True leaders don’t want yes men; that is all great in theory but most of us have managers that are surrounded by hand picked yes men who will do anything to undermine high quality employees to bolster their position. 

How many of us work with true leaders instead of petty managers using their position to manipulate workers for their own means? Generally, such managers are weak leaders too frightened to employ top notch candidates who would be considered a threat to their shaky abilities. Instead, they surround themselves people of limited ability who remain loyal to that manager as they know they will not be likely to pick up a similar position in another company. 

You need to play these guys as hard as you can, they believe that you are weak and will not confront them directly. In military terms, a frontal attack is a poor choice, instead flanking and penetration tactics straight out of the German WWII military manual stand the test of time. You identify weak points and attack the weakness, they try to reinforce the weakness and then expose another flank, you move again as they try to defend that position. 

If you adapt such tactics for business, this ensures you counter-attack from a defensive position and not leave yourself exposed. The German military were not stupid enough to attack France by going over the Maginot Line; instead, they swung around through the poorly defended Belgium and attacked the flank at their weakest point in a Blitzkrieg maneuver. Well, you need to adapt the same tactics and use maneuver to your advantage. 

You need to build alliances to counter their unethical tactics and use game theory to determine your desired outcome and work backwards to counter their every move. That way you will have insights into the way they play the game and be ready to counter their now poorly and hastily planned defensive moves stifling any further offensive moves. Then you have them.

Flying Jetstar is a bit of a lottery, a short flight to Bali is usually uneventful even though flights can be delayed, I don’t mind as that it is a budget flight. As the trip is a short three and half hours, how uncomfortable can it be? You have to be careful, these budget carriers can be more expensive after all charges are considered so you need to take baggage and inflight food costs into account.

You don’t need a meal for such a short flight; no need for complimentary drinks, there are plenty of opportunities for that in Bali and you can load your own in-flight entertainment onto a tablet. For the return trip, I couldn’t believe my luck, apparently Jetstar had a number of maintenance issues and had to seconder Qantas aircraft. 

So I could view their in-flight entertainment and enjoy a glass of wine with my very basic meal; Jetstar was in a little trouble and it was Qantas to the rescue. I was told by friends that Jetstar tried to charge them for extra services; get your maintenance schedule right and you don’t have to provide upgraded services for no extra cost.

Fairfax Media is on a downward spiral, decreased revenue and journalists fired and moved on – this old style media empire is not adjusting well to the information age. The internet has taken most of the revenue that classified advertising earned through newspaper sales. Now unable to finance quality journalism; this is what we end up with – an inferior product.

What is now churned out of Fairfax could barely be described as journalism at times, unfortunately the journalists all left when they were given their marching orders and one presumes with decent redundancy packages. Along with The Guardian, Fairfax media has a strong left leaning, that in itself isn’t a problem as we require balanced reporting in an open press even if it is somewhat skewed and one dimensional. 

Otherwise, what we end up with is a biased press that is concentrated in the hands of a small number of proprietors with extensive influence. Unfortunately the fact is Fairfax’s clientele doesn’t wish to subscribe for articles and Google and Facebook is picking up the former revenue that the Fairfax group once collected – the fate of Fairfax is heading to game over.     

I can’t recall the number of discussions I’ve heard about teaching dive computers as opposed to teaching dive tables. I believe in teaching dive computer use to post entry-level divers; I don’t believe in overloading entry-level divers with knowledge development and motor skill exercises too early. The objective is to build knowledge, skills and attitudes known in the training field as KSAs in staged and carefully sequenced events to reinforce learning.

Firstly, I despise the term advanced diver for a person who has just completed their first four certification dives under instruction and then a further five dives under supervision for a total of nine dives to call themselves an advanced diver. What I do advocate is teaching dive computer use to level-two divers, this includes general computer operation, algorithms, basic decompression theory, multilevel dive planning, ascent rates, extended safety stops (including deep stops), gas usage and what to do if you end up in decompression.

You work hard to earn a living, you save your money and you become proficient in a specific activity only to be dudded when you go on holiday by lazy resort staff. It’s not right when you fly 12 hours with a further 4 hour combined bus trip, jeepney and trike ride to end up at your dive destination to be rewarded with a divemaster who sees this private charter as an opportunity to take it easy.

When you have a boat to yourself, albeit a small banca, you are paying for the boat crew and dive guide and none of the costs are shared. Needless to say, this really grates on me as a longtime client of the business. So where does this lead me? I three choices – I can complain, I can accept this and do nothing or I can never return to this business – I am currently contemplating the third option. I did complain and told my dive guide that I didn’t come all this way for 40 minute dives so he still ended up sitting in the boat after 40 minutes and I dived the final third of the dive by myself – outstanding.

I am a reasonably frequent international traveler who flies economy and not business class. What really irks me about economy is the inability of the airlines to police carry-on baggage limits. I arrive at my seat and all the overhead lockers are stuffed full of hand baggage, the fight for space slows down both boarding and exiting the aircraft.

Everybody knows the hand baggage limits and a large majority wantonly abuse the limits inconveniencing fellow flyers. Fortunately, my carry-on luggage is below the 7kg weight limit and well under-sized so I can stow under the foot rest of the seat in front of me. Really, it is up to the airlines to enforce these rules to ensure self-centred and arrogant passengers do not ruin the flight experience of fellow passengers who actually do the right thing. The airlines need to get together, this is currently being abused by way too many people.

