I love following watches and Longines is a favourite mid-range timepiece that has sparked my interest. They are a solid timepiece, reasonably priced, have plenty of history and have plenty of support through a large distribution network.

I was looking to purchase a HydroConquest about two years back, I like the watch but I thought something was lacking, I stayed true to Longines and purchased a Conquest. Similar to the Conquest, the band with triple lock clasp is great. I like the dial more than the Conquest with the nine numeral added. But I knew in a year or two a ceramic bezel model would come on the market and I would be unhappy with the model I had. That time is now and had I purchased a HydroConquest then, I would be unhappy now.

Like the previous model, 41 mm stainless steel case has a screw-down case-back and screw-in crown maintaining the 300 metre water resistance rating. The crown guard is pretty distinctive for me as with most Longines sports watches. Like most high quality sports watches, the scratch resistant sapphire crystal has layers of anti-reflective coatings to reduce glare.

The L888 automatic movement is the ETA 2892-2 powerplant operating at 25,200 vibrations per hour with a respectable 64 power reserve. For me, the most distinctive feature is the new ceramic bezel, whilst a new feature for the HydroConquest range, it is welcomed. The ceramic bezel is highly scratch resistant, doesn’t lose its colour and is reasonably hard. Why Longines waited so long? I don’t know but I’m glad they have upgraded the HydroConquest and I like it.

The Apollo space program left us with an array of memorable photographs from their lunar missions. The difficulty is how to decide what was the best photograph of the program? Is it astronauts, rockets, the collection of space craft or the lunar surface?

For me, I find it hard to go past the Earthrise taken from Apollo 8 as the command module orbited the moon on Christmas eve of 1968. I wasn’t born yet so for me these achievements by NASA amaze me, I wasn’t able to follow these space flights during the height of the space race. Amazingly, no country or space agency has the capability to return people to the moon more than fourty years after Apollo 17 in December 1972 – that’s insane.

Apollo 8 was the second manned space flight of the program with Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot James Lovell and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders as the first manned spacecraft to leave low Earth orbit travelling into the gravity field of another celestial body. The command/service module made 10 orbits of the moon and was only the second Apollo mission to carry crew into space after the Apollo 7 mission just 2 months earlier.

These manned missions were to build to the lunar landing of Apollo 11 in July 1969 with Apollo 9 launched in March of 1969 and only a couple of months later Apollo 10 in May of the same year. What I find amazing is the rate that NASA was launching Apollo missions, I can only imagine the frantic activity at Cape Canaveral during this period. The space race was flat out, that’s for sure.

I viewed this unusual situation, I was waiting at a crosswalk and there was a number of people using a crosswalk. A woman was waiting in her car letting people cross when the guy behind her became aggressive driving around her stopped vehicle crossing onto the wrong side of the road to get through.

People had to get out of the way, he was accelerating through the crossing whilst people were still in the middle of the road. Had he have struck a pedestrian, he would be automatically guilty of a traffic violation. I would have hated to see a pedestrian in such circumstances, this was really a reckless act that had the potential to seriously injure a person. Naturally I’m glad this didn’t happen, people really need to think about the consequences of their actions.

The question of retirement in Australia has been made all the more difficult by the poor policy decisions of the Turnbull government to change superannuation strategy for the purpose of budget repair.

Let’s not forget that the idiotic policies of the Rudd and Gillard governments led us down this route of fiscal instability where budget repair is now required to return the budget to surplus and start paying back the mountain of debt now accumulated. In 11 years when I turn 60, will I be able to transition to retirement?

These idiots running currently running the country seeking both personal and political power over the best interests of the inhabitants had better start working together to ensure the working class are looked after – in other words, the taxpayer. Instead of targeting accumulations funds, let’s go after defined benefit funds, this is public servant superannuation funds – that should be popular. This is only a small segment of the population, but they have benefits far in excess of the general population.

Whilst we haven’t had a technical recession in 26 years, we have had a number of economic slowdowns resulting in plenty of personal economic difficulties. While this hasn’t destroyed the personal wealth of working class families wholesale, plenty of individuals are feeling economic stress and any chance of retiring early have been smashed. Will my personal transition to retirement run smoothly when I turn 60?

I am unsure and whilst my personal finances are currently reasonably robust, these constant changes in government policy to not lead to stability allowing individuals to plan for retirement and remove the burden from the publicly funded pension system. Naturally the political class have no such concerns, their generous taxpayer funded retirement packages are off limits.

The Baselworld Watch and Jewellery Show is the premium watch exhibition held in Basel Switzerland where the latest horological designs and upgrades to existing designs are on display. The new Omega Diver 300 will be available in boutiques in August 2018 – so I guess I won’t be seeing one in the flesh for a while.

For the 25th anniversary of the Seamaster Diver 300, Omega has updated their entry-level diver model, this is also the 70th anniversary of the Seamaster range so an upgrade was always on the cards. Sized slightly larger than previous Diver 300s with the 41 mm case, a larger 42 mm case houses a the METAS certified master chronometer co-axial Calibre 8800 automatic movement updating the 2500D movement.

The standard blue three hand timepiece reference 212.30.41.20.03.001 or black reference 212.30.41.20.01.003 has been expanded with a grey dial added but I can’t say I like the look of the grey dial. I would stick with the blue dial, as this is a Seamaster, the blue of the ocean is the likely choice, I do know there are black versions, that is to my tastes, but on this occasion, it doesn’t suit a Seamaster.

What I loved about the previous model is the dark blue lacquered dial on the 212.30.41.20.03.001 reference or jet black 212.30.41.20.01.003 reference, my choice is the blue. I don’t like the new laser etched wave dial, but that’s just me, I never liked the wave dial on earlier models either although they were pretty popular among watch enthusiasts.

