I’m a diver not an aviator so I generally don’t go for the pilot’s timepiece. However, the Bremont ALT-1 P2 is a stunning example of why I may need to reassess my attitudes – this is a seriously beautiful timepiece.

The ALT-1 P2 with cream dial is fairly different to the classically styled aviator’s timepiece, you generally don’t see too many chronographs as aviator’s timepieces based on WWII specifications, upgraded versions are more complicated. I love the distressed leather strap on the ALT-1 P2, the strap contrasts the dial well. The 43 mm hardened stainless steel case is water resistant to 100 metres utilising Bremont’s Trip-Tick® construction. I had no idea what this was, so some research was in order as I had viewed this term on the Bremont page and was a little perplexed.

The three-piece case design is meant to be distinctive; the case consists of a bezel, case mid-section and case back. The case was designed to have an aerospace appearance with multiple axis CNC (computer numerical control) machining. The COSC certified movement has 27 jewels, from what I can gather the BE-53AE automatic chronometer is fitted with a glucydur balance, an anachron balance spring, a Nivaflex 1 mainspring that is a variation of the Valjoux 7750 chronograph – that’s a pretty heavy-duty base movement.

It was a Friday night and I wanted a decent warm weather wine, I like Riesling in summer and sitting out the back with my old man is a decent lead into the weekend. So we tried something a little different from what we normally have, this was my father’s choice and I am happy with his selection.

I like white wine dry, I like fruit but I don’t like sweet so a balance of fruit and dryness is important for me. I find Riesling is pretty acidic and it gives me nasty reflux, yet I don’t mind – dry is better than sweet. This Riesling is light pale straw in colour with a greenish hue. I am finding aromas of zesty lime and citrus flower, the palate has flavours of lime juice with mineral notes that develop with length to a finish that is crisp and fresh.

Power and politics, this is a chapter from an organisational behaviour textbook. An interesting concept, how power is gained, how influence is determined and how the political process within organisations affects power. Whilst power is very overt in many instances, certain positions possess high degrees of positional power that carry influence regardless of who holds the position. This is not the area that interests me, nor is how these people gain these positions as they are rarely awarded during a competitive process.

From my observations, these positions are offered to friends, hangers-on or done through favours and this includes sexual favours. Cronyism is a recurring theme that is mostly given to yes men and that doesn’t add any value to an organisation whatsoever. Soft power is exhibited through shoring up support, this is generally non-performers who owe their positions to a person holding and abusing positional power. Performing favours, calling in favours and bypassing merit selection principles is the domain of weak leaders exerting power in a government job.

I see plenty of kickstarter articles flash across my Facebook newsfeed with claims this start-up watch company is disrupting the $19 billion dollar luxury watch industry – what absolute bullshit.

Firstly, we need to define what is a luxury watch and what is a fashion watch. Let’s start with the fashion watch brand, the most notable trait is these watches are produced by the major fashion houses to round out their fashion accessory business with brands such as Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors and Daniel Wellington. There is nothing uniquely wrong with a fashion watch, many people revere and follow fashion trends, these timepieces are matched to current fashion trends with the fashion watch emergence in the 1980s.

Following on from the quartz revolution of the 1970s, the fashion watch era lead by Fossil, Guess and Swatch were less about the technical capabilities and more about ascetics. The branding was not about accuracy or innovation but original designs – some would argue outrageous design. I would argue that fashion watches are now less about original design as they tend to shamelessly rip-off the designs of luxury brands. The trend is now towards the watch wardrobe; that is matching the watch to the wardrobe with multiple watches required for casual or formal wear.

These tend to be relatively cheap in comparison to the luxury watch market as not too many people can afford a Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar for formal wear, a Rolex Explorer as a sports watch, an Omega Planet Ocean as their dive watch and a TAG Heuer Carrera for their motorsport activities. The fashion watch has again transformed with mechanical movements from ETA and Sellita now available to power the fashion watch brands complete with display casebacks and skeletonised dials.