It has been a clash I would have preferred to avoid but I had no choice, I could either quit my job, put up with the undermining and the snideness that had embroiled my work or fight the forces conspiring against me. Fortunately, I am up for the challenge and although it was a fight I could win, why not just negotiate in good faith to work through the issue? Ok, if you engage in deceptive, unethical and deliberately misleading behaviour then I have your measure.

I was forced to take my employer to the Industrial Magistrate’s Court to put an end to middle and senior management riding roughshod over me. These days they call it workplace bullying, it’s not a term I prefer but I can work within the guidelines of such terminology. I despise the term bullying, it makes you look weak; instead what I lacked was leverage. I am not weak, nor am I a push-over and I am not a person who gives in easily.

So after extensive research, failed attempts to organise a meeting to sort out the issue for I marched into the offices of the Industrial Relations Commission in Perth and proceeded to complete the necessary forms and file a complaint. For two years I had been intentionally denied the opportunity to apply for positions I was experienced in, qualified for and was already performing the role. Instead, the management had taken my work and claimed it as their own organising the very people I have worked with to do their dirty work for them, the mistake they made was to become greedy and paid themselves for work they had not performed – not a clever move in a state government department.

I bargained on a nasty fight and after two years of trying, I was finally allowed to meet with senior management to discuss why my employer was knowingly and willingly in breach of an employment agreement formally registered in the Industrial Relations Commission. I certainly had no fear of meeting with three directors for what turned out to be a meeting with no agenda, no minutes, a whole bunch of talk, no implementation plan and no outcomes. So just a normal meeting for these guys but what they didn’t expect was for me to put up such a strong showing,

I shot down every argument they made and left them bewildered, I brought my evidence with me and when they argued I just produced their own policies and correspondence. Even funnier, in the days after the meeting I sent them a whole load of material to ponder and they haven’t responded. Naturally I am keeping copies of the correspondence I have sent and this won’t look good in front of the magistrate.

What I didn’t know at the time of the meeting was that my employer had failed to respond to the court and I could apply for a default ruling in my favour. I had never considered this as I had contacted them via email to remind them of the date and even resent the forms they had lost so they could respond. Apparently they have treated the court with the same disrespect and disdain they have afforded me and now I just have to appear before the magistrate for the default decision. You can bet I will be there.

I have been to Lombok twice now; once on a day trip from Bali for a quick look and the second time to dive the Gili Islands. I reckon it was 1995 or maybe early 1996; so long ago now. I do recall the diving was pretty good, I had nothing but dramas though – all of my own doing.

It was so quiet and relaxed on Lombok back then, you could still get around by donkey and cart, that was my chosen mode of transport – slow but scenic. I can remember my driver whipping his donkey to go faster, I was trying to get him to stop, the last thing I wanted was to go fast. I stayed at Senggigi Beach, there was plenty of dive shops in the vicinity and an easy day trip ensured. The diving was good, the islands are well known for a certain blue coral, I was happy to indulge in searching. I recall plenty of small black tip and white tip sharks sheltering under plate corals, I bet they aren’t there anymore.

There are three Gili islands in the group, Gili Air, Gili Meno and Gili Tranwangan. They were a backpacker haunt back then, low cost, mostly undeveloped and reasonably pristine. So too with the diving, I recall we had speed boats powered by kerosene outboards – boy, did they run rough. We dived around the reefs of the islands, landing on the surface interval instead of spending it on the boat. There was less colour on the reef than I expected, plenty of shades of brown. I recall eating lunch on the island on most occasions, hanging with my new friends I met during the dive. It’s about time I organised another trip.

The Mares icon dive computer is a piece of rubbish. You are overcharged for a second-rate dive computer with a fancy screen offering little else. I owned the first series, the one before the gas transmitter was included and I regret purchasing it.

Ok, sure, I am annoyed that this expensive dive computer failed to live up to marketing hype. Well before the premature failure of my high priced dive computer that failed to deliver, I wasn’t happy with it. The fact was, it was an awful dive computer with a fancy screen and Mares wasn’t interested in offering warranty – they just wanted to sell me a new computer. 

The algorithm unduly penalises a diver who is diving less than an ultra-conservative profile, you have to be safe, we all understand that, you have to be realistic though. You purchase a dive computer and you start diving side-by-side with a diver until the decompression burden is too great so you ascend and miss a great portion of the dive – yeah right. The guy you are diving with maintains his depth, see some amazing sights while you are off-gassing in shallow waters – loser. I wont be replacing this useless wrist weight with another icon computer, I will not be purchasing another Mares dive computer ever again.

I first came across illy coffee in the late 90s while living in Turkey. The German clientele of the dive shop where I was employed would bring some tins out for the Turkish owner who had spent some time living in Berlin. He no doubt picked up the love of illy coffee whilst living in Germany, it was a good introduction for me, he was famous for not sharing though.

When I first tried to purchase illy coffee in Australia, I nearly passed out after what the importer was charging, naturally the retailers tried to pass the costs on to the consumer. I contacted the Australian distributor for information on retailers in my area that hopefully don’t gouge consumers – they never even bothered replying, such was their attitude of nonchalance.

Most cafes in Perth do not stock illy coffee, this is a shame as I am seeing plenty of illy coffee houses in South East Asia to support my coffee addiction. I love nothing more than to grab an espresso on the run of this flavoursome coffee blend.

These days I can purchase tins of illy at my local Woolworths and Coles supermarkets. Whilst double the price of other coffee brands, it is still the best option around and half the price of what David Jones was retailing illy for.