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.