In an effort to reduce my need to save up a lot of money to take a trip to Australia, I have been doing and Australian job search instead.  It made a lot more sense to me to turn it into a "working" trip and this way I will be able to stay away from home a little bit longer.

But I have had some difficulty finding a new job in a country that is so far away from my home.  Sure, you could argue that I should be able to find trade jobs easily when I get off the plane, but I needed to have some peace of mind knowing that I had a job to go to and I wouldn’t have to spend what little money I had while I was job-hunting.

Thankfully, I was able to find some retail jobs in Australia and I think that I will see if I can get an interview from them before I even get on the plane.

I might just have to wait until tomorrow - it is getting way too late to think straight.

Sometimes well-meaning friends can be a pain in the…err, neck. I’ve been trying to build an online business, but a close friend thinks it’s taking way too long. She’s pushing me to get a J-O-B. Her latest thrust - and believe me, with her it’s an almost physical SHOVE, is that I should go after sales jobs.

I’ve endured weeks of her harping, cutting out ads and rubbing my nose in them. She insists that, with my personality and my love of people, I’m a natural for sales. But I find myself dreaming of getting away someplace where I don’t have her ramrodding me into a career I’m not sure I’d be any good at.

Truth be told, however, sales might suit my personality. When I read something recently about sales jobs in the UK, I thought, "What better way to get away from all this well-meant nagging?" The best part is, I can run an Internet business from anywhere! But would I actually move overseas?

After all the nagging today, I’d do it in a heart beat!

I have been considering to take a "working" vacation over to Europe.  If I were to get a work visa, I could stay longer than a two week trip, and not have to worry so much about money.  I would really just need some spending money and enough to pay for the plane trip over there and that would be enough to get me going.

Before I hop on a plane and fly over there, I think that I should have a job lined up.  To me, that makes the most sense, and I could probably find a place that would hire me as something more than a server at a restaurant.

So, I have been looking for job listings online that pertain to my skills.  I have already applied to an ad that I found with a search for "translation company London".  Something like that would be neat as I could use the other language that I know for a change.

I guess I will have to keep looking for a job until I get one - though I hope it is soon as I would love to go there sooner as opposed to later.

While cleaning out the shop the other day, I realized that we had a lot of junk.  I mean that we had shelf upon shelf of old parts, colleting dust and taking up space.  It was about time that someone did something about it, so I went to talk to the boss and ask if that would be alright if I did.

He was happy that I offered to help clean the shop and take initiative.  He told me that I had the right to throw out anything that wouldn’t be useful to the business anymore and if there were any doubts, I should talk to him.

So, I began the cleaning that would become a week long affair.  I threw out many things that our company no longer used such as a rubber track for Bobcat mini excavator, old motor parts, and even some old hood ornaments.

Needless to say, when I got rid of all the trash that we had in the shop, there was a lot of room in there.

During the summer between high school and college, I was very lucky to be hired on by the city. The job positions were always filled quickly and you had to be taking post secondary education to get one. I was surprised when I was hired, as they usually hire people back from the year or years before.

By the time I was finished my third year of college, I was hired on to do event management. I was mostly in charge of the people that were running the children’s programs over the summer. I loved my job and I knew it would be my last year, as the next summer I would be done with school and moving on in my career.

I had the best time of my life that summer. I was working with a really great crew and, though we took our jobs seriously, we were in it to have a lot of fun. I like the job I have now, but I also have many more responsibilities, so I miss the days when life was less serious.

From time to time, I do some consulting with college students.  Specifically, I help them with writing term papers, research papers and other essays.  Just like the college application essay that I helped my buddy with, I may directly help with the writing, or help find resources related to the task at hand.

The day today started off well.  Overnight, someone must have purchased our package "Order Essay Assistance".  So, I made contact with the student to meet before classes this morning at 8 AM.

Turns out that the student needs some help with their MBA essay.  The problem I was going to have was it was on Psychology, which I only took one undergraduate class relating to that topic.  Lucky for me, I have a friend who is in for their Doctorate of Psychology, so they might just be able to help.

I arranged another meeting with my new client on Friday - at which point we will get started on the writing.

My day at work today was a little different than normal.  Usually, I am the receptionist for a busy architectural office and I answer phones all day.  But today, I had another important (and a little more interesting) task to do – book car rentals for the partners.

You see, there was going to be a couple of different conferences that the partners of our firm would be attending, and as per company policy, they were to each have a rental car.

There was going to be a little work involved for me as the conferences were in three different cities: Orlando, Tampa, and Miami.  I had little problem booking a Tampa car rental and the Miami car rental.  It was Orlando that I was having problems with.

I ended up having to search online for “car rentals Orlando” and luckily I did find a place that could help us out.  With the car rentals booked, all I had left to do was book the hotel rooms… I am sure that is going to be fun.

I had the opportunity to spend a day in the life of one of my best friends today.  You see, the store that he works for has a "bring your friend to work" day twice per year.  They do this to encourage recruitment of employees that have references from their current staff.  The argument is that this way, it is more of a family environment - and the staff will be more loyal.

So, I was invited to this even by my friend Dave and I was excited.  You see, I have never, ever sold bathroom suites before and it would be a change of pace.  I arrived at work to find an apron and uniform waiting for me.

The first task of the day was to learn about the difference between whirlpool baths and shower baths.  In fact, we spent about two hours getting a "bathroom bootcamp" if you will.  In the end, we were sent out with our friend to try and sell some bathroom suites.

How do you think I did?

Well, after fumbling through one sale, I did manage to sell one suite to a customer - and boy did that feel great.  From this experience, I have a better understanding of how Dave’s life is and what he goes through at work.

I can remember years ago when you would have a training program at work and you would learn from a person.  Now, that doesn’t happen so much anymore thanks to the information age.  You see, most of our training materials at the office come in a digital format, so that there is no paper waste, and no overhead due to some high paid corporate trainer.

Instead we have the "Online Business Academy" which consists of all our training manuals and knowledge base.  In fact, just today, I was looking in our knowledge base for the most current store reviews in our company.

You see, twice a year they send us out into the field to do insurance reviews with the store manager.  We need to ensure that each outlet has adequate insurance coverage to replace the inventory and store should disaster strike.

So now I have to follow the online training program regarding the insurance audit so that I am up to date with our current practices.  I can’t wait till this is all over and I can go out in the field and be outside of the office a bit.  I am thankful that we have these breaks from our routine - it keeps the job interesting.

I work in a television studio and am in charge of making sure that the digital media is working up to par. There is a lot of technical know how involved, but I would have to say that I am in my element dealing with the in and outs of the equipment.

I also get the grand job of going back into the archives to find segments from previous weeks, months and even years that need to be reviewed. This is the most tedious part of my job, because if it was not labeled correctly, I may have to go through hundreds of clips, to find the one I need.

I am trying to work out a labeling system in which you could just do a free search (on a database) and come up with the segments required. This will take a lot of time, as all of the clips will have to be relabeled and organized.

Although the equipment becomes obsolete on a regular basis, you will find nothing for sale here. I thought that maybe one of the perks of the job was going to be to get good deals on old equipment, but sadly, I am not sure what happens to it.