Read the passage about dream jobs and choose A, B, C or D to answer each question.
Dream Jobs
During our teenage years, all the pupils at my school had to attend a meeting with a ‘career advisor’ who seemed to know only about jobs at the local shipyard. That was fine for some, but many of us would have liked to hear about a wider variety of opportunities at that time. If only she had known about the jobs I’ve been researching for this article! It seems there are positions out there that are almost too good to be true.
Take the job of ‘Ice Cream Flavour Consultant’ at the ice cream manufacturer Frederick’s for example. Imagine making and tasting ice cream for a living! From Frederick’s website, I learned that those in this role are all chefs and food scientists, and often go on what they call ‘taste hunts’ where they travel to other countries, trying new foods to get inspiration for new products. The website’s homepage also states that ‘every ingredient deserves consideration’, meaning anything from peanuts to potatoes could make it into the next flavour consultant’s invention. I guess the only downside to this job is probably having to taste failed creations.
Another job that sounds incredibly glamorous is the one for those who dream of living on a remote island. As the caretaker of a private island in the Maldives, Simon Grainger enjoys the fabulous weather, fishing, and boating as part of his work. However, he says that while it may sound more like an extended holiday than a job, the responsibilities can be demanding. These include maintaining and repairing the island owners’ property and cleaning up after storms. Plus, being alone on an island means that your social life suffers. Meeting friends requires an hour’s boat ride, which is never easy and sometimes impossible. Grainger warns anyone considering a job like his to be realistic about it. He says you have to be practical, physically fit, and happy in your own company. If you are this type of person, you’ll do well at the job and never want to go back to life on the mainland.
A fortune cookie is a crescent-shaped biscuit given away in Chinese restaurants, containing a small piece of paper with a message on it. Millions of these are read daily, but few know people actually get paid to write the words of wisdom you find when you crack your cookie open. Daisy Cheng, president of New Asian Food in Los Angeles, was one such person. It wasn’t exactly her chosen career path, but a role she took on by chance. When the company expanded and realized it needed to update the messages on the cookies, she was asked to do it because her English was better than other employees’. She found it difficult to start with, but soon she was finding inspiration everywhere, from subway signs to newspapers.
As a writer myself, I’d love to create messages for fortune cookies, but I’d also be delighted to do any other of these amazing jobs. Listen up career advisors!
(Adapted from Engexam.info)