Have you ever had a performance review that made you rethink everything? Well, after my first review, I made a decision. If this company would not grow me, I would find one that might. So I did. I accepted a job offer in Ottawa and prepared to move. Then, at the last minute, the owner of the company came back to me. He asked me to stay, and offered a role that was becoming crucial for the business: placing someone with our biggest customer, in Montreal. There I was, around 24

Eight months after I watched those towers fall, I graduated. April 2002. A degree in Aerospace Engineering, and a feeling of incredible pride. Then reality. My classmates and I were all chasing the same few jobs. One of them was in Winnipeg. Not the most sought after posting, so "only" twelve of us competed for it. I got it. I felt like I had won. An offer letter. Thirty five thousand dollars a year. My first real salary. There was just one problem. My car was dying. An old H

Twenty five years ago… I was a few days into my final year of Aerospace Engineering at Carleton University in Ottawa. I would have finished a year earlier, but I had taken a long, 16 month internship first. That morning, I was getting ready to leave my apartment for class. The news was playing in the background. Then the newscasters’ voices changed. Something felt wrong. I looked up. And I watched, live, as an aeroplane flew into the World Trade Center. I did not have the wor

When my parents left for Canada, they left two of us behind. My second sister and me. It was the mid 1990s. My father had his next posting, in Ottawa, Canada. But I was a year from finishing my London A-levels, and my sister was completing her CIMA. Our studies were not done. So we stayed. Two young people, in our parents’ house in Sri Lanka, on our own. We were not exactly roughing it. There was a driver. There was help around the house. Close friends and some family would v

In 2019, I moved to Japan to work for Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation. Most people assumed it was my first time in Japan. It was my first time working there. That much was true. But my first time in Japan was 25 years earlier. By 2019, I had lost count of the visits. Most of them to see family. So how did I end up with family in Japan? My very first visit was near the end of April 1994. I was almost 16. It was a family trip. My brother had moved to Japan a year or two earlier

At 13, I arrived in Malaysia with one enormous advantage. Nobody knew I was the boy who had failed. It was 1991. My father had received his next posting after a Middle East tour that had lasted nearly 12 months. Kuwait. Baghdad. Amman. Abu Dhabi. Now, Kuala Lumpur. A new country. A new school. A language I was still learning. By then, I had lost count of how many times we had started over. But this time was different. This time, we were staying. I had to settle down and learn

We escaped the Gulf War. But the taxi driver who befriended us in Baghdad was sent to fight in it. My last story ended with my family leaving Kuwait behind. But I often wondered if that taxi driver survived the war he did not choose to fight. So, let me return to Baghdad for a moment. To one person I have never forgotten. We spent weeks there, waiting. A city bracing for war. And here is what I remember most, all these years later. The Iraqi people were kind. Warm. Loud at ti

February 1990 was when I first boarded an aeroplane. I wore a bow tie. My whole family was dressed as if we were going to a wedding. I was 11. My father had joined the foreign service, and we were flying to Kuwait for his first posting. I remember the aircraft like it was magic. It was an Air Lanka Lockheed L1011 Tristar. I remember our first hotel too. A real ocean liner, turned into a hotel, sitting half in the sea. The Ramada Al-Salam. I still remember the beautifully mani

At around ten years old, I failed an exam that was supposed to decide my future. My three elder siblings all passed. As the youngest, I was the last. And, I was the only one who didn’t pass. I still remember the feeling. Not sadness. Something worse. Inadequacy. I’m 48 now. An engineer. An entrepreneur building a business across four countries. Over the years, I’ve spent some serious time wondering how that boy became this man. Looking back, I can now see how each event and e