Planet Grapes is fast becoming a favourite haunt of mine when I am staying in Mandaluyong. This is both a bar and restaurant serving good quality wine alongside top notch food – I really enjoy going there.

When I discussed some wine tasting and education they had advertised in their menu, the waiter pointed to the wine shop across the road on the other side of the shopping complex. I know this particular wine shop, they have premium wine for sale as I found out much to my surprise – the prices were outrageous. Fortunately, at Planet Grapes the wine pricing, whilst not cheap is significantly more reasonable than across the road. On my next trip across to the Philippines, Mecky and myself might engage in a little wine education that involves some tastings. You have to, after all, put theory into practice.

No, I don’t mean a sober divemaster, although that is sometimes required. I frequently dive in South East Asia, there, a divemaster is generally an underwater guide and spends their time in-water with the divers they lead.

At the other end of the spectrum, I worked on large charter boats where we would carry 40 or so passengers during the peak summer months; a smaller vessel I more frequently worked on had a capacity of 20 passengers. In such a case, a boat based divemaster is the most efficient utilisation of the position dealing with large groups of divers under their care.

Utilising a critical mass of people in high income economies, it is just not cost efficient to employ so many dive guides so a central dive organiser ensuring divers under your care are logged in, helped in and out of the water and logged back in again. Should they be required to enter the water, they can as well as providing search & rescue if required or emergency first aid. If the dive controller is undertaking a dive and such activities are required, then waiting for that person to return could be critical to getting the job done effectively – a dry divemaster is critical to achieving that goal.

We were discussing some issues at work during afternoon tea, the guys like to generally discuss issues related to science and other interesting phenomenon. So I brought up the beliefs of the Flat Earth Society just as a bit of a stir – just as a bit of a laugh. They informed me that some guy named Columbus had already proved those beliefs to be false so they didn’t believe there was such a group known as the Flat Earth Society, they couldn’t believe that people could be so stupid – fair call.

I initially thought Flat Earthers were doing exactly that, just causing a bit of a stir and seeking attention so I started looking into this more as a laugh – I really didn’t think they were serious. I first read about Flat Earthers when American rapper B.o.B started a GoFundMe page to launch multiple satellites into space to disprove centuries of science and related technology.

Now I must admit, the only rapper I knew of before this chap was Eminem, so I’m not well versed in the world of rappers. If I have the misfortune to hear someone doing this rap thing, I am concerned that my ears might start bleeding so I didn’t take this claim seriously. I didn’t actually know the name of this guy, I just thought he was some dumb arsed rapper seeking to promote his little known career with some controversy, this could still be the case.

The Earthrise photograph captured on Christmas eve 1968 from the Apollo 8 mission to orbit the moon shows the Earth suspended in space – amazing. Apollo 8 was just the second manned mission in the program and the first manned mission to leave the Earth’s orbit to reach the moon. The six day mission included 10 orbits of the moon before returning to Earth. Searching through NASA information gave me a bit of a surprise as the Apollo 8 back-up crew consisted of a couple of gentleman named Armstrong and Aldrin along with Fred Haise as lunar module pilot who later flew the Apollo 13 mission.

No doubt the Flat Earth Society will denounce the moon orbits and moon landings as fake so this stunning photograph will be dismissed as a hoax. We can seen the moon from Earth and we can view by eye that it is a sphere, the sun is also a ball of burning gasses and every other planet viewed through a telescope is spherical, Let’s not even get started on gravity or why the world’s oceans don’t pour off the edge of a flat Earth. I do believe in challenging beliefs, this is the reason why science has evolved and new knowledge gained – this isn’t doing that.

It’s been years since I have been to Tioman Island on the east coast of Malaysia. For Singaporeans, this is a weekend away from the city, as a diver this is a destination I like to visit. I reckon it has been about a decade since I have been to Tioman Island so another trip should be considered reasonably soon.

I have been lucky enough to visit Tioman Island twice, the first time in the mid 1990s and the second time about ten years later in the mid 2000s. The second visit was during the Easter break, we flew to Singapore from our dual destinations to meet up. From there we caught a bus to Mersing before catching a ferry to the island getting off at ABC Jetty, that was the fourth stop as I recall. Usually I am diving in South East Asia, on this occasion I intended to hire some dive equipment as I usually carry my own.

As this was the Easter break, the island was full of Singaporean divers on their dive break, I made the decision not to dive as I expected the dive boats to be full and the sites to be overwhelmed with divers. My dive holidays usually involve mid-week diving so I miss the crowds so on this occasion I decided to not dive and instead stay on the island and relax instead. Wandering down to ABC Jetty, better known as Ayer Batang in the evening was the best time, the sun was setting and the jetty was now mostly solitary, what a great evening.

What I like about the American psyche is their ability to engage in business enterprise with their entrepreneurial spirit. The United States now has a service based economy; you exclaim, that’s not exactly true, unfortunately the majority of their manufacturing base has been transferred overseas by CEOs seeking short term gain.

