Job Information

How Rich a Chef Can be?

When talking about the highest paid professions, people might think about professional athlete or a movie star. Before his sex scandal arises, pro golfer Tiger Woods had an annual income around $100 million. Actor Johny Depp got about the same amount in 2010, just by starred in 3 films. A celebrity chef, although don't generate as much as those jobs, is still considered as one of the highest paid professions.

Celebrity chef is a term used for kitchen chef who has become famous and well-known, mostly because they host their own cooking shows in television. Among the most popular (and richest) ones is Rachael Ray, who has four Food Network programs. Rachael Ray is estimated having around $60 million of net worth, with annual income of $18 million. Those money is not just from her TV shows, but also from endorsements, appearance fee, and cooking book.

These are the ten top-earning celebrity chefs in the world, including their annual income in 2008, according to Forbes.com:

Rachael Ray, $18 million
Wolfgang Puck, $16 million
Gordon Ramsay, $7.5 million
Nobuyuki Matsuhisa, $5 million
Alain Ducasse, $5 million
Paula Deen, $4.5 million
Mario Batali, $3 million
Tom Colicchio, $2 million
Bobby Flay, $1.5 million
Anthony Bourdain, $1.5 million

The best jobs in the world are the ones where people can do their hobbies/things they like, and get paid a lot for it, and I think athlete, actor, and chef can be included. So, if you really enjoy cooking and trying Chinese food recipes, why you are not considering of becoming a chef, instead of doing an office job that you don't like?

Of course to become a celebrity chef and get paid that sum of money is a long shot. So, how much an "ordinary" chef is actually paid? As any other jobs, chef's salary is depend on many factors, including work environment, your culinary education, working experience, and geographic location. Here are average culinary arts salaries of the middle 50 percent workers in the industry that you can use as a reference, in case you want to pursue a chef career:

Culinary Job Title	Annual Earnings
Cooking Assistant	$22,174 - $28,461
Executive Chef	$55,867 - $85,121
Executive Pastry Chef	$47,756 - $71,559
Food Scientist	$51,021 - $77,563
Line Cook	$18,642 - $26,639
Restaurant Manager	$38,239 - $56,053
Sous Chef	$33,473 - $52,959

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Profession: Race Queen

It's not that I'm boring or something if I post about uncommon professions that involve sexy women like AV Actress or this Race Queen job. It's just that I want to give information about various, sometimes unthinkable, jobs, instead of giving the same old info about office works. Who knows if it will bring inspiration for some people to search a different professions!

What is Race Queen?

Race queen is a term that used only in Asia, mostly in East and Southeast Asian countries. This profession is like a combination of umbrella/paddock girls with promotional girls. As you'd probably knew, umbrella girls are young women employed in professional racing events, with the duty is to hold umbrellas above racers to protect them from the sun and the rain. They attract attention by wearing tight fitted clothing (kinda looks like bikini), which also useful to put the logo/design of sponsors.

Most race queens work as umbrella girls during the national racing season. Outside the season, or between races, they also work as promotional model, also known as sales promotional girl. They are hired to drive consumer demand for a product, service, brand, or concept by directly interacting with potential consumers. Similar to when they work as umbrella girls, this job is also not a permanent one, but only in short term during a promotional events or new product's launching.

Race Queen Controversy

Of course that there's controversy about using sexy girls to cover racers or to promote any products, as the common reason is because it's associated with sexism. However, if in many countries this "campaign girls" are generally looked down upon as the occupation is regarded as "low profile", the situation is not found in East Asian countries, especially in Japan. In there, race queens have a higher profile and are regarded as idols.

South Korean car-makers Hyundai and Kia have recently announced that they would cut down on the number of models in their shows, stating that "We would rather have the spectators' attention on our cars than the attractive ladies."

As race queens have to be a beautiful woman with attractive appearance, most of them are also working as part/full time model. It's not uncommon to see race queens turn to Asian models or actresses. So, there are many young girls from Japan, Korea, China, or Indonesia who want to become a celebrity choose race queen profession as their stepping stone.

Now, here are some beautiful race queens from various Asian nations, which also known as model/actress in their countries:

Baby Margaretha (Indonesia)

Kim Ha Yul (Korea)

Li Qiao Dan (China)

Momoyo Aihara (Japan)

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American Tourist and Fisherman

It's true that businessman and financial planner always carry their job everywhere, even when they're on vacation. This one is a joke about American tourist, who also happens to be a businessman, which having a dialogue with local fisherman:

A boat docked in a tiny Mexican village. An American tourist approached the local fisherman to ask some travel tips. Seeing the man working, the traveler complimented the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch them.

"Not very long," answered the Mexican. "But then, why didn't you stay out longer and catch more?" asked the tourist. The Mexican explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his needs and those of his family.

The tourist asked, "So what do you do with the rest of your time?"

"I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, spend time with my wife... In the evenings I go into the village to see my friends, have a few drinks, play the guitar, chase the senoritas, and sing a few songs. I have a full life."

The tourist said, "I have a M.B.A. from Stanford and I can help you. You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue , you can buy a bigger boat. With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers. Instead of selling your fish to a middle man, you can negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant. You can then leave this little village and move to Mexico City, Los Angeles, or even New Jersey! From there you can direct your huge enterprise."

