The Greatest...Video?

Well, the video submission deadline has come and gone, and I got mine in just under the wire. I had a couple of iterations at the developmental stage of the video concept. At first, I thought I would start off with my qualifications, in bullet point format, and no name and then cut to a video from my high school football days (that's American football for anyone outside the US and Canada). In the video in question, our team was kicking off, and I sped down the field and made a flying tackle of the ball carrier. Just after the tackle, the cameraman said, "Is that Fabrizio? Fabriziooooooooo!!" I thought it would have been an interesting way to start off the video, a real attention getter. The main issue with that concept was getting the video from VHS to digital format. I only had access to one VCR, and it was hungry.

After that fell through, I re-read the application requirements: must be entertaining and engaging, tell why you're the best person for the job, and demonstrate your knowledge of the islands of the Great Barrier Reef. Ever since I was in uni (university for North Americans), my roommate and I would sing along to songs and change the lyrics to reference people in the room or situations at the time. When I moved to Japan, I found my true calling in the karaoke bars. There was no mistaking the lyrics at these places. I could sing whatever I wanted, and there was no annoying musician reminding everyone that what I was saying was not exactly the original. While I was in Miyako, I wrote a tribute to the island to the tune of Kokomo by the Beach Boys. I call it Miyakomo. If you want to know how it goes, you will have to sneak in to a karaoke session with me sometime. Anyway, I was trying to think of something that would be entertaining and engaging for the audience, and I thought that the creativity of Miyakomo would work well. The only problem was that Miyakomo really didn't have any relevance to Hamilton Island or Queensland. On the night that I re-read the application requirements, I went to bed straight after reading them, so I couldn't sleep because I kept trying to think of a new concept. That's when it hit me. I wanted something about Queensland, and I remembered a song by Dada called Dizz Knee Land. The chorus of the song is "I'm going to Dizz Knee Land!" I quickly realized that this could easily be changed to "I'm going to Queensland!" The tune was catchy enough, so all I needed to do was come up with the verse. I also tweaked the chorus a bit to make it more appealing, "Let's go to Queensland!" After that, I went right to sleep. The next day, I did some research and chose some key places and sights in Queensland and the Whitsundays. I reckoned that I could start the song from the broad perspective of the state of Queensland and then zoom in to the Whitsundays and Hamilton Island. If you're curious, the lyrics are below:

Brisbane, Gold Coast, Great Barrier Reef
Let's go to Queensland!

74 islands in the Coral Sea
Let's go to Queensland!

Diving, turtle, bird, and whale watching
Let's go to Queensland!

Heart Reef, Hill Inlet, White Haven Beach!
Let's go to Queensland!

Here's a brief breakdown of why I chose these lyrics. Brisbane is the capital of Queensland, so it's an obvious starter. The Gold Coast isn't exactly near the Whitsundays, but it's not far off, so it shows movement from Brisbane toward the Whitsundays, which are on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). That's the first verse.

The Whitsundays are a group of 74 islands in the Coral Sea, enough said.

Being on the GBR, diving is a given, and there are quite a few opportunities to see turtles on the GBR. I saw several when I went diving off of Cairns a few years back. The portion of Hamilton Island that is a National Park, which takes up about 70% of the island, is great for bird watching. Whales also migrate through the area in mid-winter, which is exactly the time the position starts. Whales migrate past Miyako-jima in winter as well. I never got to go out on a boat to look for them, but I saw them from the shore once. That's one thing I would have liked to have done while I lived there. Anyway, since July is when the job starts and is the ideal time for whale watching, I decided it was also the ideal addition to the verse.

The last verse is a smattering of famous sites in the Whitsundays: the heart-shaped reef, Hill Inlet and White Haven go together as Hill Inlet is at the northern end of White Haven Beach, and no trip to the Whitsundays would really be complete without visiting White Haven Beach as it is most likely one of the most famous beaches in Australia, or at least in the Whitsundays.

