As I mentioned a few weeks ago I’m updating the directory pages of the Overseas Job Centre. Currently I am working on the Sea & Sky section where we list useful links for finding cruise ship jobs, airline positions and where to find private yachts looking for crew.

I’m not ready to add new links to the directory yet – I’m just weeding out dud links and tidying up at the moment – but am adding a few of the interesting things I stumble across to our Facebook page.

Another option open to those of you wanting to find out more about working on board a cruise ship is to consider Wandering Earl’s ebook Work on a Cruise Ship.*

Earl, the inspiration behind our My Bad Travel Photo series, knows his stuff on this subject after five years spent working on board cruise ships himself, in the lucrative position of Tour Manager.

* Affiliate link

Image courtesy Sean MacEntee

I rarely remember dreams. The only one I can recall from childhood involved being in a series of underground tunnels. Wandering through the tunnels on my own I eventually came to a hole in the dried mud wall where I could observe my friends enjoying themselves together in another room but not breach the wall to join in myself.

My best interpretation of this dream is the obvious one: of feeling like an outsider.

I felt this again recently when the My 7 Links meme did the rounds. Despite thousands of other bloggers taking part I thought this had passed us by until Rosemarie John of Travel and Beyond kindly nominated us.

A year after most others had participated I was in two minds whether to write this post or not. In the end I decided to wait a while longer until our two year blogging anniversary was coming up when it would be a good excuse for a little reflection on some of our posts from the past.

My Most Beautiful Post
At first appearance Life in a Little Room in a Big World looks like a moan about living in grotty one room accommodation. The squished bug stains on the thin walls, leaky roof and unprivate bathroom paint a depressing picture. It’s not until the final paragraphs that the article reveals itself to be the uplifting piece I intended it to be.

My Most Popular Post
Though my experience of America is limited to eleven days of drunkenly falling out of hostel bunk beds, kitchen floor sex with strangers, and being followed into a toilet cubicle by two large dudes who didn’t like my (white) face in their bar, this researched piece on Travelling Across America on the Cheap regularly makes it to the top of our stats.

My Most Controversial Post
I took a lot of time before I hit send to make sure I got Expats, the Property Ladder and the London Riots pitch perfect. The British obsession with tying up investment in their homes vastly reduces the chance of today’s working class youth from gaining a stake in society and, though I didn’t want to absolve the rioters, I knew I was probably swimming against the tide on an emotive and still raw issue.

My Most Helpful Post
Though there is plenty of frivolous stuff, our whole website is essentially about helping people find a job abroad. But it is only rarely that we hear if anything we added to our sites has actually worked out for someone. In the case of Volunteer Work in Fairyland we have twice been contacted by readers that have made their way to Cappadocia to work in this cave hotel.

A Post Whose Success Surprised Me
We make an effort to make sure sponsored posts are genuinely useful to our readers. I still weep over the loss of all the perfectly good money turned down because I didn’t think the articles fit us well enough. Nonetheless I am frequently pleased with sponsored posts especially when, as with Travelling and Work Opportunities in Backpacker Hostels, a day off from writing, money towards something shiney or chocolatey and the post does well to boot.

A Post that didn’t get the Attention it Deserved
I thought people would bow to my genius when I adapted a famous The Frost Report sketch into a take on the snobbery of The Travel Class System: Location Independents, Backpackers & Cubicle Workers: but nobody did. Bastards.

The Post I am Most Proud of
I’m usually quite a nice person but when I lose it I don’t muck about and do so properly. I’m also quite a private person and Get in Touch With Your Inner Jerk: Keeping and Losing Your Cool on Your Travels was perhaps the first occasion where I moved away from writing purely informative articles and revealed something personal about myself. In this case I showed just how much of a cretin I can be on occasion.

So there you have it. I’m not going to nominate anyone to carry this on because surely there isn’t anyone left who hasn’t already participated. But if you haven’t done your 7 links and are feeling left out please consider this your invitation to pick up the ball and run with it.

Images courtesy Kevin Hutchinson, william_79 and mdanys

When our pension owner announced he regularly got in a circle with a load of his pals to chant ‘cak’ and walk across hot coals we were intrigued. Invited along, I naturally grabbed the camera and settled down to enjoy the show.

Tracing its roots from Sanghyang dedari, a traditional Balinese dance exorcism, Kecak is part of the religious expression of the Balinese adapted into an art form.

As the deep, rhythmic chanting commenced the movements of two archetypal Balinese girls told the story of a battle between a monkey army and an evil king. Their dancing also provided the visual stimulus loved by the lenses of great photographers and me. Later male performers worked themselves into a trance and walked across burning coals.

Even I could have got some good shots, right? Nope, I had forgotten to charge the camera. Though I did manage to coax five shots out of the dying battery the rush with which I took the shots combined with the low light ensured the usual blurred travesties with which readers of this column are familiar.

We have launched two new sites – Taking a Gap Year and Taking a Career Break.

For both sites we have selected a range of gap year programmes, career breaks and volunteer work projects to suit all budgets and interests. Keeping words to a minimum we have displayed our selections pictorially and included projects with wildlife and the environment, with people and communities and also suggest a variety of CV or life enhancing internships and courses to study.

This is just part of what we have been doing lately. Our oldest site the Overseas Job Centre has also had a long overdue overhaul. I had updated the design of the front page of this site a while ago but have finally done away with the old look on the content pages too.