"How long would that take?" asked the Mexican. "Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years," replied the tourist."

And after that?" asked the Mexican. "Afterwards? That's when it gets really interesting," answered the tourist, laughing. "When your business gets really big, you can start selling stocks and make millions!" "Millions? Really?" asked the Mexican. "And after that?"

The tourist replied, "After that you'll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, play with your children, catch a few fish, spend time with your wife, and spend your evenings drinking and playing the guitar with your friends!"

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Riddles and Impossible Question in Job Interview

During a job interview, did you ever encounter some of these riddles and weird questions: "How many gas stations are there in United States?", "How can you divide evenly 5 apples to 6 people without dividing any apple to 1/6, 1/8, etc?", or "How would you determine the weight of a Boeing 747?".

Those kind of questions seem like impossible to instantly answered and will caught the job-seeker off guard. People usually noted these kind of brain teasers as "Microsoft Job Interview 2.0" or "Google Interview Questions", as those two companies used it more than a decade ago. Now, much more companies apply those riddles since they think that everything Microsoft or Google done, it must be good right?

One thing to note, when asking those puzzles, interviewers don't expect the right answer, they prefer to see how someone will react and give "out-of-the-box" thinking. However, that doesn't mean that it's okay to give ridiculous and pointless solutions, instead employee need to give a logical answers, even though there's no "right" answers for the questions.

Take the How many gas stations are in the United States? question for example. The most common reaction by job-seeker is to come up with any numbers that they think is logic. A smarter person will give answer like "Well, the population of U.S. is about 250 million; half of them has at least one car, and one gas station should cover......". This probably won't bring you even closer to the actual number than if you're just guessing, but even the interviewer won't know the solution, he just want to know how you solving problems.

Then there's also this common bulb riddles: There is an enclosed room with 3 light bulbs. Outside that room are 3 switches. You need to find out which switch turns on which light bulb, but you can only enter the room once (there are no windows). How would you do it?

There will be some silly solutions occurred, such as turn the switch and watch the light from the keyhole. The others will answer with turn one switch on, one switch off, and one switch at half (assuming the light will dim), or even radically turn one switch on-off until the light is broken. How about if someone answer turn one switch for 10 minutes, one switch on, and one switch off (there you'll get one light on, one light off, and one light warm)? Will you hire him?

The point is, someone who only expect to get the "Why do you want this job?" and "Where do you see yourself in five years?" for job interview questions will found him/herself in hard time if the interviewer prefer the brain teaser type of questions.

The creative and "out-of-the-box" mind is a talent for some person, but not to the others. However, it's something that we can practice. That's why there are lots of puzzle, brain teaser, and hard riddles sites on the web, to help train people to open their mind.

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Weird Job: AV Idol

Weird and unique job section is about unusual works that people do for a living, and in this first post we'd like to talk about Japanese AV Idol. Adult video idol is a Japanese actress that work in pornography business. It doesn't mean that we try to inspire you to become a porn star, it's just that this is a very unique industry in Japan, and we'd like to give you a description of it.

Pornography in Japan

First, let's talk about how AV is a massive business in Japan. Did you know that the estimate number of population in Japan is over 120 million people? Meanwhile, U.S. population is almost three times of Japan. U.S. porn videos, who're known and watched worldwide, only release about 2500 titles a year. Amazingly, Japan release about 14000 titles in a year! The AV market was estimated to make up about 30 percent of Japan's video rentals.

Surprisingly, those numbers came up even though Japan have a very strict censorship law. To show the genital area of male and female is illegal there, thus the legal video has to apply a mosaic/blur in the "private" area of its actors and actresses. However, many producers still release the uncensored video, which is difficult to prosecuted as it's spread via internet.

Maria "Miyabi" Ozawa, probably the most recognized AV idol, not only in Japan,
but also worldwide.

Becoming AV Idol

Because of those facts above, no wonder that many young girls attempt to be an AV idol, because they know that they will be well-paid. Many women in many countries will be hesitated to appear nude and do sex scene with stranger in front of the camera for public consumption, no matter how high the salary is. This not apply for Japanese girls, as AV idol is a respectable profession there.

AV is often becoming a stepping stone for a girl who wants to be a mainstream actress. Many Japanese women who started their career as AV idols finally landed became a model or television soap opera actress. Uniquely, this also applies vice versa. In other words, being a porn star is not a bad resume that gonna hamper someone's chance to landed in other jobs.

Typically, young women start their AV career in their late teen, and only last for few years. Usually they made debut in their 18-20 and retired after two or three years. In this short career's span, an AV idol made around ¥200,000 - 4 million per video (around $US 2000 - 50,000). In an English language interview in 2011, AV idol Azusa Maki estimated that as many as 10,000 girls attempt to get into the Japanese AV industry each year.

Don't let Rinka Aiuchi innocent face fools you, she's a wild porn star all right.

Most of AV idols choose to "play by the rule", by appear only in legal videos. However, some of them choose the underground way, and playing in uncensored version. They usually the ones that struggle in the official business, or the ones who already in their retire time and decide to comeback. However, there are the rare few that decided to appear uncensored, even when they still on top of their career. Probably because of the fans request or higher contract offers. Among these are the infamous Maria "Miyabi" Ozawa and the cute Rinka Aiuchi.