The US military started to number their fighter aircraft sequentially after the 100 interceptor designations were superseded; the F-14 Tomcat, F-15 Eagle, F-16 Falcon and F-18 Hornet filled a number of differing roles.

The F-17 never made it into production with the F-22 Raptor released as the fifth generation fighter jet, I wondered why the F-17 never made it into production. I am certainly no expert on the matter, I am just a little inquisitive – that’s all. Then there is the 19, 20 and 21 designation aircraft that also never reached the production phase either. The Northrop YF-17 prototype looks like a smaller version of the F-18 Hornet currently in service with a number of military around the world.

The aircraft was to supplement the navy F-14 interceptor/air superiority role. The aircraft had to fulfill the attack capacity that was then covered by the Vietnam era A-7 Corsair II and F-4 Phantom, these aircraft were to be phased out. To enable the aircraft to reach production, Northrop teamed up with McDonald Douglas to redesign the aircraft to operate on the flight decks of an aircraft carrier allowing the F/A-18 to enter service with the US Navy and air forces around the globe.

I was meeting a friend in Ortigas for lunch whilst she was at work and we headed off to Toby’s Estate, I was impressed. This was a great little cafe, this was a great place to hang for a few hours.

This is an excellent coffee house in an up and coming business district, this is a great place for lunch and not just a coffee. This place gets a little busy during the lunch time rush period, but you can never complain about a business that is pushing big numbers through and still looking after their customers. I had never heard of Toby’s Estate before and then I told this was an Australian chain of coffee houses. I thought they must be big on the East coast of Australia because I hadn’t seen any on the West coast until I wandered into the domestic terminal.

For a lot of these East coast businesses, they view the West coast as the wild west and they tend to display a little fear with expansion beyond the higher populated states New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria on the eastern seaboard. I thought it was an unusual growth strategy, normally a business pursues a domestic strategy before embarking on international growth but I’m pretty happy the have. So some research was in order, I can’t just rely on what I am told and I found out Toby’s Estate Coffee Roasters is a Brooklyn based chain – I’m glad I took the time to verify.

Is leadership the new business buzzword? I certainly see it overused and used out of context in the government sector, but what about private enterprise? This is where I actually see leadership applied in the workplace.

I am now getting to use my business skills learnt in university in the workplace. So ok, when you are in a leadership team, what does this really mean, what does this entail? Management was once the domain of getting work done through others, is this now leadership? I prefer a situational leadership model and without reciting the Hersey-Blanchard model too much, a directing, coaching, supporting and delegating range of situations is the most effective method based on both workplace conditions and personnel.

I certainly believe values plays a major factor in not only leadership decisions but the influence factor of leadership. Motivation is certainly a major sub-skill of the provision of leadership along with providing direction, this requires role model behaviour. So, as part of a leadership group we are supposed to achieve outcomes through others in a similar manner to what management was. To my way of thinking, management is concerned with measurement and leadership is getting the job done efficiently and effectively.

As a leadership group, our job is to implement the vision as defined by senior leadership. The role of the leadership group is not purely implementation, ideas are developed within the team and turned into policies that benefit the entire workforce. Yeah, I am happy to be a member of a high performance leadership team.

A number of years ago I went to a wine tasting evening arranged by my brother at his local wine store. They had invited the winemaker over from Witchmount to speak about shiraz in general and also tell us about his pretty decent version.

This was around the time Witchmount had become popular after winning the Syrah du Monde international wine competition held in France for the world’s best syrah. This is what we prefer to call shiraz and I prefer in its purest form, I never appreciated cab/shiraz blends or even worse shiraz/cabernet blends, a peppery shiraz is still my favourite.

Whilst it was the 2004 vintage that won the competition, I was able to get hold of the 2009 vintage. I was pretty happy, I was able to get a taste of what was considered the world’s best shiraz. I have to admit the French style is softer and far different to the Australian style so I tasted this vintage with a degree of trepidation.

Apparently, the black label denotes full bodied, although I feel this is a medium bodied wine and not full bodied as I am used to. That being said, I like to try new styles and a medium-bodied wine suits me some days, the judges know what is a good shiraz based on blind testing, now it is time for me to appreciate it.

So a trend I am seeing is the self-designated superior management term being thrown around by the incoming Chinese management at the mine I was working. Nothing could be further from the truth; inferior management, that is a more accurate term. I have never seen a major project unravel so quickly. This is by far, the worst management team I have ever seen in my life and I thought I saw dummies first hand in the government.

Their sole purpose is to get rid of the expat management team and replace them with mostly low paid and sub-standard Chinese workers. This 10 year old project was sold just over a year ago to Chinese interests who pretty much kept the workforce intact. Then, they decided to unload the very expats that made the 2.63 billion US dollar purchase price possible. The project is already unraveling, their poor decision-making is amazing to watch, they work to no plan let alone a strategic plan, they change their mind frequently and nobody, I mean nobody knows what is going on.

I sent a personal email to a former work colleague based on a discussion we had on the final day of my job. I explained that I respected his contribution, he had put in so much unpaid work for the strategic business unit to make it work.

