Having made the early two and a half hour bus trip up from Iloilo City, I was ready for breakfast and to then set my equipment up for a couple of afternoon dives. I loved the hand built facilities, speaking to the resort manager who lives there with his family, I learned that he designed and built the whole resort himself.

The owner lives in Iloilo City and heads up to the resort for the weekends, this place is very much his personal weekend retreat. As I stayed at this resort during the week, I never met the owner in person but I am told by the resort manager this place is growing every year and expanding.

The kitchen is a provincial outside facility, you eat your meals under the cover of the awning and is especially brilliant in the afternoon as the sun sets over the water. As my stay was mid-week, I had the place to myself, this is pretty much standard in the Philippines in smaller dive resorts.

The locals come down to Antique to dive during the weekends and the facilities are very quiet during the week. I plan my Philippine dive holidays this way so I can avoid the crowds, The whole week, I dived only with the dive guide with an exception of one morning dive – not bad at all.

A bank security analyst had driven up from Iloilo City and had an afternoon appointment with the bank manager, he decided to have a dive before the meeting and I was pretty happy with that, I had someone else to chat to that morning apart from the divemaster. Who can complain about now diving in a group of two for the morning? At any rate, he would be gone in the afternoon and we would be back to our usual routine.

Some days the resort manager’s daughter would come for a ride out on the banca, she was super cute and very lively. I embarrassed myself by completely underestimating her age, I thought she was about six, I found out she was closer to eleven and I guess I didn’t make a friend there.

The meals were fantastic, the resort manager would come and he would ask me every day to agree on a menu for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The volume of food he and his wife cooked for me was embarrassing, there was no way I could eat this much food, it was not just the amount, the quality of these home cooked meals was exceptionally good – I loved eating here.

The construction of the resort was all his own work, he designed and hand built every building over the period of a decade. He was very proud of his work and I can see why, every opportunity he would show me something he had built and the way he constructed each building.

This was great as I was pretty interested how he went about building in the provinces with somewhat limited equipment and materials. What I do know is I will be returning to dive at The Dive House once again in the future.

Legendary currency speculator George Soros has raised the ire of the Chinese government citing the slowdown in Chinese economic activity and Yuan devaluation as the major factors in weighing down global markets. Soros is warning 2016 could be just as bad as 2008, a situation we never really recovered from.

According to Soros, the Chinese government is struggling to transition to a new growth model after spending up big on ghost cities and other building projects that are not currently adding to growth and GDP. It would now appear financiers on Wall Street and hedge fund managers are lining up to short sell the Chinese Yuan and one imagines the Hong Kong dollar as well, much to the chagrin to the Chinese government. So the question is, will Soros sell Chinese Yuan short to drive the price lower to reap a financial benefit?

The Make-a-Wish Foundation is a stunning organisation granting wishes for seriously sick children, I have supported them in the past and if they ever needed to highlight their great work, it was on display for all to see. One hopes this recent adventure with assistance from the New South Wales Police Service brings donations flooding in – I know I will be calling them up to get onboard again.

Sydney is gripped by fear as the evil Ultron and his henchmen have taken control of the city after kidnapping Make-a-Wish reporter Hope Joy. The New South Wales police commissioner has made a desperate plea for help sending out Polair to collect Domenic Pace, a seriously sick kid with cystic fibrosis to transform into a super hero, save Hope Joy and free Sydney from this terrible threat. Iron Boy needed full use of police resources including a police escort to the rigid hull inflatable boats to get to Clark island when Hope Joy was being held hostage before heading over to the Opera house to take on the ringleader himself.

The twin 2014 aircraft losses and subsequent loss of life tragically befallen on Malaysian Airlines and its passengers looked like it may bankrupt the airline. They have rebounded only to lurch to another disaster by not allowing checked-in baggage carried to Europe citing unseasonably strong headwinds on the routes.

Full fare airlines, already under increasing pressure from price conscious passengers patronising budget carriers are struggling. Malaysian Airlines was already a marginal business, this comes at the expense of a number of national airlines; this is a shame as I had always liked Malaysian Airlines service.

With passengers, corporate clients and staff abandoning the airline, where to from here? While Malaysian Airlines kept flying, it did so with empty planes for some time, no doubt they were carrying a fair amount of freight during that time to cover costs. Corporate level decision making, the failure to immediately fully inform the families of MH370 passengers what was happening and the fateful decision to allow the MH17 flight path over hostile territory when leading competitors had chosen alternate routes all points to systematic management failure.

What the management now can’t afford to do is allow empty aircraft to continuity take to the skies. They need to ditch uneconomical routes, scale back operations and concentrate only on profitable services, they need to contract and survive. Maybe it is time for the Malaysian government to liquidate their holdings forcing the airline into bankruptcy and allow budget airlines to fill the void. The other alternate is re-nationalise the airline – this is probably not the best option.

