And that's how Travelling and Globalization ruined my career...

On the 26th of December, 2009, while strolling around El Moez Street in Islamic Cairo after taking some cool pictures and having a sugary banana pancake; Raina was like: “Did you know that Juan is in India? I tried calling him but he wasn’t picking up.
You know what: if there is one place I’d rather be right now it is definitely India. I even applied for a 2 month volunteering program there next summer and really hope they accept me”.

 Raina is an American student I had only met once before and it was already time to wish her goodbye as she was leaving the following day. Even though our meeting was quite short, yet we somehow clicked and really enjoyed each others’ company.
Raina’s excitement about that bamboozling country stroke me, and without giving it much thought I replied back:” If you do get accepted... I’ll come visit you”.
2 days later, she wrote me back telling me she got accepted. And 7 months later, we were watching sunrise over Taj Mahal during my 16-day backpacking trip in Northern India, after which my life was never the same again.
Planning that trip was not easy, and travelling around in July during monsoon made it more preferable to stay towards the North and next to the mountains, which was not a very safe area either. After doing loads of research, I picked the perfect destinations, and chose the most challenging and risky means of getting there: 2 of the most amazing 2-3 day road trips through the Himalayas: Manali-Leh and Srinagar-Leh roads, in which the views are stunning but the journey is long, tiresome and dangerous, roads are quite bumpy and uncomfortable, you are subjected to Acute Mountain Sickness due to the passage of up to 6,000m peaks, flooding and landslides can happen anytime, besides the conflict that can happen in Srinagar/Kashmir. Having the trip planned, I needed to find a travel companion who would be willing to travel around in case Raina couldn’t, and this was almost impossible especially with the Egyptian stereotypical idea about India being merely “spicy food and stinky smell”.
Luckily, in mid May, I met Patrick, a Canadian ex-military pilot who decided to quit what he was doing and travel the world for the next 2 years with the aim of making a difference. Patrick’s 1st itinerary was Egypt as a part of his Middle East overland tour that also included Jordan, Syria and finally Turkey.
One hour after we met, I could tell that we were quite likeminded .I told him about my trip to India and spontaneously asked him to join. He seemed excited but had to check when his tour ends. To our greatest surprise, the tour ended in Istanbul on my arrival date in Delhi and hence we managed to meet up from day two till the end of the trip.
The trip was mind-blowing, and for the first time ever I totally escaped that sophisticated civic life which I hate. I even hardly contacted anyone to avoid ruining my blast with everyone’s day to day complaints.
Going back home then to work was quite shocking. For some reason, things seemed so awkward. I couldn’t get myself to focus at all and hardly found interest in my job.
I assumed that to be a natural behavior after coming back from a vacation, but suddenly started realizing that I am not even motivated to get out of bed in the morning, the only thing I am ever looking forward to is the weekend, and that’s when I started having second thoughts about my whole career.
On a Monday morning, I found Cristina Palamariu online on the office communicator and decided to share my thoughts with her. Cristina is a Romanian who had lately embarked on a one year journey in South East Asia with Radu her husband and decided to settle down in Singapore.
Even though I had never met Cristina in person and we had hardly ever talked, I knew she would understand me. Cristina’s first comment was:” You need to find value in what you are doing. Let’s do an NLP session over the phone to help you better understand your core values”.
For the next hour, Cristina kept asking me so many “why” questions, and the next day sent me an email with a very interesting description about myself, preceded by a more interesting comment:
 “When it comes to our perception of the world, namely if something seems exciting or boring, nice or aggressive, pleasant or unpleasant etc., we actually use a set of filters which we developed throughout our lives based on our experiences and culture.”
And she concluded that my values are: “Positivity, Entertainment, Breaking Limits, New Discoveries, Living Life and Meaningful Relationships”.
As soon as I was done reading the mail, or right after the session, everything became clear. Travelling has been an eye opener for me; allowed me to push my limits further and gave me the gut to admit that I am totally off-track.
I started comparing my top passions” basketball and travelling” with work, where I spend most of my time and energy, and wandered if I felt the same? I tried motivating myself in every possible way, like everybody does, but failed to. I thought about every possible excuse that would allow me to go on” you need the money, you are doing a great job, what about your past 8 years of engineering,..etc”, but nothing worked.
Finally I came to admit the fact that I was not born to be an engineer, and that’s when I decided to drop it all, jump out of my comfort zone and into the unknown!!!!

Starting 1/1/2011, I’ll be on a self discovery mission till further notice.


Life is just too short so don't waste it trying to live up to everyone's expectations =D