any specific outlets. And that the cigarette companies have given up this business for good and have taken up some other businesses that add value to life, the farmers who hitherto cultivated tobacco have replaced it with some other cash crops to produce ; making productive use of their land.

When that happens you may still find some unscrupulous elements selling cigarettes to vulnerable customers in the dark alleys (in the wee hours of the night) just as they sell drugs now. Youngsters and potential smokers my advice to you: ‘don’t do drugs or cigarettes’.