Perth is a hot city in summer; I like it, but plenty don’t – that’s unfortunate for them. Our recent run of hot weather has seen the issue discussed extensively but we all know February is the hottest month is the hottest month of the year – so why is this news? People were complaining about the heat on Sunday, I headed down to the Swan River for the afternoon with the gentle breeze coming off the water refreshing me, I spent the time with a book sitting on the grass in the shade; I brought my computer down to and worked on an educational paper.

The evening lows are pretty good too with mid 20s at night, but by the way the media is carrying on, it’s like we are the hottest place in the world. Perth is located on the south-west coast and usually protected from the extreme heat, the climate is Mediterranean with a fresh breeze usually floating across the Indian Ocean – this week it isn’t.

A series of high pressure systems are sitting in the Great Australian Bight forcing hot winds back over the west coast from the desert. The hot winds are cancelling out the sea breeze and temperatures are rising, I think about my friends in the northern hemisphere trapped in the the freezing conditions of ice and snow – give me the sun any day.

Chatting to well known dive author and Asia-Pacific technical diving pioneer Simon Pridmore about my first dives out of my open water course, I was surprised to find that my first two dives were to 22 metres. I had always remembered my first non-training dive lasted for a duration of 35 minutes and the second dive was 40 minutes. I was told during the course to breathe normally, I soon learned that was bad advice and I learned to skip breathe to increase my time under water.

Author of Scuba Confidential, Scuba Professional and co-author of the Diving and Snorkeling Guide to Bali, we were discussing training standards as I also thought the safety stops I did after these dives were decompression stops as I had never performed any safety stops on my training dives. This was poor practice, the instructor had the opportunity to instill in me an important safety aspect, fortunately, I picked this up later on, but it should have never happened this way.

Fortunately I was talked into undertaking an Advanced Open Water course directly after my entry-level course, I told my instructor I wanted to go out and gain some experience before undertaking a series of courses. I am glad I did as I had plenty to learn and I am a believer in experimental learning methodologies. I learned ascent rates, buoyancy control, dive computer use and finally stopped my carbon dioxide headaches after learning improved breathing techniques from fellow divers.

The Swan Bell Tower is now an iconic landmark on the Perth foreshore, once decried by the local newspaper, public opinion was shaped by newspaper editorial opinion based on political point scoring. Now enveloped in the Elizabeth Quay construction, the Bell Tower structure sits along side the artificial inlet of the development and will soon be dwarfed by the surrounding hi-rise structures that will line the inlet.

The Bell Tower is a stunning building, housing the Bells of St Martin in the Fields, donated by the City of London during Australia\’s bicentennial celebrations in 1988, the Bell Tower was a tourist attraction in its own right.

I am constantly told by supporters of the Australian Labor Party, the political party of trade unions that the Swan Bell Tower was a waste of taxpayer’s money. I always reply, at $5.5 million dollars, the Bell Tower was designed, built and opened on time and on budget and is still open. This is an unusual situation for a state government project, possibly because it may have been a non-union site with no strikes, work to rule, stoppages and union graft payments.

I always ask these same people what WA Inc cost Western Australia? $877 million of tax payer’s money was lost to money heaven. That could purchase a further 159 Bell Towers around the state, that is of course purely academic as WA Inc delivered absolutely no physical structures or outcomes. Just the Royal Commission inquiry into the workings WA Inc cost over 30 million dollars taking losses to over 900 million dollars. How many hospitals, schools and government programs could that finance?

Marissa Mayer was brought into Yahoo! to turn the fast failing internet business around; the monumental task requires Yahoo! to take on rivals Twitter, Google and Facebook to restore both market share and profitability.

Marissa, a former Google vice president defected to former rival Yahoo! after the business plunged to serious depths of despair; unfortunately, the business hasn’t performed since Mayer’s 2012 appointment. Yahoo! has three main divisions of search, mail and Tumblr and may soon be realigned into four divisions of news, sport, lifestyle and finance. Under Mayer, the business has engaged in high profile acquisitions that have failed to increase shareholder value.

The board is considering the sale of patents, real estate and a number of programs as earning decrease again. Jobs are at risk with 1600 or more employees shown the door with more probable job losses pending. The board is seeking strategic partnerships but one expects Amazon, Google, eBay, Facebook or Apple to launch a takeover and break the company up and sell the divisions individually in a move that might increase shareholder value.

The recent World Economic Forum in the alpine town of Davos Switzerland brings together political and business leaders to discuss contemporary economic issues. Lending glamour to the conference is movie star Leonardo DiCaprio who later met with the Pope to discuss issues with capitalism and environmental issues.

