For a major national airline, South African Airways offers a pretty crap service but this is well known, but for certain routes, we don\’t have many options until better options become available.

My flight was delayed from Perth International Airport, this happens at airports all around the world for a variety of reasons and is not the issue. However, on board the aircraft I notified cabin staff that this delay in departure needs to be forwarded to Air Katanga check-in staff so they can hold the aircraft for me.

The integrity of South African Airways is at risk here, their service is poor, everyone knows that – that is a given. There are not too many options available, if Qantas starts flying the Perth to Johannesburg route again then their monopoly is broken and their lousy service will not be accepted in a competitive environment.

I requested that as the flight is delayed, my information is forwarded to the check-in counter of my next flight. They assured me that this has already happened, I pointed out this is a company charter and still no issues they told me. Needless to say, this did not happen, they were dishonest in their dealings with me – in short, they lied.

I arrived at the check-in counter 2 minutes after the staff left, needless to say, they had not been contacted so I missed my flight. But in true South African Airways it gets better, they loaded the luggage on the wrong conveyer and these guys are in no rush to do anything. Had South African Airways lifted their game ever so slightly then this wouldn’t have been a problem. To say these guys move in slow motion is an understatement, they have no accountability whatsoever, it is not hard to work out why they are in financial difficulty.

So the project at Tenke Fungurume Mining (TFM) unraveled very quickly, the Chinese owners of the mine decided to demobilise all western expats and bring in cheap Chinese labour.

On international projects, government contracts and mining leases stipulate and expat to national ratio to train the national population to take over operations within a given timeframe. This is not what is occurring at TFM, the management is bringing in cheap (and largely unskilled labour) from China.

As Western expats, we are being moved out and replaced by cheap Chinese labour that has been found to be sub-standard. That happens, I can live with that as I possess a certain skill-set that makes me highly employable. However, the national workforce should be afraid – very afraid.

I place little respect in the Chinese management, they are generally low paid idiots that make embarrassingly poor decisions without any thought for consequences. However, one decision they made half right was to demobilise the expats in waves according to importance so the project didn’t stop altogether.

So that left me some time to contemplate employment options, I was to be demobilised in the final wave of retrenchments. I counted less than 10 Western (white) expats remaining on site on my return from offshore R&R rotation. So I used my time remaining to research and apply for positions, I was fortunate enough to be brought in for two interviews for a position in Botswana during my break. Whilst I never believe I have the job until the door is shut, armed and cross-checked and we have push-back.

They did mention positive steps such as a final telephone interview with the Project Manager and mailing official contract hard copy documents to the site I am currently employed. The HR recruiter asked if I could hang out a further 6 months on this project but I told her unlikely.

So, where do we go from here? Sitting at the departure area of Johannesburg OR Tambo International Airport waiting for my delayed SAA Express flight to Lumumbashi, I have no idea how long I have left. The initial hand-over from the contract maintenance team to an internalised model went well because of the expat planning and organisation.

That was a great experience for me, that required advanced planning, organising and project management skills. Now, in their rush to throw the Western expats out, the maintenance program isn’t as stable as they think. Now the component replacement program is 40% behind plan, machines will soon be running components to failure, production will soon decline.

There were four maintenance divisions headed by four experienced expats, now the want to join four divisions into two large divisions and place under the control of two inexperienced and newly appointed national Superintendents to save money. What a brilliant plan nobody said ever, let’s watch a $2.63 billion project be transformed into a $500 million project.

So now they are planning to restructure to save minor costs when major costs are looking to blow out of control. Not that this will worry me, I was well advanced in my negotiations for the Botswana project as this is the future and Tenke Fungurume Mining is soon to be the past. It looked like I needed to find a short-term position to keep me busy waiting for this role to eventuate until that position fell through and it was time to start looking for work again. Just when you think you are comfortable, everything changes and your plans are thrown into turmoil.

Should I go or should I stay? When a restructure is announced the decision is, do you get out early before the mass retrenchments or do you hang on for some form of financial package?

As a contractor, the best I could have envisioned is one months salary and no one was really sure what was going to happen. We were in the middle of a large change management program so even the inept incoming management could see we were required. That gave us some time, we knew we were going but no indications as to when, fortunately the HR Coordinator was an expat as well and kept us expats quietly informed. The change management program began to reach the minimum requirements that we set so they believed normalisation had occurred.

