Next month, that�s going to be me.

While we are in Austria, we are going to have a go in a real bobsled. It�s expensive, but it�s also a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and in a few years we won�t even miss the money anyway. You get taken down with a professional driver and brake man, the maximum speed is around 110km/h, and the track looks like this:

In a couple of places the walls are really high (for example, at the loop in the middle). This means that the bobsled will probably be halfway up the wall as we hurtle downwards on the two steel blades of the sled. My God. I can�t wait!

That�s the end of the entry. The following is an excessively lengthy response to a meme from clarity�s site (locked):

Please name 4/5 jobs you've had, ending with the job you have now. I don't want to know company/where/salary/how long, etc. I just want to know "what" you do.

I haven�t had many jobs. I was so shy* in high school that the idea of dealing with complete strangers every day was just unfathomable. I applied for one job, at a video store, but in the interview I didn�t know what to say, and I don�t think they were even hiring at the time. I didn�t get my first proper job until the year I started university. Sad, isn�t it?

* Fortunately this wore off, and now I have to be careful to register when it�s time for me to shut up.

So, jobs�

1/ Tutor: At the ripe old age of eleven, I was tutoring the kids of a friend of mum�s. They were younger than me and weren�t doing so well at school because they had trouble reading. They were nice kids though, and I was getting $20 a week from it � a nice little earner at that age.

2/ Packing boxes: Mum�s work needed twenty thousand videos packaged in a hurry. So mum and I went in together and stood there for six or eight hours a day, labelling videos and video cases and packing them into boxes. We got a real system happening (anyone out there studied management? The word �Therbligs� mean anything to you?), and we got quite unbelievably fast at it.

3/ Dance teacher: Hey, I can�t believe I nearly forgot about this one! I did it for years, too, teaching tap & jazz. I have qualifications to teach both, though I haven�t done it for a few years now. Anybody want to learn tap dancing?

4/ Paper-pusher: I worked night shifts at a transport company with a bunch of middle-aged ladies. My title was something like �data prep�. I got to look at consignment notes and sort them into piles and categorise them and check that the information and codes were correct, so that the data entry ladies would be able to do their job faster. I actually didn�t mind that job because the �girls� were fun to be around.

5/ Census officer: I worked for the Australian Bureau of Statistics during the 2000 census. My job involved walking from door to door in my allocated �zone� (or whatever) and talking to people. People had a couple of weeks to fill out their census forms, and the hardest part of my job was getting them all back. Some people had these kooky conspiracy theories about the Government wanting to spy on them, so they refused to fill their forms out. I wanted to grab them by their smug little shirtfronts and hiss, �well, I hope the newsagent refuses to sell your children any of those little information booklets next time they have a school project about cultural populations in Australia!� I saw so many front doors during those months, that one night my entire eight hours of sleep and dreaming consisted of still shots of various front doors. I�ve never been so bored in my sleep before.

6/ Call centre/customer service: (This is going to be a long one.) I worked for the University, taking calls and answering questions about courses, enrolment, alternative options etc. We got a lot of phone calls from the parents of kids who didn�t do so well in their HSC. I also got to log complaints. The job wasn�t that great, but the staff were awesome (we were all students getting high marks - it was a requirement of employment) and the pay was pretty good. We even had a quote book so that we could have a record of the funniest and stupidest questions people asked us (one guy rang us up and said this: �if it says in the book that the entrance mark to get into the course is 85, what mark do I need to get in?�)

There was also Edward. He had gone to school with the Big Manager of the place, but had suffered some sort of breakdown. He used to ring the call centre on a regular basis, asking us about accounting courses. He had such low self-esteem, such a pleading voice, and his conversations usually went along the lines of: �do you really think I can do it? I mean, do you really think I can do it?� �Yes, Edward, of course you can do it.� �I don�t want to go straight to University though. It might be too hard. I think I�ll go to TAFE first, and get a Diploma, and then I�ll apply for University. I have to take my medication too, I have to keep taking my medication. Yes, and I�ll do it part time, so it�s not too much for me. Do you believe me? Do you think I can do it?�

He needed to hear somebody confirm that he could do it. All you could do was tell him that you believed he could do it, and you could hear in his voice how much this meant to him. He needed it. Everybody knew that he never would apply, though. He rang us up for years with the same questions and the same claims that he was going to apply this year.

Towards the end of my employment there, we were told not to accept calls from Edward any more. He was wasting valuable customer service time. Our phone calls were actually timed, all our stats were recorded each week. But if Edward called, we were to say, �Edward, we�ve told you not to call any more,� to be firm and not to waste time talking to him. After all, we weren�t a counselling service. I never had the heart to do that though, and I think neither did some of the other people who worked there. He needed our time and some of us were still willing to give it.

7/ Designing mudflaps: Yes, that�s where I am now. My job is to make vector art so that the routing machine, which I also operate, can cut the die to make the mudflaps. I�ve had some doozies too. One that stands out was a complicated picture of what was essentially a portable toilet, but it took me a couple of days to do it. When I go overseas, General Manager will be doing part of my job (just the urgent stuff), so tomorrow I will be training him (well, giving him a crash course) in operating the programme I use. I hate telling people I design mudflaps for a living because they just give me this� look. But I�ll probably be here for a while yet. It�s easy, it pays pretty well, there are huge bonuses for all � twice a year � and they�re paying for my petrol and motorway fees every week. What is there not to love?

Anyway, I don't know whether to pleased or regretful that I have never been paid to clean a toilet in my life.