The online home of Appleman1234 / Benjamin Southall

Hey everyone,

I was going to write another joke post similar to my QUT IRC sketch, but then I realised that I wasn’t feeling as satirical at all today. So instead I have a few things to update people on and a few more things to mention and poke a sharp pointy non stick like object at for all to ignore. Firstly I am not blogging to you all live from Hamilton Island, and I am not from the UK. To my parents, my siblings, my grandfather, my godfather and anyone else that reckons I should attempt to masquerade as the Best Job in the World winner, I say thanks for the suggestion but no thanks.

Attempting to masquerade as this person, would probably involving me changing my appearance and gaining an English accent and hiding the person I would be impostering in some sort of underwater pressurised cell in my secret underwater lair in the Great Barrier Reef, and fun and awesome as this all is, If I actually attempted to do it, their would be several consequences which include

• One of my secret lairs would being no longer secret
• I would have to blog to world why the Great Barrier Reef is awesome and spend a lot of time snorkeling, which isn’t that hard to do but takes away time that I need to work on my university assessment.
• Eventually I would get busted as my English accent would be not good enough or I would get knighted by the Queen for services against the Global Recession and services in support of conservation for my English accent being too good

A second thing I should mention is my pagerank still seems to be intact despite families assurances that I had been bumped to the 8th page of Google when they used Macca’s Wireless to check emails and stuff (This is why you shouldn’t let your siblings get addicted to WoW and other online games, as then the shared internet connection goes away and the other family members have to resort to Macca’s wireless).

The amount of media hype regarding this job, got me thinking about it, particularly as the person who won it has a similar firstname and the same surname as me. He gets to housesit a luxury house in Hamilton Island for 6 months, to basically have a six month vacation and gets paid $150k for it.  Evidently it is a publicility stunt, apparently $100 million of publicity from the media hype on media hype has already been generated. And this very good for QLD’s tourism industry, to quote Ruth Apelt’s song “Tourist-led Recovery”, “yeah we’re banking on a tourist-led recovery, that’s what I know, that’s what I know, and in QLD we say, yo way to go!!”.

But is a paid vacation really the best job in the world ? I mean 150K for 6 months is approximately $834 dollars a day or $105 dollars an hour for an 8 hour work day. In terms of rate of earning there are plenty of other jobs that can earn people $105 dollars per hour for an 8 hour work day, so it doesn’t win there, but I do suppose it is rather cushy. However once that job is finished, the money stops, like all employment, however the personal publicity he will obtain, would probably help him find future work.

But is the rate of money earnt per hours worked the most important thing in making a job the best in the world ? From an altrustic perspective it certainly isn’t, from that perspective the best jobs in the world would involve the saving, supporting and development of other people’s lives. This would have people with Doctor’s without Borders and councillors and social workers as having the best job in the world. From a hedonistic perspective the Hamilton Island job isn’t the best in the world, because in terms of hedonism, there are other jobs that cause more pleasure for less sacrifice or pain. From an egoist perspective the job isn’t the best in the world , because it isn’t ultimately in the individual’s upmost best interest’s as if he was offered a better offer, he would be then obliged by belief system to take it.

Jobs are perceived by most people as a means to an end in earning an abstracted concept which humanity assigns value to. The best job in the world is when your occupation isn’t a chore or a job, but is a passion, so you don’t even perceive as being a job or a means to end, you do it because you love it, despite the consequences negative or positive.

What do you think is the best job in the world and why do you think that ?

I would love to write down some more on this question but I have to get back to work on my university assessment.

Best wishes

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234