So now I am back on an international job, I am back working long rosters and 8/2 is a long enough roster. But it is an international job, life is good and I certainly have nothing to complain about. For those uninitiated in mining rosters, an 8/2 is 8 weeks on and 2 weeks off, even better, I travel in my time off-site. For this international travel, it takes me 27 hours to get home so I am pretty buggered when I walk through the door, the first couple of days were purely recovery – nothing else.

Some could argue all I am doing is sitting in a vehicle driving to the airport or sitting in the pressurised tube hurtling through the air at high speed. It is not hard labour but it is certainly time you don’t get back. Rosters change depending on projects, I was being sounded out for a project in Botswana that has a 6/3 roster. Two weeks less to offshore rotation and another week off, whilst we hadn’t discussed remuneration yet, I would expect it to be similar in pay and we have discussed retirement benefits that were not available on my current posting.

That is too far in the future, I need to concentrate on now, that is the current goal. Sure 8/2 is a tough roster but no roster is my biggest concern. Still, 2 months away from home is difficult, but if you enjoy not only the job but the people you work with then that 8 weeks goes fairly fast. You miss a lot during the two months you are away, then when you return you lose days of your break. You are tired, firstly from your 8 weeks of work, then there is the flights and the mandatory jet lag. When you are feeling better, it is time to jump back on that flight and do it all again.

So the job at Tenke Fungurume Mining (TFM) in the Democratic Republic of Congo unraveled very quickly. TFM as it is known was managed for a decade by FreeportMcRan, an American mining giant.

However, an ill-timed foray into oil and gas at the peak of the boom left the company laden with debt as oil prices dropped dramatically. The company was in dire financial distress and needed to off-load assets to survive, hence TFM was put on the market and sold to CMOC International, a Chinese company.

The first year went well, the project ran pretty much as it had under expat control and CMOC International remained a good corporate citizen by all accounts. There were however forces at play within the company as the communist party in China was a shareholder and sought to exert control over their shareholding.

We have all seen the events unfold in Hong Kong, the communist party is neither a good global citizen, as the world saw in Tiananmen Square, any form of dissonance is crushed without remorse. The communist Chinese government and their henchmen are pure evil – there is no doubt about that. We are seeing exactly the same intent with Chinese management at TFM, they are deplorable, they have no shame.

The management made a request to the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo to crush the artisan miners and troops were called in. People were displaced, their homes burnt down in what can only be described as human rights abuses in direct contravention of the United Nations resolutions.

The mine maintenance section was under-performing and a new leadership team has brought in to develop a world-class maintenance program. Collectively as a high-performing team, that is what we did but that didn’t last long as we internalised maintenance processes and were then retrenched once the handover took place and the maintenance stabalised.

The bush fires burning out of control in New South Wales are devastating, with more than 80 fires burning across the state. This is a national emergency with the army and army reserve called in and firefighters are working to exhaustion.

Adding to the distress is all sides of politics engaging in bullshit climate change finger-pointing political point scoring. People are dead, homes are being burnt down, native animals are dying with reports of over 350 koala deaths in the Port Macquarie fires and all types of animals lost.

Nobody with half a brain gives a fuck at this point, from what we are able to determine, some of these fires are deliberately lit and others are caused through carelessness. Seriously, there will be a time once the fires are out when families are clearing up burnt out shells of homes a proper and through analysis of the cause and origin of the fires can be undertaken by professionals.

I was reading an article on Bloomberg about how high net worth Asian families are deserting hedge funds en mass. Firstly, I had to do a little research to understand the difference between hedge funds and mutual funds as I wasn’t entirely sure.

So I discovered mutual funds differed to hedge fund insofar as hedge funds are pooled investments generally investing in security classes such as shares, bonds, infrastructure, short-term cash, fixed interest, derivatives and some venture capitalism using the equity provided by members. The fund keeps a percentage of the fund in cash, usually in the 6% to 10% range so as to meet any short-term outflows. Hedge funds also use pooled funds from members employing higher risk strategies for greater returns targeting sophisticated investors who are generally multi-millionaires or billionaires.