There is now a certain uniformity throughout all of our static sites and the navigation doesn’t go a little screwy on mobile devices – which was our main motivation for the update in the first place.

The changes are not just superficial. All the articles have been updated and a lot of old content archived. There is still a lot of work that needs doing. I’m currently weeding dud links out of our directory and will finally be adding the new ones sent to us or collected over the past couple of years!

As I do this I’m jotting down Facebook pages and Twitter accounts worth following for finding jobs abroad and gap years. We may also link to the experiences of working travellers put up on Youtube and already have a lot more content from bloggers to add to our new Workers of the World and Bloggers Guides to Working Abroad sections.

As for our own social media efforts we are putting a lot of material and tips we find on our own Facebook page. Some of the columns we do here on The Working Traveller I feel can be done better in an abridged form on Facebook, or even Twitter.

Exploring thousands of websites as I currently am, now would be a very good time to Like us – whenever I see an organisation or employer state they are currently looking for staff I’ll add it to our fan page.

We also have a Pinterest account set up ready to explore, though it may be another month or so before I’m ready to add any boards.

Another task on my list is adding new NGOs to our Free or Cheap Volunteer Work site.

In total we now have six separate but united websites grouped together under the PAYAway banner. Each site serves a specific function and our intention is for The Working Traveller to serve as the blog for each of them.

I have been working on all this on and off for over a year. There were a lot of false starts and I wasn’t entirely sure what form our gap year sites would take. I didn’t want to duplicate the gap year material we had elsewhere.

One thing that has become clear is that The Working Traveller has been a bit of a time hog since we started in May 2010. This winter has been spent mostly indoors out of the cold and dark getting all these jobs done but with summer approaching I doubt I can or will want to keep up the same pace. The same goes for when we are travelling and without reliable connections.

It is only in the past couple of weeks when I’ve stopped posting every day – Monday to Friday – that work on the bigger picture has progressed at a satisfactory clip. Though we will still post at least a couple of times a week (one photo, one article), and sometimes more, I intend to keep this flexibility from now on.

This doesn’t mean we will be working less, just that the work will be more shared out across all our sites. We will also have time to develop new ideas and – who knows – even answer the odd email or two.

It’s not even summer yet but it is already time to start looking for ski jobs for the 2012/13 winter season in the Alps.

Though some companies won’t start recruiting for another a week or so many ski tour operators are already in full swing with their efforts to stock the mountains of middle Europe with British staff (or those with permission to work in the UK and a NI number).

As I mentioned last week I’m in the process of updating the links in the directory of the Overseas Job Centre. Today I’m on the ski resort jobs section and – about two thirds of the way through – have been adding links to our Facebook page to companies that have stated they are already recruiting for next winter. Give us a Like and start your job search there.

Elsewhere on the Overseas Job Centre we have a list of over 60 ski resort employers in the Alps that we invite you to look through to find your dream job in the snow.

Image courtesy of Weefz

Guest Post

Relocating to Benidorm? Or maybe you’re just looking to make a little extra money during your summer holiday? Whatever your reasons, the temperature is climbing and so is the competition. Grab some of these summer jobs in Benidorm before they’re all gone.

Server
Restaurants are always looking for good help, and with the right attitude and a little initiative, you can find a hosting or waitress job almost anywhere in Binidorm. Check the Levante area for the most restaurants per square mile, or Benidorm’s Old Town for local favorites and lots of culture.

Promoter
This is a great job for young people or those without a lot of traditional work experience. Local bars and clubs will pay you to promote their business – usually in the forms of signs and/or socializing – and you can usually score free drinks and admission, too.

Hotel Worker
Become the face of hospitality for the duration of the summer. If you’re confident with a phrasebook, check out Hotel Villa Del Mar, Servigroup Castilla, or the Maeva Residence; otherwise stick with familiar names like Best Western and Hotel Royal.

Translator
The official languages of Benidorm are Valencian and Spanish. It’s a major edge to your resume if you can speak either of them, but oftentimes English is enough is secure a casual translating job for local businesses and vendors.

Manual labor
Those festivals and fairs don’t set up themselves! If you have strong arms, offer them to local events and construction workers. The Las Hogueras de San Juan (The Bonfires of St. John) takes place in June, the St. James Festival in July. The Romeria del Corpus is a great opportunity if you have any experience with horses.

Domestic Helper
It may not be your ideal summer job, but it will pay for all those holiday expenses. Best of all, there are no language barriers or social hierarchies to complicate things – just grab a broom and get to work.

Cell centres
Have a good phone voice? Call centre and telemarketing jobs are ubiquitous among developed countries, and Benidorm is no exception. Radio is especially booming right now – sell ad space over the airwaves and take home commission as well as salary!

Customer Service
Entice customers at a Ticket Sales Kiosk. Take orders at Benidorm’s new Frozen Yogurt store. Operate rides at Terra Mítica, Benidorm’s biggest theme park.

Teaching English
This is more of a year-long commitment, but with a little searching you can find summer schools or even private students in need of English tutoring. It’s a booming business across Europe and Asia, so you should have no trouble finding this kind of work. Contact your local TEFL school for more info.

Tour guide
You’ll need a working knowledge of Benidorm and its attractions, but this is definitely the best summer job to have in Benidorm. It’s fun, it pays well, you’ll meet tons of new people, and best of all, it’s entirely seasonal – work while you’re there and then go home without any regrets.

Image courtesy JohnONolan