The Best job in the World

An Australian state is offering internationally what it calls "the best job in the world" -- earning a top salary of 150,000 Australian dollars (105,000 US dollars) for 6 months of lazing around in a beautiful tropical island named Hamilton Island on the Great Barrier Reef.

In return, the "island caretaker" will be expected to stroll the white sands, snorkel the reef, take care of "a few minor tasks" -- and report to a global audience via weekly blogs, photo diaries and video updates.

The successful applicant, who will stay rent-free in a three-bedroom beach home complete with plunge pool and golf buggy, must be a good swimmer, excellent communicator and be able to speak and write English.


Okay, I am aware that it is an advertising gimmick created by the Australian Tourist Promotion Board and hence I should not take it so seriously. On the other hand, hard campaigning it could also deliver an idea that is miseducating to the younger generation; promoting the concept of bagging a ridiculously huge sum of remuneration and shunning the idea of working. They are trying to brain wash us that a vacation-like passing time is the epitome a good life. “Vacation is good. Working is bad” so the slogan seems to imply. If you really have to work, you better be paid supremely well and the job has better to be task free.


Tv shows like “wheel of fortune“, “how to be a millionaire” are already changing people’s idea of an honest income. Money can actually comes by through easy means. If it is possible to get rich by “walking on stage” or participating in quiz games, who cares about having to get out of bed early and spend 8 hours away from home? Soon, people take up a job just to keep life going while day dreaming that the lucky moment will arrive. Nobody bothers about getting knowledge or improving oneself?

Why people demand huge sum of money for their work? Mainly because they are unhappy with what they are doing. In order to “make” them perform a task or any task, they must be well compensated.

Confucius once said “Choose a job that you like, and you need not work another day.” My father never rested a day in his 60 years of working life, not even when he was ill. And he was paid a pittance. Nobody coerced him to do that. I did not understand him then for I was too full of the wonder of his own going. Certainly there were moments of stress, anger and struggle but there were also moments of socializing, moments of pride (when he knows he did well), moments of enjoyment. To him, that’s not work. That’s life.