4 Cool Jobs

CHAPTER 1 What's the Right Job for You? MAYBE YOU HAVE A JOB OR MAYBE YOU ARE THINKING OF JOBS YOU CAN DO. HERE ARE SOME THINGS TO THINK ABOUT. Head or Hands? In some jobs you only think and speak and write. In other jobs you have to use your hands: you make things or make things work. In other jobs you design things on a computer. Here or There? Some people like to come home every night from work. Others enjoy traveling. They go to different countries and stay in hotels. But sometimes these people have to stay in difficult and dangerous places. Air, Sea, or Land? Do you like flying in a plane? Do you like to be in or on water? Do you like big cities, small towns, or the country? Do you like hot places like deserts, or cold places like snowy mountains? People work in all kinds of places. Safe or Dangerous? Many people go to work every day and they come home— safe. That's true, but not for all people. Some jobs are dangerous. Some people do these jobs because they have to. There are no other jobs for them. Other people like doing dangerous jobs.

CHAPTER 2 Head or Hands? SOME PEOPLE MAKE THINGS WITH THEIR HANDS; OTHERS USE THEIR HEADS. Ice Sculptor The city of Harbin is in China. In winter, it's very cold and people make things with ice and snow. Ma Yue comes from Harbin. He's a famous ice sculptor. But Ma Yue doesn't only work in Harbin. In 2010, people in Finland wanted to open an ice sculpture park, called Icium. Ma Yue took 60 ice sculptors there and they made a park. There are also ice parks in many other countries. In February, you can visit ice parks in Sapporo in Japan or in Quebec in Canada. In Quebec you can stay in an ice hotel. You can sleep on an ice bed, drink from an ice glass, and look out ice windows. It's all ice! Roller Coaster Designer Do you like roller coasters? Some people do, some don't. Kent Seko really likes them. Roller coasters are his job— he designs them. In 1989 he helped to design a big roller coaster in Ohio, USA. This was the first roller coaster in the world to go up 60 meters. Now the highest roller coasters in the world go up 139 meters. Not all roller coaster designers want to ride on their roller coasters, but Kent does. He really enjoys it. When one of his new roller coasters opens, he's the first person on it. He loves it, and he doesn't have to pay!

Make-up for the Dead Carrie Bayer is good with make-up, but she only works with dead people. "Some years ago," she said, "I went to a funeral. I looked at the dead woman's make-up and I thought, "I can do that better.' I was 33 years old, but I left my job. I went back to school and learned about make-up." And how does Carrie feel about the dead people? "I enjoy spending time with them, and getting to know them in a way. Also, I think I help their families at a difficult time." Robot Maker Amy Kukulya has a really great job. She works with underwater robots. She uses them to learn about the ocean. She works with a robot that is very fast and can tell her a lot of things about the ocean. When Amy was a child, she loved playing in boats and catching fish. And now she's often on the water. She never thinks it's boring. Every day is different. Sometimes she makes parts for robots in Massachusetts. Other times she goes to Hawaii and works underwater. All the time she's learning and asking questions.

CHAPTER 3 Playing Games DO YOU LIKE PLAYING COMPUTER GAMES? WOULD YOU LIKE TO WORK WITH THEM? Ryan Shwayder is a game designer. It can be an interesting job, but it isn't all fun. He has to work many hours and he doesn't make a very good salary. He has to play many games, but he doesn't enjoy all of the games. Also, he has to think about the games. Why is this one good and this one not so good? And he has to read many books about games. Another job with computer games is a game tester. Maybe you think it's a great job, but it's really not so easy. A game tester doesn't play a lot of different games every day. Game testers work on one game until it is ready for the factory. So they have to play again and again, and they have to find the problems. They have to talk to other game testers. Do you think it's a great job now? Some people work with games from home. They are called gold farmers. In some computer games, players can make money. This isn't real money, it's game money. They can use it to buy things in the game. Gold farmers play a computer game for many hours to make a lot of game money. But they don't spend their game money to buy things in shops. It's gold to them because other players, all over the world, buy the game money from them for US dollars! Then the other players spend it in the games they play.

CHAPTER 4 Jobs in Different Places DO YOU WANT TO TRAVEL TO INTERESTING PLACES? SKI IN A HOT COUNTRY, OR WORK IN A SUBMARINE? THEN READ ON. Location Scout Look at the picture. This is from the movie, World War Z. This part of the movie is in Philadelphia— but this isn't Philadelphia. It's Glasgow, in Scotland. The movie makers came to Glasgow and changed it into an American city. They changed the Scottish street signs for American ones. But why did they do this? Why not make the movie in Philadelphia? Because sometimes it's cheaper or easier to make a film in another place. Do you know this place? This is Hogwart's School in the Harry Potter films. Or is it? It's really Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, England. Location scouts travel all around the world to find good places for movies. Cruise Ship Waitress Gabriele Petrauskiené comes from Lithuania. Here she speaks about her job. "I'm a waitress on a cruise ship. It's hard work 70 hours a week. There are 1000 people on the ship and they eat a lot of food. I work six days and seven evenings a week. But I enjoy it because the ship goes to interesting places— the Caribbean, the Bahamas, Hawaii, and different parts of Europe. I visit nice places and see a lot of new things. On the ship we have parties, movies, and dance nights. Also, you can go to classes and learn lots of things, like new languages."

Cook on a submarine Australia has three cooks on some of its submarines. They work together in a very small kitchen and make three big meals a day for up to 58 people. They have to travel a lot, and they can be away from home for six months. Food is very important for people on a submarine because life there can be really boring. It's not an easy job, but it pays well. The cooks make a salary up to 200,000 Australian dollars a year— that's about $205,000. The only person on the submarine to make a bigger salary is the captain! Snowmaker Mark Simpson is a snowmaker. He works for Acer Snowmec in England. "We make places to ski inside," Mark says. "It really is snow it looks like snow and feels the same as snow in the Alps. And we can make many different kinds of snow." Mark goes to different countries, and sometimes he makes snow in the desert! "People from cold countries know about snow. But in a hot country, snow is something new. People don't know about it. It's interesting for the adults, but the children really love it."