Laugh with me to the last degree to create the life you want.
Career
I used to be a Tupperware Demonstrator and I enjoyed it.
Aug 18th
Shock horror! Seriously if you ever wanted to start your own business join a party plan business just to get your feet wet. I have had friends become demonstrators for Tupperware, & Intimo and I have attended my fair share of jewellery, candle and linen parties.
Lessons Learnt being a Tupperware Demonstrator:
The benefits of joining these businesses are
- You already have a product (which hopefully you love so it is an easy sell).
- The administration is already organised.
- You learn new skills and Training is provided.
- Most have zero upfront starting fees.
- The marketing material is already provided.
- There is a support network and team with managers wanting you to do well.
- There is a rewards program (in addition to money there is usually free products, cars and trips overseas)
- You meet new people and make friends through customers and colleagues.
- It is a great second job if you work full time or are a mum. An extra $500 a week doing a party of two was fabulous.
- You work around your own commitments.
As my Tupperware Manager used to say, “It is your Business. You put in what you get out.”
With these benefits in mind I stayed with Tupperware for 3 years and I had a lot of fun. Of course there were the annoying customers and the dud parties where no one turned up.
I also had my fair share of trying moments:
- The night I went home after
- Brisbane Tupperware Sessions 2008
driving all the way to the Gold Coast and got a speeding fine (there went my earnings),
- The time I forgot a major ingredient in the 5 Minute microwave chocolate cake after it starting cooking (major flop)
- The night my Tupperware Manager and I demonstrated for a party of two guests, signed them up and then they vanished from all contact and never picked up their orders,
- The day I arrived an hour late because I got the time mixed up,
- The massive fundraiser we organised with the Royal Brisbane Hospital to raise money for Breast Cancer – Cups4Cups. It was a high-tea with guest speakers and demonstrators. However all that effort and marketing barely made a profit after the expenses,
- The time I went to a party, after emailing and confirming the date and time only to arrive and no one was home,
- And lastly the Party I did when only two hours before I found out I was pregnant.
Now I have three cupboards overflowing with Tupperware and a converted partner who takes his green sandwich keepers to work everyday.
The Amazing Race Xmas Style
Aug 9th
Last Friday a friend announced on facebook the launch of the Australian version of reality TV show, The Amazing Race. Applications are open for pairs of every day Aussies to work together competing against other teams in a race around the world. For fun, I downloaded the application forms and tested N to see if he would be interested. He is not so keen as who wants to have couples arguing on National TV (a lot of people apparently). Would we be a good couple to go on it? N is a good driver. Excellent driver so that is a bonus. Me; I am not too good with directions so I might let the co-pilot down.
One of the questions in the application form reads, “What is the weirdest thing about you?” I am stumped. What is weird, unusual, and odd about me? I can’t recall any unusual food or pastime cravings or fetishes. Maybe I am just un-interesting to go on TV. I do listen to Christmas carols all year round. Is that weird? Probably. But my arguement is if you ever feel a bit down just play a bit of Frosty the Snowman or Jingle Bell Rock and I am sure you will feel better. I suppose now I should announce my love of Christmas decorations. It started ten years ago when I worked in the Christmas department at Myers. When the internal job applications were opened to work as Santa’s Elf I jumped at the chance. At that time Christmas at Myers included the decorated Christmas cave, window and yearly themes. I attended Santa school where they trained all the Santa’s for the holidays. In Brisbane they had a city Christmas parade to launch the opening of the themed windows. Unfortunately I was not svelte enough for the ballerina costume and had to be content wearing the clown outfit handing out balloons.
Let’s just say Elf and Clown are no longer listed on my resume under Chlamydia expert.
Christmas 2009. Babies less than four weeks old. I promise never to dress them like this again.
Will keep you posted on our application.
The Stay at Home Dad
Aug 1st
N and I have been juggling with our roles over who was staying at home since we both went back to work. Enter now the stay at home dad. I was very lucky for the first few months we were both home. In the early blurry days when we come home from hospital it was the constant 24 hour monotonous four hourly feeding, changing and sleeping. We had routine where N would stay up late for the night feeds and I would be up at 2am for the morning feed. It was hard but we worked well together when we did not have to factor in anything else. Then the girls started sleeping through the night and then he went back to work. When the girls were four months I had to go back to work too. Since then it has been a juggle where the current weekly routine on the fridge reads
- Monday– N;
- Tuesday– daycare;
- Wednesday – babysitter;
- Thursday – Grammie;
- Friday – me.
Whew. A different carer everyday but its working ok. I enjoy my day with the girls and N and my mother enjoy theirs.
But now N’s job is not secure and so we have decided he will have a more permanent role as the stay at home dad. It is scary decision depending on one income but it makes sense as I have the higher income and secure employment. We are trying to reframe it as an opportunity. We can now save money by taking the girls out of day care. N can focus on starting his own mobile mechanic business from home. Work is flexible so I can come home around 3:30pm some days and do any extra work at night from home. So we have done the budget and there are some changes to be made. We probably will have to move somewhere cheaper but that is the trade off to have a parent at home. It might be temporary indefinite but some changes are going to be made. At the moment this is right for our family.
Are there any other stay at home dads out there? What tips can you offer to men thinking about tacking this role?
The story about Chlamydia
Jul 23rd
“You’re the only person in the world who has a folder on your computer hard drive titled Chlamydia,” my sister once said.
Now to get the story straight almost ten years ago I spent a year studying the molecular evidence of Chlamydia affecting our Koala population. It was my graduate science Honours degree and during the project I carried the scientific motivation and fascination for discovering something new although most of the year involved silently trying to spell Chlamydia correctly and pronouncing the species name C.trachomatis without embarrassment.
