Don't Think of a Polar Bear

"They say it's really hard to concentrate if you start thinking about polar bears. So do not think of a polar bear, right now."

This charming, almost middle aged corporate mix between Derren Brown and Chandler from "Friends" of a head of HR was both encouraging and distracting me and 11 other aspiring somethings on a four hour "assessment" for a job at this large sales company. How very light-heartedly kind of him to be throwing a simple little psychology inspired joke like that into the midst of struggle and nervousness that was us twelve, all under 25-year-olds, dealing with a set of tasks that we were judged upon in competing with each other. The Office Games.

One ill-witted gentleman of the group nervously asked afterwards, why the mister kept mentioning the polar bears - presumably having completely swum under the stratum of the subtly amusing tease. We all had to sit through the guy explaining he was just bored and was saying "silly things" to keep himself occupied. What a diplomatic and respectfully polite answer.
Oh, stop it, me!


In my several hours of acquaintance with the men of this company I have learned several things:

• In London, or any financially sufficient capital, it doesn't really matter what your line of work is; you pretty much fall into a profession one way or another, but it becomes your duty to make it the thing you do best, to make it yours. 
• Hard but rewarded work makes you more focused, happier, and more attractive as a person.
• However rich, salesmen tend to have a noticeably stale sense of fashion. 

That's how I saw the guy—

—that's probably how you'd see him.

Kinda harsh, but I am fairly deluded.
But anyway, polar bears! Don't get distracted now.

Speaking about working hard and professional competence: an American journalist Simon Ostrovsky goes on ahead and tells us all about how almost two weeks ago now he got kidnapped, what happened during the several days and how he felt, and how he finally got released. There's even footage of how his colleagues and friends met him afterwards here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQGRJN4Radk

Having teased the idea of jumping head-first into journalism, I clung onto this guy as an idol and an inspiring professional in the field. Reporting on the Ukrainian-Russian clashes now - and getting kidnapped occasionally - a few years back he resided on the Russian-North Korean border, reporting everything from an eye level The most amusing aspect of his reports is the seemingly detached, almost aloof way of describing what's happening, as if he's only crossing some man-made imaginary three dimensional space of "news". To this guy, it seems, brutal reality is a freaking video walk-through tutorial on Youtube, of this game called "Life".

Professionalism? Or passion? Maybe it's having dug through enough tough dough (whoah) in one's life and/or career that makes you that much more impervious to, really, anything. Oddly enough, a similar kind of tenacity glimmered in the faces of the fellers at that sales company, and similarly dishevelled haircuts they were sporting too. That's the kind of citizen worth aspiring to: dedicated, focused, keeping to a set personal moral code and not letting yourself become a gloomy self-loathing and self-indulging asswit.

And polar bears.
Oh and by the way, don't get seduced by the chicken flavoured "Pringles" because it's literally like munching on a flattened out chicken flavoured soup spice cube.
And let's all hope I get that job, just for the termination of this blog.


[Pictures: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02533/Don-Draper_2533120b.jpg
http://envisionedentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/sleazy-salesman.jpg
http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/tQGRJN4Radk/0.jpg
Disclaimer: All the rights to the polar bear image that you inadvertently witnessed belong solely to Your Mind©®™]