That's the explanation of the lyrics. I won't bore you with the details of the 20+ takes on the recording of the audio for the video, but it was all done right here on my laptop using the microphone in my headpiece for talking on Skype. I shot the video completely on my own which meant doing several takes to make sure that my head wasn't cut off during filming, and then I edited, cut, spliced, and overlaid the audio on my mom's desktop using the software that came with her video camera. It turned out alright, but I would have liked to have the sound match with the movement of my lips and hands a bit more.

Well, I hope you enjoyed my Queensland music video. If you haven't seen it yet, you can check it out here.

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The Greatest Job in the World

About a month ago, a friend of mine sent me an article titled "The Greatest Job in the World". I had told him that I was going to be leaving my job and the China/Hong Kong area, where I had lived for about a year. I think he sent it to me as a joke, but as I read the basic job description in the article, I began to get very excited about it.

For those of you who don't know, the job is caretaker of Hamilton Island in Queensland, Australia. The main purpose of the position is to promote tourism to Queensland. According to the article and the website (www.islandreefjob.com), the job responsibilities include snorkeling, scuba diving, exploring the surrounding islands and other islands on the Great Barrier Reef, and basically spending time walking the beaches, swimming with the fishes, and being an ideal tourist. The caretaker is also responsible for keeping the world up to date on her/his activities by blogging, interacting with media, etc. It sounds like a bit of a cowboy job, but I'm sure that there are a lot of other responsibilities involved. Being a tourism promotional model isn't easy, at least I don't think it is.

The excitement that the article spurred within me got me searching the information superhighway for more, well, information about the job. I found another article in which someone from the Queensland government was giving some tips and advice about applying for the job. She said that due to the demand for the job, there would be an insane amount of applicants; however, anyone who has a degree related
to environmental studies and has any experience living in a similar place will automatically be in the top 25% of all applicants. Now when I read this, I got really excited because I have a degree in Forestry-Recreation Management, and I lived in Miyako-jima, Japan in Okinawa for 5 years. Miyako-jima seems to be
Cape Higashihennazaki,
Miyako-jima, Japan
very similar to Hamilton Island. It is located at 24 degrees latitude, so it has a similar climate, it is 300km from the mainland of Okinawa, so it is isolated, and it has some of the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen in my life. It has a population of 50,000 people making it a bit more populated than Hamilton island, but still fairly small as far as populations go. On top of that, while I was living in Miyako-jima, I had a role on a weekly local TV show on the island. The show was news-based, giving local news, but the unique point was that it was almost entirely done in the local dialect, not in Japanese. My role on the show was to have the woman teach me the local dialect. It would have been
challenging being on a TV show that was in Japanese, but it was even more challenging as I didn't understand what was being said most of the time. Still, it was a lot of fun, and I did learn quite a bit of the local dialect. I was surprised at how qualified for this job I really was. When you happen onto an opportunity like this, you have

Volleyball at Maehama Beach,
Miyako-jim, Japan

to take a shot. That's why so many people are putting in applications for the job. When you're actually qualified for the job, it's a no-brainer to put in for it.

When I tell people that I am applying for this job, they always have the same reaction...a chuckle and smile, then when they see that I'm not laughing, they ask, "Seriously?" I reckon that most people look at putting in for this job about the same as buying a lottery ticket. The reward is amazing, but the odds of receiving it are slim and none. At last check, there were about 6,000 applicants on the website. I reckon there will probably be somewhere around 10,000 by the cutoff. If I am in the top 25%, as the woman in the article stated, that would make my odds of getting the job about 1 in 2,500. That's better by far than the odds of winning the lottery. Plus, my video application should shove me out a bit further toward that top percentile. Queensland will choose the top 10 candidates by May and fly them out to Hamilton Island for interviews. The website also mentions something about possibly taking part in challenges, etc. It makes it sound a bit like Survivor to me.

Well, for those of you interested, I will be posting more info about the making of my masterpiece of an application video later.

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