Now my results are not ground breaking (although I recently searched for my own publication and it has been cited a few times since – Whoopee fo
r bibliometrics) but I did discover and characterise novel uncultured Chlamydiales in Free-Range Koala Populations.
Although I no longer work in the laboratory, I have never been able to capture the same feeling of accomplishment as I did from that project.
What made this project different? Was it:
- The autonomy and problem solving,
- The opportunities to experiment with an idea,
- Having access to skilled and intelligent mentors,
- Strict deadlines which meant late night and weekends in the laboratory to try new experiments, theories and repeat results. Extra hours which for some reason I did not mind doing.
- The meticulous writing up of laboratory notes. Like a Vision diary creative expression is all in your laboratory books and lastly
- The satisfaction of having your results in print.
I often wonder if I should have continued with the curiosity that drives career scientists into a PhD and research. Instead I chose the commercial world. Today I wonder if I had continued on the research trajectory would I have been driven to discover something innovative and groundbreaking or even becoming an expert in my own niche of science and would it have been a more fulfilling career.
So what parts of that project I enjoyed most can I start to replicate again today?
On a final note, not to dampen my achievement in the paper “Molecular evidence for novel chlamydial infections in the koala (Devereaux etal Syst Appl Microbiol. 2003 Jun;26(2):245-53), can you see the different interpretation my father had as he would proudly report in public that his daughter “is named after new species of Chlamydia and had a publication to boot.”?
Seek Your Dream Career and Hit the Apply Button
Jul 21st
You spend most of your life at work so its best to find something you enjoy. Hence I am always interested to know how people got their dream job. Over the past fifteen years I have had jobs that helped me get through study, had the graduate jobs, and I have also been fired from a few (or in other words where I did not culturally fit).
Recently I was asked for my advice on how to get that DREAM JOB and this is my practise in action:
- Do an online career assessment. One of the best ones I have seen is based on the theme ‘Fish for your career’, this career test assesses your interest in over 170 occupations to determine the career and area of study that best suits you.
Find your ideal career with this popular online career assessment.
Take control of your career and put it into action every day.
Set up daily FREE email searches on Seek.com.au
This is how. Set up an account with seek.com.au (Australia’s no 1 job search engine or find equivalent overseas) and list all the dream job titles you want in the keywords. This strategy is not necessarily to apply for the jobs but to research and read the advertisements.
What it teaches you is:
- Where the jobs are (interstate, local, overseas etc).
- What is the demand for these jobs or skills? For an example is there a high need for people with these skills (represented by a lot of advertisements) or only a few?
- Are they permanent roles or cyclical, more casual and part-time or contract or consultancy preferred.
- What companies recruit these people? So you can do research on the companies, and even approach them for work experience? Get to know the companies! Especially for industry knowledge and competition in the market and if you ever meet people from these companies you will have something to talk about.
- What are the salary scales for junior entry to senior roles.
- Selection criteria! What do I need to do to get the skills required for these kinds of roles? And then integrate them into your career plan. If you are lacking in one key skill that a lot of advertisement ask for you know that is what you have to do so you can apply.
This is not a quick fix as it takes time to understand a particular job and industry market. I have been doing this for years since I worked in recruitment back in 2003.
Even though I have a good job now I still receive the Seek emails every day for keywords I am interested in like technology commercialisation and business development. It is always good to be up-to date in the market and know who is employing who. Keep your network up to date so you know where people leave jobs and where they are going too (i.e. Linked-in is good for that). It will take some time but worth the effort.
Laugh with me to the Last Degree
Jul 20th
I have always been an advocate for personal networking in my career and I have countless stories of the old adage, “It’s who you know not what you know” working new opportunities for me. My foray into online social media was first introduced with an ICQ account somewhere in the late 1990’s before the Live Messenger was launched. Then I joined Facebook over three years ago just for keeping in contact with my friends and kept it separate to Linked-In for networking with work colleagues. But it was only last week that when I started to research the relaunch of my blog did I open accounts with Twitter and Dig. That is only the start of it and now my head is spinning with information streaming through the social media networks. How does anyone keep track of it all?
To try to focus back onto my blog and provide something of value without getting distracted by the barrage of continual news, spam, jokes and interest. I signed up with hundreds of other bloggers to take part in the 31-Day ProBlogger and the SITS girls The Secret to Success is Support Build a Better Blog Challenge. Perhaps by connecting to this forum all the Helpful People in my Vision Board will come forward to help me develop and grow my blog?
I won’t post each task but yesterday was Day 1 and I am already late with my homework.
The task was to develop an elevator pitch for your blog. A pitch is not something new to me in my day job as I work with scientist and entrepreneurs who need to pitch their ideas daily to find funding and support. So I have had a brainstorm and come up with three. What do you think?
- Laugh with me to the last degree to create the life you want.
- Laugh with me to the last degree to realise your dreams today.
- Laugh with me to the last degree and see the law of attraction in action.
The theme being that no matter where you are in life, nothing can really stop you from realising your drea. I have chosen laugh as besides from the fact I am known for a distintive laugh but life is funny and I hope to always bring warmth and humour into my posts.
As mentioned in my earlier posts, this blog is a resurrection of an old blog titled Ski with me to the last degree to raise awareness for bipolar disorder when I was raising money and awareness for the Bipolar Expedition (hence the url The Last Degree). However as that chapter has closed I wanted to keep the blog and domain name and resurrect it into something new that was current in my life. In the eighteen months since my bipolar blog, I gave birth to twin girls and turned 30 but what has given me a framework and inspiration to my blog is a vision board and a growing list of all my hearts desires. This blog aims to capture that journey of the law of attraction in action.
The Bipolar Expedition Blog
Your Comments. Thanks for visiting.