I will admit I do like the laser etched wave dial on the black version, that is good. The Omega logo on the previous model really pops as it a separate piece, the new version appears to be painted on the dial and lacks the depth of older models. The Calibre 8800 is a great improvement, many argue the METAS certification is really an Omega internal certification and they have just renamed a series of tests but that’s not entirely true. The METAS labs are open to any manufacturer wishing to gain extra certification.

One expects the brands within the Swatch Group to be the main certification volume, I can’t really see competitors increasing costs by undertaking extra tests unless a solid marketing gain might be gained. Plenty of people like the new model, I am certainly impressed by the mechanical specifications but can’t get into the wave dial or the clunky helium escape valve. Despite my initial apprehension, I think the 2018 model will be popular with Omega customers.

Social media opens up the world, we have so many new people to communicate with but we all know the downside, the internet is the domain of trolls and wankers, Facebook is not the worst – that is Twitter.

What I really like about social media platforms such as Facebook is the ease that you are able to block these faceless trolls, bullies and imbeciles. When these people reply to your comments with these stupid flashing messages, angry faces or just dribble and/or a tirade you are able to put them out of your mind immediately never to bother you again.

What really makes me laugh is they never seen to post their own pic on their page, it is always a pic of a famous person, an absurd portrait of a deceased person, cartoon character or a sporting team logo. These gutless and faceless trolls might get under the skin of some people, once I am able to block their stupid comments, I am glad I never have to give then another thought.

I constantly ask myself employed as an advanced skills lecturer at a major training organisation, whom do we actually serve? I sincerely believe our focus must benefit our students and the organisations employing them as apprenticeships and traineeships are funded by business enterprises. A simple analysis, yet this is rarely the case with decisions mostly favouring individuals in the training organisations.

Then, secondly our actions predominately benefit the organisation with students, employers and the industry employing enterprises and individuals sadly lagging. Public organisations also employ apprentices and trainees, we must never forget where we receive our funding from and to whom our loyalties ultimately align.

During my business studies we explored strategic management and value adding activities. I really focused on core competence and the resource based view of the firm. As a state government employee, we receive funding at both a state and federal level and we as both an organisation and individuals must take our responsibilities seriously and make decisions based on the best interests of those we serve.

After all, we receive tax payer funds so our mission must be to realistically employ public funds in an efficient and responsible manner and to not purely serve ourselves. We have a duty to not only current taxpayers, but past and future taxpayers to increase productivity leading to advantageous outcomes for the state.

In many respects I still haven’t made the jump from the private sector to the public sector despite my twelve years of employment in the government. The culture is just so different because there is no culture to perform at a productive level. I am now surrounded by a bunch of people, many who have never worked in private enterprise believing they are businessmen and businesswomen, but maintain a public sector mentality of poor productivity and a failure to take responsibility.

We have a whole contingent of professional meeting attendees who fail to achieve any measurable outcomes from these meetings whatsoever. I call these government meetings; these are meetings with no agenda, no minutes, no implementation plan and no outcomes. We don’t even know who attended these meetings, what was discussed and most of the time they can’t even recall the date.

We have had discussions where I have been told we agreed on this, my question usually is, “was I there?” Needless to say, the minutes of the meeting are never distributed to any team members because there isn’t any. Ironically, registered training organisations offer a unit of competency in BSBADM502B Manage Meetings, this is a unit in the business administration curriculum designed to equip graduates with the skills to effectively manage meetings.

It goes without saying if I have to call a meeting, an agenda is published and minutes recorded but I do this on a personal level as per my private sector training. The implementation plan is recorded and during subsequent follow-up meetings, the implementation plan is reviewed and updated as required.

As part of our professional development requirements, all team members should undertake this unit of competency, there should be no recognition of prior learning with all candidates required to undertake the full learning and assessment package. Then the cost of unproductive meetings and the cost to the organisation might eventually be negated.

You would actually think that with all these meetings attended that they would become pretty good at this; but unfortunately this is the government – think again. Across the organisation, I would hate to actually calculate the cost of these unproductive meetings, as I believe that more than 80% of meeting time is wasted based on my observations.

Gone are the days where a scuba diver would strap the largest stainless steel knife to their lower leg before heading off into the water. It was a terrible location, if you got entangled then it was actually difficult to access and would frequently snag. I’m glad I relocated my dive knife early in my diving career.

These days dive knives have become smaller, sharper and manufactured from more exotic materials like titanium. So many options are now available to mount a knife to either your jacket, harness or low pressure inflator hose. The adaptor for the low pressure inflator is my choice of mounting point but it is not without its problems yet I consider it the best option. I do change regulators often and prefer my knife mounted on my jacket. Previously I had just used cable ties to secure the knife using the leg strap slots directly to the inflator hose attached to the BCD although these days I find it easier to just use the mount that accompanies the knife.

Diving in shops in South East Asia, it is now being reported to me that potential divers are walking in through the door with fake certification cards – I could hardly believe this story.

My first question is why? Why would you risk your life just to get out of taking an entry-level diver course? These days you pay your fee and then do the academic section online before heading into confined water to learn the skills required to become a safe diver and then reproducing those skills in an open water environment.

These days with online checks, all you do is give your name and date of birth and diver certification can be cross referenced. From what I am told, the fake certification cards are poor quality, the logo and are a give away and no diver number exists. That will no doubt change in the future as counterfeiting quality improves but unless they are able to hack dive certification agency records then an online cross reference will find them out.