White sands, blue skies... and lots of books. Applications have opened for what might just be the best job in the world: running a bookshop on a luxury desert island in the Maldives.
Passionate lovers of books — who are also adventurous, outgoing, creative and don’t mind spending all day barefoot — are sought for the year-long contract, which starts in October and involves moving to live on the remote island of Kunfunadhoo in the Indian Ocean.
The bookselling takes place barefoot, because no shoes are allowed to be worn on the island. Reading a newspaper, even one as compelling as the Observer, would also be frowned upon.
Photo: AFP
“The ethos of the island is: no shoes, no news. They encourage guests to reconnect with the ground,” said Alex McQueen, spokesperson for Ultimate Library, which runs the bookshop with the Soneva Fushi resort, and provides bespoke library collections for hotels, resorts and private residences around the world.
Guests at the resort — usually high net worth individuals — are encouraged to switch off from the digital world and allow their “barefoot butlers” to attend to their needs.
McQueen said the island’s bookseller will need to be a self-starter who is happy to introduce themselves to guests and provide them with personalized book recommendations. The successful applicant will be solely responsible for the day-to-day running of the bookshop, including accounting and stock management.
Photo: AFP
“The applicant will be there on their own, so they’re pretty much running the whole thing themselves.”
For this reason, he is ideally looking for someone with bookselling or publishing experience.
Accommodation for one on the island is provided free of charge and all meals are free. There’s also a gym, access to a spa and watersports like diving, and staff have their own private beach.
Photo: AFP
The basic salary is US$750 a month but it is expected the bookseller will be able to earn extra “service fees” on top by, for example, offering book-related workshops or classes to guests.
Georgie Polhill, 27, who recently finished a six-month contract as a bookseller on the island, said one of the biggest challenges she faced as a “turbocharged Londoner” was getting used to the slow, relaxed pace of life on the island.
“If you tried to fight it too much and harry everyone on to get things done, you would absolutely burst a blood vessel,” she said, adding: “I came back a very different person. I learned an entirely new culture. I made friends that I will have for life.”
She had previously worked for a bookseller in London but will soon start a new career in theater.
This has meant adjusting to wearing shoes again — something which she said “definitely felt weird,” at first.
“I was so unused to wearing anything around my toes and my heels.”
Chris Findler says that the introduction of neural machine translation software has reduced the demand for human translators. “I am pessimistic about the future of traditional translation jobs,” says Findler, a lecturer of translation and interpretation at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). Online translators such as DeepL Translator, Yandex and Babylon offer accurate translations in dozens of languages, which means that a human translator may no longer be necessary for some jobs. Machine translation software’s growing influence is irreversible. Translation software can utilize artificial neural networks and large databases in order to accurately predict sequences of words and provide nuanced expressions
Among the Amis people around Chenggong Township (成功) in Taitung County there is a story of a place called Malaulau, ma being a prefix and laulau, meaning “withered.” In fact, that is the old name for Chenggong in Hoklo (more commonly known as Taiwanese): “Malaulau” (麻荖漏) is taken from the Amis word. What does that name refer to? In Amis oral histories, it is the place where a massive wave struck Chenggong, killing many people. The wave was quite localized and Amis communities to the north have no legends of that event. The east coast south of Yilan has good protection
It’s baking hot in New York, which can only mean one thing for the city’s small mammal population: it’s splooting season. This week, with temperatures reaching 35 degrees Celsius, the city’s parks department urged residents not to worry about the health of squirrels seen sprawling on the ground, legs extended behind them like a person whose arms gave out halfway through a yoga class. “On hot days, squirrels keep cool by splooting (stretching out) on cool surfaces to reduce body heat,” the department tweeted. Perhaps even more remarkable than the phenomenon itself was the word the government agency used. Splooting? Is that
When Zuo tested positive for COVID-19 while working as a cleaner in one of Shanghai’s largest quarantine centers, she hoped it wouldn’t be long before she could pick up the mop and start earning again. But four months on, she is still fighting to get her job back — one of scores of recovering COVID patients facing what labor rights activists and health experts say is a widespread form of discrimination in zero-COVID China. Using snap lockdowns and mass testing, China is the last major economy still pursuing the goal of stamping out the virus completely. Those who test positive, as well
RSS