My work email at my new job lit up, apparently he printed this email out and placed it on the lunch table for all to read. Based on the responses I received there was some anger attached but I actually care not even a bit. From what I was told, it was the same blow-hards, workplace bullies, non-performers, social climbers and yes men. They are not the sole reason that toxic workplace exists as it is a series of complicated social interactions but it forms a large part of the issue.

It is kind of fun to stir these morons up from my new job, what’s even better is I have been granted two years leave without pay so I can return at any time. Because of their embedded government mentality, they are angry, nasty and unable to leave this toxic workplace they created. So now I know he is printing out private correspondence I now have the ability to write with a little freedom and be a little poignant with my prose. I never mention names, they all think they all think it is them so I get some laughs.

The blow-hards think I don’t know it is being printed out and they all repeat parrot style their dislike of anyone who has the ability to break out of this cycle of bullying and intimidation. I’m out of this horrible workplace full of professional YouTube viewers, work shirkers and opinionated loud mouths. They have been employed way too long in the sheltered workshop of the government and adapted low productivity practices.

A large contingent watch YouTube videos all day in full view if everyone in the open plan office, there is no accountability and although everyone knows what is going on, there are no consequences for their actions. A large contingent have never held a job in private enterprise, some for just a brief period so they have never been under pressure to perform in free markets. I made sure I never adapted the government work ethic, I always kept my options open, for me, it was a seamless transition back to private enterprise.

Having grown up in Perth, my only experiences with snow involved throwing open the refrigerator door and peering into the freezer. Stage 2, flying over the Rocky Mountains from New York to Vancouver saw a positive sighting from a airplane window at 30,000 feet and then saw snow again over the Blue Mountains when flying from Sydney to Perth 4 weeks later.

That was until I headed up to the Jung Frau in Switzerland on the rack and pinion train, I walked out onto the snow from the station, slipped over and ended up with a wet backside. This was not the first experience I had envisioned, but your pants dry soon enough and you get on with it – this was an excellent day out.

Founded in 1933 by Italian Francesco Illy, this dark roast coffee is a favourite of mine since first introduced in Turkey by Germans, illy coffee is difficult for me to source in cafes in Perth, this is not like Italy or Germany where I can walking into a cafe at random for a illy coffee. illy produces only one blend made from Arabica beans from different parts of the world. This blend is available in three varieties – decaffeinated, normal roast and dark roast. As a matter of course, illy coffee has been steadfast in its adherence to the highest quality standards.

Coffee experts from the company visit different parts of the world to personally select the best Arabica varieties and prepare the unique illy blend. The processing of beans is done under highly controlled conditions. In the 1980s, illy coffee stopped buying green coffee from global commodity markets. The company buys directly from the producers and has exclusive deals for Arabica coffee from Brazil, Colombia, India, Africa and other countries in Central America.

This practice brings two advantages – firstly, 100 percent assurance on quality and secondly, the cost benefits. Ground illy coffee is pressurised using insert gas instead of air. In fact, the technology of using inert gas in an automatic coffee machine was perfected and implemented for the first time by Francesco Illy. The technology he used was the predecessor of the modern espresso machines. In order to preserve the precise flavours of each type of coffee, illy coffee company uses steel canisters are used for packaging.

So, I stacked my mountain bike in the Democratic Republic of Congo and snapped the rotator ball from my right arm, there was no choice, I needed surgery.

My employer was willing to fly me home to Perth from South Africa, that wasn’t a great option from my perspective so I declined. The public hospital system in South Africa is a little iffy according to all reports, the private sector is apparently world class. So, with my company based private sector insurance, I headed off to a private hospital in Sandton and I can attest, it was a world class facility. After my initial examination, then waiting for the insurance claim, I was wheeled straight into surgery.

After the insurance claim cleared, the surgeon walked back into his office in his scrubs and it was on. They wheeled me into surgery within an hour of the claim and it was on, even better, I was given a private room as I came from the Congo and they were worried about everything from ebola and malaria to hepatitis. So I came around and receiving a little lip from my nurses, I had a morphine drip and wasn’t using it, they would come in the room, push the plunger repeatedly and then tell me all about it. That was ok,  I didn’t need it but I appreciated their concern.

So recovery was interesting, I had to wait to be discharged from the hospital, that took way longer than I requested and I missed my return flight to the Congo. I was put up in a very nice hotel in Sandton, the hotel where the senior managers stay, that made recovery a little easier. It is interesting when even the South Africans refer to the Congo as the jungle, I was enjoying my time even if mountain biking was no longer an option for the next few months. But hey, it got me a better hospital room and hotel room so no complaints.

When you travel through most European countries, well Western European countries at least, I am amazed at the courtesy shown by both motorists and bike riders to pedestrians at crosswalks.

It took me nearly two weeks to get used to, when you come to a crosswalk all traffic stops. Even if the crosswalk light is just turning green and you are not at the crosswalk yet, motorists still wait. I would come to a crosswalk and hesitate because I wasn’t sure if the motorist would stop. After a while, I finally became confident enough to step out before I had seen the vehicle pull to a halt. After following the lead of other pedestrians I would hesitantly step onto the road. No vehicles tried to sneak through and wiz past you. Even push bike riders would stop, it was fantastic and totally different attitude to pedestrians to what I am used to.