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.

When I am overseas in South East Asia, one of my favourite bottles of cabernet sauvignon is Grant Burge; well, that is when I am in the Philippines anyway. The Benchmark shiraz is one of my favourites as well, from the Barossa valley in South Australia – pretty good stuff.

When you crack the seal on the bottle you are assured of a fairly decent cab sav, you have a certain degree of consistency, you should be reasonably relaxed with the quality you receive. The colour is deep red, from my experience the wine is aged a couple of years, the wine is not stashed away awaiting a special occasion. This is a full-bodied cab sav, a 2016 with blackberries and dark chocolate flavours with a bit of vanilla in the after-taste.

So, since I reported misconduct in the form of misappropriation of state government funds, I had made myself a target – fair enough. I drew plenty of attention to myself so there was plenty of interest in me and my actions – so be it.

One such request came from Directorate Services who informed me that since I had recently traveled interstate and I had failed to report my activities to the Directorate. I had five days after the event to lodge an activity report I was informed. This is great stuff, they had been following me on social media and caught wind that I was interstate.

I reported to them that I had indeed traveled interstate to Adelaide; however, my personal leave and interstate travel whilst interesting to them was well outside their control. I reviewed my trip, I was dressed in a Trent Nathan suit, Jeff Banks shoes, a Calvin Klein tie, Omega Seamaster timepiece and a tailor fit shirt.

I also let them know that if they wanted to follow my travels, my blog is the best method to keep up to date with my latest notifications. Funnily enough, they do, but since this blog is so diverse, they can’t claim it was created to discredit them. They knew this already as they were cyber stalking me, this is too funny, they thought they had me on a technicality.

What they don’t understand is that I thoroughly enjoy this level of attention, this was to be expected when I applied for whistleblower protection under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2003. I was just laughing at them now, my attitude was come after me if you want – make sure you bring your A game. They hadn’t before, so I didn’t expect them to this time, as always, they lived up to my low expectations.

Possibly another strategy is to accept that corruption and misappropriation of government funds was occurring on their watch and instead of targeting me, just work on cleaning their own operations up. This is what it is about, forget about trying to drag individuals down, just sort out the root cause of the problem.

I believe people should begin retirement planning young and start building their retirement savings from an early age. The problem in Australia is idiotic politicians keep messing with the system making forward thinkers and planners vulnerable to change – they make stupid short-term changes for long-term investments.

As a result of poorly conceived public policy that is neither stable nor consistent, people tend to not lock up funds in schemes that will be eroded in value when the next government changes the rules after a brain wave. Grandfathering rules don’t always apply so investors are forced to make long-term decisions based on short-term policy with ad hoc rules applied when political pressure is applied. Whilst tax incentives are involved, they have been scaled back significantly and losing importance.

I believe to maintain a standard of living one has become accustomed to, ten years of gross income is required for a comfortable retirement in one’s superannuation fund. You need to enjoy the early years of retirement and that means saving for the early years yourself and not relying on the age pension. So if a person is accustomed to a $100k per annum salary, you would expect $1 million in retirement savings. A basic breakdown would suggest a base $50k income would last 20 years, this would assume income and costs are balanced out.

As it turns out, superannuation funds are expensive to administer. Chatting to an advisor, he felt I should go for an aggressive investment strategy in the early years before becoming more conservative in the later part, I thought about it and will look into this strategy. Earnings in the early years would need to be aggressive to maintain the balance. Naturally inflation would need to be accounted for as a basic $50k income in the early years won’t be a great income in 20 years time.

This is why I prefer equities in my portfolio like so many others, you can draw dividends to live on without selling the equities. I am of the belief you need a million dollars in 2020 money to live a decent retirement. Some advisors would say otherwise but you need to ensure you have a sound back-up should another covid-19 or financial meltdown come along. That just gets a 50 year old to retirement day, you want to go at least 10 years – better to plan for 20 years.

Marina Bay is an excellent place to hang out; the Marina Bay Sands is an impressive hotel and shopping mall and casino. Whilst I am not interested in the casino, I do enjoy the entertainment precinct of Marina Bay Sands.

TWG Tea is located on the lower floor in the middle of the huge shopping mall. This is a pretty decent mall, nice restaurants and specialty shops. When I am transiting through Singapore for any more than 3 hours, I get out of the airport and into the city. So what do I like about TWG Tea at Marina Bay Sands? Well, looking from Marina Bay Sands hotel, I can see this is an interesting mall. I can wander over to the financial district, around Marina Bay, Boat Quay or Gardens by the Bay.

But first I stop at TWG Tea, this will include either breakfast or lunch, a cold red tea such as Eternal Summer Tea and just sit around for a while before strolling around Singapore. For me, I am just not in the mood for a hot tea, to be fair, I can do that at home, I certainly do not make a cold tea like they do. Not a bad morning before heading back to Changi Airport for an afternoon flight.

So when I look back travelling through Spain, where does my mind wander? I do like the south, then again, I am from Perth so some of these areas are similar, maybe I need to spend more time in the north of the country. I, like so many, have multiple options to choose from. The Mediterranean coast has so many options from Barcelona heading south through Valencia, Malaga, Marbella all the way through to Algeciras.

So I was wandering around the shopping centre and I always stop outside Mazzucchelli’s Jewellers and have a look at what they have on display. This is one of their smaller stores and doesn’t have a full range, this is my local shopping centre though where I do my grocery shopping so I always stop and peer through the glass.