Design is still undertaken onshore, technology and innovation still rank highly. Manufacturing in the US is pretty much redundant these days, but not entirely; so much technology and capability has been exported overseas increasing the decline.This has been most western countries though, the forced technology transfer, copyright infringement and pilfering of trade secrets has seen western manufacturing in general decimated.

Americans are traditionally very strong at marketing and sales, this once again harps back to retail and services, the United States is very much a consumer driven economy. Financial services has been the growth industry, this has however been their undoing in many respects, this was the downfall. The purpose of finance is to raise capital to fund business activities, by sending manufacturing and the respective technology offshore, economic capability is inadvertently lost. Are we witnessing the decline of the United States as a manufacturing and economic powerhouse?

I don’t recall the first time I saw the KFC fake chicken hoax appear on social media, I guess it was about seven or eight years ago and I see this is still doing the rounds. I can’t say I’m a fan of KFC, what I don’t like is people pushing fake rumours that hurt not only KFC but also their suppliers and employees.

In Australia at least, KFC is supplied by both Steggles and Ingham, I am also informed Turi Foods also supplies chickens as well but I know less about this company. As Australians know, you purchase both Steggles and Ingham from the supermarket, so one could argue you are getting the same chickens as the supermarkets.

I didn’t know too much about Turi Foods so checking out their website I see they make a commitment to no steroids or hormones and also pledge to monitor suppliers for GM free products in their cereals and grains fed to the birds. Their chicken food includes wheat, barley, oats, sorghum and soy protein so one would believe the birds are reasonably fed and not the beakless and featherless mutants force fed nutrients via tubes the internet sharing community would have us believe.

They did get in trouble from the ACCC, that’s the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission as their suppliers claimed they were offering free range chickens to KFC where chickens are free to roam. The chickens were free to roam within the confines of a large air-conditioned barn with access to clean water and food but fell short of the definition required.

We all know Kentucky Fried Chicken changed their name to the abbreviated KFC, we all thought it was in response to health concerns with deep fried foods. This may be true but is also related to a strategic move to change their menu to offer more than purely chicken. Clearly they wanted to remove the term fried from their name, that is understandable and while I can’t say I’m a fan of their product, I can see why they want to expand and differentiate their product in a tight market.

I have been a little critical of the Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte over his style of governing, death squads, locking up of political critics and general demeanor.

I understand he is popular with the largely uneducated citizens hoping his tough talk and promises will pull them out of poverty – you can’t blame people for seeking a better life. However, I have to agree with him on the state of Boracay, the raw sewage pumped out to the nearby Bulabog Beach is just sickening.

Authorities have also dug up illegal underground raw sewage pipes pumping out effluent to their famous White Beach – it’s disgusting. So with Boracay set to reopen on the 26th of this month, one can only hope the notoriously corrupt government officials have been able to sort themselves out.

They need to stop the large resorts discharging human waste straight onto the beach where people swim, dive and relax. Let’s hope they have pulled their heads in and put the environment, people’s health and the sustainability of the island above their short-term profits – if not, they should be shut down for good.

Working as a Wall Street trader, Michael Bloomberg was successful in his own right as a general partner heading up equity trading at investment bank Salomon Brothers; a corporate buyout can be a real career killer and Bloomberg was offered a $10 million redundancy package in 1981 – not too bad at all. Using the funds from his payout, he took his intimate knowledge of Wall Street finance to develop a terminal system with features and screens dedicated purely to finance.

The terminal is not cheap, professional stockbrokers and investment firms have the revenue to justify such expenditures, all but the most successful investors have to seek other options placing independent investors at a disadvantage. The exorbitant price is not purely for the hardware, the terminal is loaded with real time information for traders to make buy/sell decisions in a multitude of markets for a multitude of products. Supporting the Bloomberg terminal, the Bloomberg finance is channel shown on cable television is an informative program designed for the finance professional but equally informative for novice investors.

I am recounting a story told to me by an acquaintance from the high school we both attended, I had spent some time with her post high school. As she was a couple of years younger than me at high school; I can’t ever recall knowing her at school but apparently she knew of me. I was pretty much biding my time at high school and wasn’t interested in the social aspects of the education system and I met her a number of years after leaving school.

World Skills is a pretty big trade-based competition, this allows apprentices to apply their diagnostic abilities in a skills based competition. The World Skills organisation operates at an international level with competitors participating at a regional competition to qualify for national selection with national winners heading to the international competition.

One of our apprentices who did very well in the last regional competition and headed off to the national competition acquitted himself well picking up a third place. His employer was pretty impressed gifting him a $10,000 toolbox and a significant pay rise – great news. This is really what World Skills is all about, he was offered a degree respect with financial inducements thrown in.

There are plenty of reasons to compete at World Skills, this is a learning experience, a great skill to add to the resume under achievements and there is the stress of competition and learning to perform under pressure. Now a second apprentice from from his company has qualified earning himself similar financial benefits and credibility. I am glad I am part of the World Skills competition as a judge and I really love seeing our apprentices succeed.