The fund requires accredited investors, in Australia they must meet certain requirements in terms of income, net assets and require a current certificate from a certified accountant under Chapter 6D or Chapter 7 if wholesale clients. In order to qualify for a sophisticated investor status, the individual must have an income exceeding $250,000 for the previous two years or hold $2.5 million in assets. Hedge funds tend to invest in venture capitalism, also derivatives including short-selling strategies, employ debt strategies involving leverage and carry much higher risk.

The Shipwreck Hunter is an excellent account of the personal adventures written by David L. Mearns describing the manner David located a number of high profile shipwrecks around the world.

Previously, I had just finished reading Eugene Cernan’s The Last Man on the Moon and whilst I thought it was a cracking read, I understood why a Saturn V rocket was required to launch three huge ego into space. Not so with David, for a guy why was at the top of his career for an extended period, I was amazed at how humble this guy is.

The book started out with his education in marine biology at Fairleigh Dickinson University and how he almost failed the first year only to get his act together through hard work and application at the in-house laboratory on the Caribbean island of St Croix in the US Virgin Islands. David attributes his improved grades in his second year to engaging in group study and was shown how to learn.

He then explains his failures applying to various universities until he managed to get a scholarship at the University of South Florida as a MSc student with the potential to pursue a PhD a year later. Although David began marine biology, he decided on studying marine geology instead as he thought this offered more seatime and employment opportunities.

This change in study area links to David’s opportunity to learn to use geophysical instruments and how he got his start using high-frequency towed side-scan sonar to map the ocean floor. David describes the university side-scan sonar he learnt on as one of the earliest commercially available units that was decrepit and requiring constant repair.

As an engineering tradesman, I believe in initially learning the trade on the old equipment to master the concepts before moving onto more modern and sophisticated equipment. For me, this is the foundation of any technical background because generally speaking, most modern equipment is based on a constant evolution of existing equipment and techniques.

The book then went on to describe a number of shipwrecks from the MV Derbyshire, the HMS Hood and KMS Bismarck, TSS Athenia, HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran, AHS Centaur and finally the Esmeralda. The wrecks he located describes the human side of the maritime tragedy and the effects on survivors and family members.

What I learned is that David undertook painstaking research to determine and narrow the search box well before the side-scan sonar was dropped in the water. He doesn’t just sail around the world’s oceans towing a sonar behind a vessel hoping to get lucky, David emphasises the research required to be successful in what I would expect to be a notoriously difficult field.

You just don’t get sick of sunsets like this, Moalboal is a great dive location during the day, the place is a little quiet as it is a small village on the south west coast of Cebu – you don’t mind when the sky lights up like this.

I haven’t travelled to Moalboal for a couple of years, that is a shame as the dives at Pescador Island were really fantastic. Moalboal is on the west coast of Cebu, it is only a small place and I don’t go far once I have finished diving. I don’t really like night dives, so sitting on my balcony looking at a moored banca, the dives are great and the evenings amazing.

Smokers only care about themselves and their filthy habit, they do not care about anyone close or in the general vicinity.

In Western Australia we have strong smoking laws and as a lifetime non-smoker, I am so thankful of the groups that lobbied parliament to ensure the laws were pushed through. I am so used to people not smoking around me now, when I am overseas it really comes as a shock to me having to breathe in someone else’s filthy air polluted by cigarette smoke.

This was driven home to me sitting having breakfast at the restaurant at the Jayakarta Hotel in Legian Bali. We were sitting eating when all I could smell was that putrid stench of cancer causing smoke drifting across from a nearby table. Seated next to us was a young family, the child, I am guessing around the three to four age range was eating her food as the smoke wafted across.

This individual surely must have known small children were surrounding him, but chose not to care, he is allowed to smoke here and bugger anyone else. A small child and her family, no issues, he is enacting his right to smoke in Indonesia as there was an ashtray on the table and his rights were more important than anyone else at breakfast.

This is exactly the reason anti-smoking laws are drafted, if smokers weren’t so arrogant and got up and stepped outside to smoke away from people then laws wouldn’t be required. It is exactly their arrogance that these laws were passed and they only have themselves to blame, forget about complaining that your rights have been stripped away – you caused it yourself.