Misleading career guidance

At high school, when the time comes for students to make their subject choices, and again, when they are supposed to be applying to universities, a flurry of well-meaning guidance counsellors make their appearance to offer career advice. One of the things that they always rattle off is that students should find the thing that they enjoy doing the most, and try to build a career out of that.

I really enjoyed studying English, so I threw myself into that, as well as peppering the rest of my academic selection with a schizophrenic variety of subjects that bore testimony only to my lack of conviction in any particular path. The upshot of all of this is that today, I am a journalist, and quite happy with my career decision.

However, having just had a week`s break, I realise the error I made when using the counsellors` methodology. The thing I enjoy doing most is being on holiday. I am also particularly good at it. And I`m talking the real, get-your-hands-wet and get-your-feet-dirty kind of holiday - no electricity, no cellphone reception, no hot water, just plenty of beach action, and lots and lots of seafood.

The one thing that I do think should be altered about the city is the clothing that we wear to work.

Georgina Guedes, Journalist, ITWeb

While others are content to sit on the beach and soak up the sun, I cruise around rock pools armed with a butter knife, prying mussels off rocks to be stewed later, over an open fire, into a delicious cream and white wine soup. The trek I made across two kilometres of beach sand to show a friend a particularly pretty starfish I had managed to find was probably a bit extreme, but she was gratifyingly enthusiastic.

Squinting up my eyes to read by lantern, singeing my fingers on gas flames as I struggle to make the first cup of tea of the morning with long-life milk, dressing every day in nothing more than a bikini and a kikoi - this is the kind of life I feel I am cut out for.

But then, when I get back to the city and soak myself in a long, hot bath, turn on the television to watch West Wing and come to work to write and access the Internet, I grudgingly admit that I`m a city girl at heart. And since musselling isn`t exactly the most lucrative career option, I can`t really think of any vocational path I could evolve out of my aptitude for being on holiday, so I`ll have to be satisfied with publishing.

The one thing that I do think should be altered about the city is the clothing that we wear to work. Now I know that as a journalist I have precious little to complain about, but I really do think that this being Africa, the fact that we have our corporate attire dictated to us by outdated European norms is a ludicrous scenario. Especially with such an ingenious piece of clothing as the kikoi so easily available to us.

For any of you who have managed to miss the last 20 years of South African beach fashion, a kikoi is a brightly striped rectangle of cloth that is worn wrapped around the waist. It is completed by a sassy bikini top or T-shirt and a pair of flip-flops.

I think that as a real tribute to our sunny country (today`s showers notwithstanding), we should all cast off our collared shirts and shiny shoes, and embrace the kikoi as the most appropriate piece of clothing for any Proudly South African board meeting.

A friend who was on holiday with us from England was coerced into buying what he mulishly continued to refer to as his "dress" by a particularly overzealous salesperson who told him that while it might be his first, it certainly wouldn`t be his last. I share his conviction.