A minimum of 9% of your salary is paid into a special retirement fund (think mutual fund) in addition to your salary. The program also allows you to built your super with your own contributions, which take advantage of super’s favourable tax treatment. Like a 401k, you choose the fund that the super money is paid into.

If like me, you are a temporary employee in Australia, you can claim the superfunds when you leave the country (minus some taxes). This benefit is HUGE. Sadly, I’ve read that many migrant works don’t know it can be claimed, so the funds are returned to the Australia Tax Office (ATO).

This allows anyone working in Australia to save 0% of their net wages and still have at least 9% of their total lifetime income waiting for them at retirement. Incredible.

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A journey can only begin with your decision to embark. – Michael Dell

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live. – Marcus Aurelius

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. —Oscar Wilde

Those who stand for nothing fall for anything. – Alexander Hamilton

Those with more talent require fewer props. – Hugh

Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened. – Dr. Seuss

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sail. Explore. Dream. Discover. – Mark Twain

It’s not about being treating like a superstar, it’s about being treated like part of the family. – Steve Lawler (DJ)

I work extremely hard doing what I love, mainly to ensure that I don’t have to work extremely hard doing what I hate. – Hugh

You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend or not. -Isabel Allende

Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light? – Maurice Freehill

Success is the culmination of failures, mistakes, false starts, confusion, and the determination to keep going anyway – Nick Gleason

Fashion is about clothes and their relationship to the moment. Style is about you and your relationship to yourself. Fashion is in the clothes. Style is in the wearer. The distinction could not be more revealing.

Style is, for starters, one part identity: self-awareness and self-knowledge. You can’t have style until you have articulated a self. And style requires security—feeling at home in one’s body, physically and mentally. Of course, like all knowledge, self-knowledge must be updated as you grow and evolve; style takes ongoing self-assessment.

“Clothes are separated from all other objects by being inseparable from the self,” Anne Hollander writes in her classic Seeing Through Clothes. “They give a visual aspect to consciousness itself.” Through clothes, we reinvent ourselves every time we get dressed. Our wardrobe is our visual vocabulary. Style is our distinctive pattern of speech, our individual poetry.

As the speed of all our transactions increases, we need fast ways of transmitting information about ourselves without losing authenticity

Style, on the other hand, doesn’t demand a credit card. It prospers on courage and creativity. Unlike fashion, style consumption isn’t promiscuous or random, at the whim of the marketplace or the urging of marketers. Rather, it is focused on what is personally suitable and expressive.

Style presumes that you are a person of interest, that the world is a place of interest, that life is worth making the effort for.

Sydney

• Manly Beach
• Taronga Zoo
• Aquarium
• Mardi Gras (Harbour, Mardi Gras Party,  Parade, Frisky, Love Muscle, Extra Dirty & Toy Box)

Cairns

• Cape Tribulation
• Daintree Rainforest
• Diving & snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef

Fraser Island Camping

• Maheno ship wreak
• Eli creek
• Indian head
• Lake mckenzie
• Lake boomanjin

Byron Bay

• Dinner @ Balcony
• Beach, beach and more beach

Gold Coast

• Prodigy concert
• Clubs & Dancing
• Sirromet Wine Tour
• Hotel party

Oh, he’s in finance so he must make good money, be good with numbers and…boring,  maybe even a bit nerdy. She’s a sculptor so she must be poor, but interesting and creative.  In reality, putting people in clear-cut boxes never seems to work.

My answer, “I’m in IT consulting” draws a combination of blank stares, yawns and incorrect assumptions. I’ve actually had people react by saying something to the effect of, “but you don’t look like you’re in IT”. Right. I’m intentionally vague because I used to be specific, but got tired of explaining my specialization.

Artists and other “creatives”  are often the first ones to dismiss my job as boring. Sure, I may not have this guys job, but my work offers several benefits that I’m thankful for (freedom and flexibility being two that immediately come to mind).

Next time someone asks me what I do, I’m going to politely tell them I’m an adult entertainer. End of conversation.