I collected my Santoku knife back from the shop today and as I carried it my leather handbag on my way home, I felt like some sort of assassin carrying a lethal weapon. If I had been in China trying to take the subway, I would not have been able to get on the train. For those who don’t know, all subway commuters are required to put their bags through a scanner before they are allowed to go past the turnstiles and through to the trains.

Thankfully I live in Hong Kong and the city is still considered safe enough to not have to do this scanning thing.

But my Santoku knife is not what I would consider my lethal weapon. As the saying goes, the pen is mightier than the sword, and my lethal weapon would have to be the former.

Writing is the only real skill I have. The ability to write has given me a roof over my head and food in my stomach. Every job I have interviewed for has required me to take a writing test.

But I hadn’t always appreciated this skill I had until I got my present job. Here, I saw that words in a business proposal mattered and the ability to edit, write and present ideas succinctly was a valuable skill too.

So while my colleagues are number crunching gurus with the calculator as their lethal weapon in the corporate battlefield, I’m the one who wields the pen as my sword. And that isn’t too bad of a weapon too, no?