The NATO strap appears to be de rigueur for not only some luxury brands but fashion brands as well with many trends taken from the luxury watch segment. No longer are fashion watches purely quartz movements although interestingly plenty of luxury watches are frequently powered by quartz movements.

A luxury watch brand will generally have serious heritage involved along with technical innovation. A brand such as TAG Heuer, founded in 1860, has been described by some as a fashion brand is incorrect even though TAG Heuer is now part of LVHM (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) along with Bvlgari (1884), Zenith (1885) and Chaumet (1780).

As a technical innovation, in 1916 Heuer designed and manufactured the Mikrograph, a chronograph capable of measuring time with a precision of 1/100th of a second. A Heuer stopwatch worn on the wrist of Astronaut John Glenn onboard Mercury spacecraft Frienship 7 in 1962 was the first Swiss timepiece in space.

The TAG Heuer Monaco and Carrera ensures the TAG Heuer brand will forever remain aligned to the luxury watch segment through their motor racing involvement. Despite manufacturing quartz powered timepieces such as the entry-level Formula 1 series. The Aquaracer is the mainstay of their professional dive watch collection rated to 300 metres.

There is the holy trinity of haute horology that includes the prestige brands of Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin. These really are the top end of watchmaking – I certainly appreciate their style. Just missing out on the group is Breguet, not because of any lack of technical innovation or style but because they were originally a Paris based French business before relocating to Le Locle in 1793 during a period of exile. This was due to Abraham-Louis Breguet being apparently in line for the guillotine during the French Revolution.

I don’t know the exact point in time I became a fan of Fermoy Estate, but once onboard – I am now a huge fan. A number of years back, they had this minty cabernet sauvignon, when chatting to the staff at the cellar door.

They kind of deny this, but then they say they have so many people talk to them about their old minty cabernet sauvignon, they are starting to believe it themselves. You read the tasting notes and you sometimes struggle to identify the nose and palate described on the notes; while we might not be trained like a winemaker.

We know what we like and as consumers are willing to pay a premium for a good product. So at the Perth Food and Wine Show I signed up to their wine club after a pretty good day of tasting and I’m pretty happy I did as every couple of months a new carton of wine arrives and I can reacquaint myself with this wonderful selection of wine.

What I learned in working back in private enterprise after working in the public sector for an extended period is the urgency to get the job done. The results driven approach requires action and I have learned to escalate, then escalate some more.

In my world of emails and meetings, an email chain with multiple recipients requires multiple headings where multiple tasks are explained so all involved know their task but the role of the others in the organisation. In order to achieve results, the position required organising people and resources, you couldn’t let a project fail by allowing the job to drift. You needed to ensure the people who were doing the work had all the resources required, their schedule and their objective.

For a large part, the job requirement is coordination of resources following the four defined principles of management through planning, leading, organising and controlling. The efficient use of resources allows the organisation to maintain high levels of employment and high salaries through the maintenance of efficiency gains. So when you need to support team members, the strategy is to escalate issues to get the task completed, your job is to support them and ensure they are well resourced.

Is the Assistant Instructor a relic of history? What roles are really available for the Assistant Instructor these days? If you work with a PADI Master Instructor, they can put you through an Assistant Instructor course, to many, it means you haven’t been to a PADI Instructor Development Course.

As an Assistant Instructor, you work under the direct supervision of a certified Instructor demonstrating confined water skills to entry-level students, indirectly conduct the academic presentations, in-directly assess surface skills or conduct non-diving specialty courses. The question is – but why? Well, to support course certification numbers, PADI allows Staff Instructors to certify Assistant Instructors. In fact, PADI wants their Staff Instructors to certify at least five Assistant Instructors to qualify for Master Instructor status.

The Assistant Instructor is a throwback to the military training days, there is no need to burn your hard earned cash on an Assistant Instructor Course – you won’t be making a living out of this certification. You get the feeling the Assistant Instructor is only really around for Staff Instructors to build their credits. The Assistant Instructor is really there to conduct academic presentations, they are not an Open Water Scuba Diving Instructor, so there is no unsupervised confined water or open water sessions.

