One-Week Anniversary

it's been one week since JoJo started her new job. gone is the glamourous life as a private equity investor. her schedule is fairly rountine: up by 6.30am, out the door by 7.30am, bus to Shenzhen from 8am to 9am and taxi to work from 9am to 9.30am. 3 hours from bed to work! many people have questions about such commute arrangement. well it is not the easiest commute in the world but what JoJo also sees is a whole new world. she used to work until 3 or 4 am and get up around 9 or 10am and always felt she was on a rush to do things. and her commute sometimes was worse because she would need to get up sometimes at 6am to catch 8am flight just for a meeting in Shanghai at noon! now, she walks to the bus station at 7.30am and she notices many different things she never used to experience in life. free news papers (4 kinds of them!), time for sit-down breakfast, time to read the FT on the bus and time to look out of the window instead typing feverishly on blackberry. work is exciting although much slower paced. but she feels she gets a lot done during the day and still has all the time after work even after factoring in the 3-hour roundtrip commute!

God is fair. everyone gets the same 24 hours whether you are man, woman, black, white, rich or poor. everything in life is a give-and-take. if you choose to devote 18 hours to work and all you have left for yourself and loveones are 6 hours. jojo has spent all her twenties climbing the ladder and neglecting herself and her family and now she thinks it's time to slow down. does she feel something is lost with such a huge transformation? does she miss her frequent flyer miles and hotel points? of course! but then she looks at what she gains from this new experience, she knows immediately why she chose the path she did. will she ever regret her choice? maybe, but then she will remind herself that every decision made in her life has been carefully considered and debated and if she shall choose to make a decision, it would've been the best decision she could've made at the time with the information at hand. no point looking back but one should only look forward and try to make the best out of it...