DiCaprio, who was reportedly paid $20 million for The Great Gatsby and $10 million for The Wolf of Wall Street; DiCaprio is blessed with a current net worth estimated between $220 – $245 million. The business of motion pictures has been pretty good to Leonardo; as they say, there is no business like show business.

Just as before when U2 frontman, Bono addressed the conference we all raised a smile. We have ultra rich rock stars avoiding tax in their own countries, then lecturing the world on the need for clamping down on corporate tax avoidance – whoa. The hypocrisy is startling, after being exposed for his own irregular tax affairs, that is tax avoidance in any other terms.

He is happy to espouse Ireland’s tax policies that, according to him have “brought our country the only prosperity we’ve known.” In essence, Ireland’s lax tax laws attract corporations seeking to reduce their tax and social burden. These corporations are predominately tech and pharmaceuticals avoid paying tax in the countries they earned that revenue.

I fully believe corporations have a social responsibility to enrich the communities from where they derive their wealth. Movie stars and rock stars should be addressing their finance managers and accountants on the details of their extensive tax avoidance schemes leaving the symbolic gestures alone. It is the middle class that pays the bulk of the tax, while they have large pay packets, they don’t represent us.

Whilst I have been known to criticise PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) on occasions; I must say, their system of instructor development is pretty much world class. Their instructor development system is educationally correct built on the foundations of adult learning theory applying adult learning principles to dive education.

Likewise, their printed training materials are not only educationally sound, they are of a high quality, their interactive learning resources are world class and visual presentations for the best part hit the mark. The PADI videos while attempting to meet the needs of visual learners do tend to be a bit cluttered and contain subliminal advertising reducing their effectiveness somewhat. Needless to say, the PADI learning materials are generally of a high standard in presentation and quality.

So, the learning materials are no issue, the focus now moves to the instructor learning process, this involves academic, confined water and open water teaching presentations. Initial instructor academic development is similar to standard diver development, that is, read the text book, answer the review questions and review the given answers. However, instructor course material then differs, teaching presentations then align to learning how to teach.

From here onwards; the instructor candidates focus on teaching practice, that is actual instruction, what they do not engage in is a review of teaching methodology, instructional design or alternate teaching methods. This is less of a case of independence and academic freedom and more a case of follow our system and you will be right. The course reviews the PADI range of dive courses from experience, entry-level, continuing education, specialty programs and entry-level (non-instructional).

Much of the focus of the instructor course then moves to the confined water and open water presentations and evaluations. This is the in-water portion of the program, these days the instructor development course has been reduced to 7 days, that is 4 days for the assistant instructor course and 3 days for the instructor development course, a far cry from the 14 day course I undertook back in 2001.

The instructor candidate is evaluated throughout the whole 7 days by the instructor trainer known as a Course Director before PADI themselves come out to independently assess the competence of the instructor candidate over the course of an evening and two days (usually a weekend). The evaluation begins on the first evening with a series of written tests that include physics, physiology, dive table use, dive programs and finally dive equipment. Then an open book standards test is administered to identify individual course standards in the instructor manual.

At the completion of the written examinations, the academic topics, confined water and open water tasks are handed out. Candidates must then go home and prepare two academic micro-teaching presentations, two confined water and two open water skills they must present. The next day sees all candidates in confined water teaching two diver skills with the other candidates as students.

The evaluator is in the water with the candidate and orders the instructor candidate and assistant to duck their heads below the water while problems are handed out to the students to encounter. The object is for the instructor candidate to solve the in-water problems, failure to do so will result in a fail, some students are instructed to perform the skills correctly, this mimics what occurs in a real world class.

The instructor development course has been shortened, this is a concern, especially for potential candidates with sometimes less than 100 dives, many candidates complete their 100 dive minimum during the course. In direct comparison to myself, I had over 750 dives before starting my instructor course.

Of that, I had over 250 dives before beginning my divemaster training so I had slightly over 500 working dives experience earned over two full seasons as a divemaster and assistant instructor. A classmate had over 2000 dives as an underwater guide, the other ten members of my course however barely met minimum levels, the actual dive skills were sadly lacking of most candidates.

As a former dive store owner, I employer a number of instructors straight out of their instructor examination – they were not job ready and much internal training was required, as a small centre, we didn’t have the resources to train instructors, I performed much of the in-house training myself. I recall my first scuba class and confined water sessions as an instructor, too slow and didn’t get schedule right.

These newly certified instructors were not ready to independently supervise and instruct dive students, I was then forced to act as an assistant to the instructor to directly supervise their class, this isn’t to just learn the shop procedures, this was a competency issue. No dive store owner I know would employ a newly certified dive instructor with 100 dives and expect them to teach a class effectively unsupervised.