The only exception is some dive resorts that have a Staff Instructor in the ranks, the Instructor will probably be looking to build their certification numbers and is willing to do a pretty good deal where you can actually run some of the courses, don’t part with money for the course though, just deal for it – everything is negotiable.

One thing I have noticed about developed countries and developing countries is personal discipline, organisation and the adherence to road rules. So I was pretty surprised when I was nearly run over on a cross walk in Perth as drivers are generally respectful to pedestrians. You feel confident stepping on a crosswalk that traffic will follow the road rules and road etiquette.

In their defence, when I was nearly run down on a crosswalk, neither the driver or passenger were actually watching the road. They were either deep in discussion or having a fight and neither were paying attention to what they were doing. I didn’t carry on much, I made sure I started at them as they flew past. They knew what had happened, it was a mistake so there was no need to say too much. It all happened too quickly, I had to jump out of the way and I spent my effort spinning out of the way.

My first automatic watch was a Citizen Promaster I purchased at Changi Airport on route to London. I had just picked up a job in Ghana and I didn’t want to use my TAG Heuer S/el on the job, so I decided to purchase a dive watch that I could bang around and not be too worried about it. The Citizen Promaster was the right watch at the right time for me.

So for around $200 AUD I had myself a pretty reasonable dive watch with a rubber strap firmly attached to my wrist. I still have this timepiece, although it is non-functioning at this point in time, it sits in my safe along with my other timepieces to one day cop a service to get it running again. What was interesting is that I now have a collection of automatic watches and I was surprised at how long the timepiece went before it required a service – or should I say how short the interval was. Still, I liked the timepiece and wore it non-stop for years.

What affects the life of the automatic timepiece is the quality and longevity of the lubrication. I get the feeling Citizen did not invest in premium grade lubrication. I will need to research with my local watchmaker and the lubricants they use for servicing. So my old Citizen Promaster sits in my safe on a metal bracelet in dire need of a service. I had previously taken it in to be serviced, but the prevailing view was forget about it. But now, a decade later, maybe it is time to get my old Promaster operational again.

The Rolex Explorer II is not an attractive timepiece, well not to my tastes anyway. That being said, a stainless steel sports watch is an attractive tool for the outdoors types so this unappreciated piece may be to their tastes.

Released in 1971,the Explorer II is a larger style watch at 42 mm, there is a choice of a white or black dial although I would prefer the white dial. The steel bezel is unusual considering ceramic bezels are now commonplace. Even entry-level watches from lesser manufacturers, in terms of prestige, feature a sapphire crystal and ceramic bezel. The stainless steel bezel is really a defining feature of the Explorer II so it is unlikely to change. The 24 hour bezel is aligned to an orange 24 hour third hand, the arrowhead of the GMT hand doesn’t really gell with the Mercedes hour hand.

It could be argued a tool watch doesn’t require a display caseback – that is fair. What Rolex does well is not follow trends so this is fair enough. At 42 mm, the case whilst not large compared to contemporary manufacturers is not large, but needs to be large enough to be legible in extreme conditions. The Calibe 3187 is a certified superlative chronometer, this has an accuracy of + 2 seconds per day so is a robust engine. A 48 hour power reserve really falls a little short these days when a 70 hour power reserve is now common among in-house movements.

A parachrom hairspring, paraflex shock absorbers and a Breguet overcoil sometimes known as a spiral Breguet. The balance spring design faults were solved by Abraham Louis Breguet who raised the springs final coil to reduce the curvature and maintain the concentric shape of the balance spring.

With a list price of $11,700 AUD, this is actually one of the less expensive options in the Rolex line-up. I was going to use the term cheaper, but the fear of being laughed out of town causes me to use the term less expensive. Naturally, it is all relative, a Rolex Explorer II is a GMT with a bezel I am not really sold on.

The Rolex Explorer II is a sports watch, this is standard Rolex territory and although this isn’t an aesthetically pleasing timepiece. It is water resistant to 100 metres without being a dive watch, the Explorer is promoted as more of a mountaineering timepiece with the Explorer II targeting speleologists, volcanologists and polar explorers.