Personal Assistants: Thumbs UP!

Why I Wrote This:

Everywhere I look around, people are busier, more stressed and just plain pressed for time. The electronic revolution makes it a bit too easy to book every second of your day, whether it's meeting, running errands or just being social. Sleep and spending time on your relationships is taking a back door to your work life. There needs to a balance.  

My solution is having a Personal Assistant. Personal assistants are awesome. I am of the firm belief that everyone (who can afford one) ought to have one. They are just so bloody useful in every possible context and you are guaranteed to have a life that's much easier to manage and much more fun.  

1. What Lines? No more standing in lines...ever. Passport office, McDonald's, License Bureau etc, you will always have a spot saved by your PA. Maximize your valuable time. Don't waste your life away standing in lines, particularly as you can get someone else to do it for you. This will also save you from having to make inane infuriating conversation with people also standing in line. You are better than that, you have a PA Dammit!

2. No More Errand Hopping: Don't have to waste time running crappy errands anymore. Ever. Your PA can take care of bills, shopping, market, buy crap, etc. If your PA buys something incorrectly and your wife gets mad, you can just blame it on the PA and absolve yourself of any blame. Dammit, you are waaay too important to spend your day at the freaking florist. 

3. Human Calender & Appointment book: PA can remind you of important meetings and pull you away from annoying people that you might be talking to. He can also be trained to introduce you to hot women and act as your wing man. No more Fat Chicks (thumbs up!). Also, more importantly, no more missed anniversaries and having to spend nights on the pull out couch. Solid Win. 

4. Aggression Management Training: Never be mad at your partner again. Take out all aggression on your Personal Assistant. Either through physical beatings or mental torture. Either of which can be televised via the web; the footage might even make a crappy yet profitable reality show. Your partner will also appreciate how nice you are to her and all of her friends will be insanely jealous of her (which is basically what she is interested in).

5. Someone to Talk To (or At): Good sounding board, you can talk to him almost like a friend, but ignore his advice and he won't mind. It's his job to listen. In fact, he'll know how tough your life really is and tell everyone he'll come into contact with just as much. He'll be your personal Public Relations director. Besides, you'll save a tonne of money on therapy. 

6. Plausible Deniability: Tell lies to your spouse, to your employees, and just random people just so you don't have to....think about it as sin prevention insurance. After all, you can't possibility be out with your friends (or your corporate mistresses) if your P.A swears upon his Mommas life that your in an important 3 AM meeting with Japan!!! 

7. Catering to your Needs: PA can act as advance scout for you when arranging or confirming meetings, he can tell the organizers what you like in terms of food, seating, allergies, diet, drinks etc. I personally hate it when I attend a meeting and all they have to offer is crap food that I don't love. Regardless of how the meeting goes, I'm going to be peeved off. Take care of me, and I'll take care of you. Listen to my PA, it's good for business. 

8. Excellent Legal Protection: Anytime the government or any law suit is placed against you, contend that your PA abused his position and took decisions without your knowledge. You are then in the clear and can sip Virgin Margaritas with your latest PA in Cancun. If Berni Madoff has a PA, he wouldn't be know 'Easy Suzy' in Jail (or in fact be behind bars).  

9. Fun to Show off: Not only will everyone think how important you are, but your friends (who are cool enough to have PA's) can compete on who can make their PA's do the most messed up things. You can also have your PA's fight each other and place bets. Female PA's will obviously earn a higher salary for such activities. 

10. Presence Substitution: You can send your PA to meetings you don't want to attend. After all, your a very important person, so you can send a senior member of your staff to an event that you desperately wanted to attend...because there is a special 24 Marathon on that night that's vital for um... business. 

The Big Idea:

Get over your stressed out life, and make some space for the more important things...like Me Time. And the best way to do that is by Exploiting your PA; It has a lot of tangible benefits. It's also legal via a rad legal agreement. Get a PA, reduce unemployment and live the life of a happy Baller. 

A Deep Question

Q. What do you want to be in life?
Ans. Perfect....ly Awesome. (Only God gets to be Perfect and I'm still trying to get on his good side.