I was looking for a Bauhaus design dress watch, one that slips under a long sleeve easily, a minimalist dial that is relatively slim. I was inspired by the Junghans Max Bill but they are next to impossible to purchase in Australia and this was the time of no international travel brought about by Covid-19. I wanted a leather strap and I knew I wouldn’t wear it often so I didn’t want a high priced piece. I like the Longines dress watch range, the Rolex Oyster Perpetual has an oyster bracelet, Nomos Glashütte or Jaeger LeCoultre are what I would choose given a decent budget but this is not really possible.

So, the Tissot Everytime Swissmatic would become a possibility, the bauhaus minimalist dial appealed to me so I wandered in the store. I did not have my reading glasses with me so when the saleswoman turned it over, I couldn’t really see the movement. I could see through the sapphire case back that the rotor was pretty much unfinished, I could see the bridge was black but that was about it. So when I returned home and began researching I found out the Swissmatic movement is somewhat of an unusual engineering feat.

This is a low priced automatic watch by an entry-level Swiss watchmaker so I was expecting a high-end piece. I did enquire if this was a Powermatic 80 movement and she was unable to answer my question, this wasn’t a concern as the Everytime has a RRP of $650 AUD and I was able to purchase for $553, a decent enough discount. The crown feels a little light-duty, mine doesn’t sit square and is worse when setting the time, even during hand-winding, the crown is misaligned on the stem.

The T1094071603100 from the T-Classic range is a 40 mm 316 stainless steel case with 30 metres of water resistance with an 11.6 mm thickness. The light silver dial has index markers with no numerals and a date window at the 3 o’clock position. Whilst this is a little large for a dress watch, it fits under my shirt sleeve. I do like the bauhaus design, the simple yet elegant dial design and long horns on the case fit my 8″ wrist well, it would be too large for a 6″ wrist, maybe even a 7″ wrist. .

The black leather strap is cow leather with a standard clasp, whilst more upmarket versions have the butterfly clasp, this entry-level timepiece has the standard pin/buckle clasp. That will do for the time being, my wrist is a little large and I have the clasp set at the second hole from the end, this isn’t really ideal. The Swissmatic is a throw away automatic movement, the whole movement is built by robotics and cannot be disassembled as the plates are soldered together. The black bridges I could see were actually plastic – amazing.

The movement has a 72 hour power reserve; that, I find amazing. The movement is built using not only an automated process, the movement was redesigned to just 51 parts that have been available in the Sistem51 manufactured by Swatch. No movement servicing required, that is actually very wasteful and doesn’t really align to contemporary sustainability values. The watchmaker just replaces the entire movement at service time so I am not even sure if the watch is worth servicing – time will tell. 

I was in Las Vegas and happened to wander in the Coca Cola shop on Las Vegas Boulevard, it is not a normal shop I would enter but I am glad I did. Looking around the store, I noticed clothes manufactured (in part) from recycled plastic bottles and this really took my interest.

I explained to the staff member on hand while snapping the photograph of the clothes for sale that I have a friend researching and writing a thesis on plastics in the ocean, I am pretty sure a corporate initiative like this would grab her attention. I have an upcoming university unit on Business ethics, globalisation and sustainability with this surely fitting into the sphere of corporate social responsibility.

Some research on the Coca Cola website found in 2007 they began producing the Drink2Wear fashion apparel manufactured partly from recycled plastic bottles and cotton. What they didn’t indicate on the website is the extent of the size of the program, what I do know is this a definitely a step in the right direction.

For the life of me, I don’t know why people rave about the iPad and the iPhone – they are horrible devices. I really don’t enjoy the iPad, but, to be fair, I probably don’t use the device to its full potential.

Give me a Samsung Android powered tablet any day, with open source software, you aren’t locked into specific apps. As far as I’m concerned, the battery life of the Apple products is superior but that is their only improved feature. So why do people love iPads? They were first and people got used to their product, I began with Android and I learned that system first. So sure, I am more conversant with Android – certainly. I don’t just follow trends, I do have one but really don’t like it.

I also took to learning the Apple product range, I now have an iPhone as my spare phone and an old iPad mini that was given to me. I do use the iPad and iPhone for travel, as I was given these products in the Philippines, they work well there with a new sim card. The iPhone is not my daily user so I am more proficient with Android products, but that is also by choice.

When I have been travelling around the Philippines, people automatically assume I am an American. I’m white, or Caucasian, in racial terms and I don’t really know how this relates to nationality.

My travels in the Philippines have seen me meet a whole host of American racial sub-groups from Hispanic, Asian and African backgrounds – they are all American. Being an American is a nationality, not every American is white, although to be fair, whites are around 60% of the population. I haven’t bothered to learn Tagalog, but it isn’t difficult to pick up the term Americano when people are chatting in local language. It works for me, why bother explaining to locals that I am from Australia if they don’t ask.

Let’s face it, most people don’t care either way and they clearly can’t pick an American, English, Australian or New Zealand accent. What is ironic for me, the average Filipino has more of an American accent than me – I am not even close. I enjoy my time in the Philippines, so I care little of the perception of nationality whilst I am there. I’m white, that’s pretty obvious What annoys me, I guess, is locals thinking I am paying with US dollars and not Australian dollars, that’s where a disparity exists.

The purchasing power of the Australian dollar is significantly less than the US dollar these days, at time of writing the New Zealand dollar didn’t fare too bad against the Australian dollar at 1.09 but that is still well short of the 0.76 of the purchasing power of the mighty USD. When I am negotiating prices with a currency of around three quarters of the value of American dollars, then this matter is important to me. Most people couldn’t pick the difference between a New Zealand and Australian accent, most in the region could distinguish a English accent either and I would mind paying in British pounds too.