At some point in our lives, we tend to ask ourselves what is the meaning of life? Is there depth to our purpose here, or are we merely specks in the fabric of time, forever dancing to the tune of tick tock.


I think because life is so ephemeral in the grand scheme of things, we are always on a quest to prolong and make most of the experience. After all, there is nothing that guarantees that we won't drop dead any second now. Which reminds me, go have fun today! just in case.


We love living, and love the idea of immortality. We don't like to think of the practicality, the boredom, the changing times, losing the people we love and worst of all the loneliness. Which is probably why religions almost universally speak of the after life, a better place where life goes on or at least is continued in some fashion; Whether its frolicking in the gardens of Eden or dining in the Great Hall with Thor (I vote partying with Thor, apparently the bar maids are hot and they awesome dirty jokes).


To deserve that better place, we must be better people. With all of humanities imperfections, disastrous impulses we are gifted the ability and tools to overcome our shortcomings. Unfortunately, we prefer to keep the tools away for emergencies rather than keep them in good use.

We are given the freedom of choice to love, hate, feel whatever we wish. It is that choice that makes us unique. It also places a great burden on our shoulders to be better, if we hope to have a pleasant after life. Assuming you believe in the after life.

I remember a conversation I had with an atheist friend of mine, she had thrown a party celebrating her move from being a closet agnostic to full blown atheism. I hadn't really met any real intellectual atheists, the ones I had met were a mish mash rebellious pissed of girls, who still hadn't gotten over the fact that a God given anatomy would make them bleed once a month.

I obviously went over to admonish her and poke her alien like frame to make sure she was real. One thing about her conversion did trouble me, which I put to her. There was no tangible benefit for her giving up God. Very simply put if she believes in God (lets not get into selection worries) then on her death she has a shot at the afterlife, even if she's right, she dies with that sense of comfort. Both of these don't exist in her current state, which disconcerted me. She has nothing to look forward to in an athiest mindset, and if she's wrong about it all, she'll burn in hell. Sounds pretty freaking stupid.

Why is it that good people tend to lead 'boring' lives? I realized that it may seem boring to me, but they have different things that give them pleasure. The fulfilment of achievement and the promise of a better after life. We admire such people, but rarely enough to change our ways and follow them as our examples, preferring Jude Law to Edhi or Russel Brand to Mandela.


Obviously no one is perfect, humans aren't wired to be, but we can struggle to be better, do better, use our lives for the betterment of others. Whether it is one person or one billion, that love is the same. God doesn't demand we succeed, he only demands that you try as Mother Theresa is often quoted as saying. It is that honest effort that marks our betterment.


I think that their are many easy ways to better ourselves, whether its being charitable, smiling more, being understanding of others, helping people (especially at home) and random acts of kindness. But that choice is ours, and it is both our greatest asset and our greatest downfall. It's a pity its not a responsibility we are really up for.

Living in a City of Boom Boom

Don't look forward to the day when you stop suffering. Because when it comes you'll know that you're dead. - Tennessee Williams

Whenever their is a suicide bombing in Pakistan, I get a deluge of concerned notes asking about my and my family's health (less lately as its become a daily occurrence, and the realization that I live in Karachi which has until recently, been largely untouched by the terror campaign). 

I appreciate the concern from my friends and I thank god every day for the fact that my loved ones are safe. So far my luck has been exemplary, so I continue praying for the streak to continue (if it ain't broke why fix it). 

One of the questions I got asked a lot was 'how do you live with all the uncertainty, isn't it dangerous and make you feel unsafe?" 

A part of my wants to laugh it off, not deal with the fact that I grew up and currently live in a scary unpredictable explosive city. A part of me wants to shrug it off and be tough about it in a debonair way, but the truth is that Death (not to mention the process of dying) scares me, but oddly enough not as much as it happening to my family and friends. The rest of me just wants to to look them straight in the eye and say yes. 

A suicide bombing is a tragic thing, but as someone said 'If someone wants to trade his life for yours, there is not a whole lot you can do about it'. It is that hopelessness, and the realization in that no matter what you do, short of perpetual house arrest, that there is nothing to do. In acceptance of that reality is where I feel at peace. 

I eventually came to the conclusion that as a nation, Pakistani citizens had inadvertently put themselves through the 7 stages of grief. Obviously, everyone dealt with their own personal circumstances differently, but the pattern was the same, dealing with unexpected losses and the fallout from the mindless destructive taking of lives, perhaps even their own loved ones. 

1. Shock; Terrorist strikes are random, unexpected and in destructive. It befuddles one how a 'religious Islamic war' is fought by killing innocents. It's one thing to attack military bases, but quite another to attack markets, mosques and religious processions. How such warped backward people live in our society is shameful. 

2. Denial; We like to think that its not really Pakistanis that are behind these attacks, that evil crazy foreigners from the middle east and the dysfunctional Stan regions (Afghanistan, Uzbekistan etc) are really behind it. Sadly, for a time, we ignore all evidence to the contrary. There is also the scope where we try to deny that things are as bad as they are. Now that all the terrorists have blown themselves that we can finally live in peace.

 

3. Bargaining; Our government has tried it, peace agreements, peace talks, tacit agreements all to no avail. It also makes us wonder what we could do to reverse the loss? Distraught family members ask God Why them, and unleash the I wish you would have 'taken me instead' mindset. Unfortunately, God and terrorist suicide bomber do have one thing in common, their is no use for bargaining other than to make ourselves feel better. 

4. Guilt; We wouldn't be human if we didn't feel guilt. I'm sure the establishment that originally set up and supported the terrorist cells in the hope to neutralize India and control Afghanistan experience more than their fair share. One tends to blame themselves in order to reconcile with their loss. Perhaps 

5. Anger; It is unavoidable, and expressing it is a national pastime rivaling cricket. We like burning cars, looting shops, closing down entire cities with our griefs. Say what you will, but Pakistanis are intensely passionate people and inflaming an entire metropolis isn't as hard or uncommon as one would think.  Mostly, its anger at the injustice of it all, after all the people killed are innocents, whether they are in the midst of worship, or buying shoes or even enjoying a night out, there is no justice in their deaths. Whether its anger towards god, terrorists, the government, the army etc, its still pain and economically rather expensive.  

6. Depression; Feelings of hopelessness, it hits us all hard and fast. It comes and goes as it pleases. That sensation of sadness from within is mind numbing and emotion sapping. Nothing will bring those people back, and nothing will deter those maniacs who slaughter in the name of God. I personally think its a fear of the unpredictability and the realization that no one is safe. 

7. Acceptance; After a point, one has to deal with the reality of living in Pakistan. Even if one is lucky and has never known someone to have actually died in one of these horrific attacks, one must learn to live with the reality. Find their own coping mechanism, maybe even joke about it....yes I'm having a Blast...ha ha. At this stage we realize that life will never be the same but we choose to continue to see hope and meaning in the future. not necessary because we believe it, but because we have to have hope in order to go on and continuing to cherish our lives. 

End of the day you keep going, move on, live, laugh and squeeze every drop of happiness life has to offer, because you never know what day will be your last. It may sound a bit forlorn and damning but I'm not, even in the best of times life and it's duration is unpredictable. From the moment we are born to our last breath we put our lives in the hands of God and pray to him to bless us and serve at his will. The atheist alternate of 'well, the idea of dying sure sucks, thank god I have an insurance policy,' does not really seem appealing to me.  

I like to think I've reached the acceptance level, but after every attack I find myself reliving the steps over and over again. Disappointingly, I find myself increasingly desensitized to it all, rushing through the steps at increasingly record time. I abhor that change in myself, suffering and feeling emotions (particularly sad ones) is a part of life. Slowly, I feel that my humanity (which I revere) and compassion is slowly being eroded away by the onslaught. Maybe that's what the real goal of the terrorists is. Once we are all stripped of our humanity, we'll stop caring what they do, we'll just live with it, we'll just want it to stop. The population at large may even elect them (worked for Nepal....sort off).

So the short answer is that it can suck living my city of Boom Boom, but I still love it here. My heart is with my family, friends and my people, as long as they are here, my home will be where my heart lies. That is Pakistan. You live your life the best way you know how and leave the rest up to God.