The auxiliary power unit (APU) on a commercial airliner is mounted in the tail at the rear of the aircraft, this turbines runs when the aircraft is on the ground.

The purpose of the APU is to provide power for the aircraft running electrical systems and most importantly for passengers – the air conditioning system. This was made very clear to me on a series of flights when the APU had failed, sitting in the aircraft sweating away certainly made us aware of this. I was always aware of the APU but become more interested in its role after this problem. I had questions such as is the unit shut down during flight. What is the size of the unit? What power source is used to crank the turbine to start.

I am aware a start cart is sometimes used to crank the turbines with the power generated by the running turbine to crank the rest of the turbines. The running APU has enough power to crank the turbines without the need of a start cart so I was guessing heavy duty cabling runs from the APU to the turbines. From some research, I have found out the APU is small enough to be started via electrical means with the APU then providing a pneumatic start using an air bleed from the running APU to fire up the turbines. All in all, it is a fairly effective and cost efficient method to crank commercial jet airline turbines.

I never knew his first name, he was known at work as Ando, I don’t know who named him whether it was himself or someone else but I suspect it was him. I worked with a whole bunch of ex-army guys so he was just another one of the flogs I had to deal with on a daily basis in a toxic work environment.

Ando was a wanker, he caused a whole host of problems at work, a former army mechanic who would never stop talking about guns in the staff room. We were employed at a government college teaching trade based skills. There were complaints from students with him talking about guns in class and acting in a threatening manner. About the same time he was there a number of racial complaints were made, none before he was ever employed and none after he left.

He also threatened staff members, I helped him as a new starter but there wasn’t much point as he already knew everything according to his self-promoted views. So it was no surprise to anyone when he was found guilty of attempted murder by trying to shoot a guy. Pulling out one of his guns and chasing a motorist whilst hanging his gun out the window firing indiscriminately at the on the Eyre Highway in South Australia in July 2013 will certainly get you locked up. His .357 magnum named precious put holes in the fuel tank of the motorist, so he couldn’t argue he wasn’t aiming at the motorist.

Indigent to the end, everyone are fools, the motorist whom he described as a creep, the police, the magistrate are apparently all idiots. He thought this would all blow over and he would come back to work, our management were unwilling to fire him so should he got off on a technicality could have well done so. He received 14 years imprisonment for attempted murder so we won’t need to worry about him coming back for a few years yet. I am out of there too, sick of dealing with the flogs that we had to endure, I have a new lease on life back dealing with high performing teams and individuals.

Well, I am not a share trader anymore but I am a share investor; sure, I might gather better results as a trader and not an investor but I cannot complain. My returns, whilst modest beat inflation on a regular basis.

So, where does that leave me? Well, whenever I generate excess savings, I divert them to the sharemarket for investment purposes. Have I made mistakes? Well, yes, who hasn’t? Have I learnt lessons? Yes – plenty of those. I did previously engage in margin lending and trading, these days I am somewhat more conservative although I do direct funds towards growth shares. I just don’t step in and out of trades anymore, now I engage in a longer-term viewpoint.

What I am now doing is purchasing an income stream, I grow my investment through dividends. Every investment-level share I now purchase must offer not only a dividend, it needs to allow dividend reinvestment where I receive automatic shares. So now I don’t need to go to the market to purchase shares saving transaction fees and steadily increasing my holdings compounding my returns. Whilst a long-term view needs to be observed, I am happy with this strategy and can always trade again in the future.

In what was supposed to be the ultimate millennial putdown, the Ok Boomer comeback lacks original thought, is inarticulate and devoid of composure or wit. What really makes me laugh is the millennial generation use the Ok Boomer catchphrase without even putting much thought into a response. This may come as a shock to some millennials, not everyone who is older than them is a baby boomer – this may come as a surprise for some.

The baby boomer generation was born between the years of 1946 to 1964, before them were the veterans – described as the greatest generation. As a generation, they lived through a depression and fought in a world war and then rebuilt the ruins. Then there is Generation X who were born in the mid 60s through to the late 70s who received none of the benefits of the boomer generation yet never complained. They grew up in the cold war era, stagflation and aids epidemic generally missing on the free love of the 60s.

So if you are going to try and portray yourself as a smart and witty individual with a stunning yet simple comeback, how about coming up with some original material and humour me. We would love to see some actual application of dry and cutting wit delivered with comedic timing. Instead, all I see is a person unable to respond in any way, shape or form to any situation and having to rely in a robotic manner. It looks like that is all they have, they seem to lack the ability to think and respond constructively.

A Sunday afternoon in Manila saw a trip out from Ortigas to the Mall of Asia in the Manila Bay area. Wandering around the mall, we came across a dedicated Frederique Constant retail store so I marched straight in to enquire about their Horological Smartwatch. I wanted a hand’s on experience on how this smartwatch fared against the TAG Heuer Connected smartwatch. I like TAG Heuer as a brand and have made a number of enquiries regarding their Connected smartwatch so I wanted a look at what Frederique Constant had on offer.

The first thing you notice is the style, the Frederique Constant is an elegant timepiece and a genuine quartz watch complete with a standard watch face. I must admit I prefer mechanical timepieces but in this instances the quartz movement makes sense. The TAG Heuer Connected smartwatch is larger with a superimposed watch face screen on a digital display – not to my taste. My taste is the more elegant but less functional Horological Smartwatch over the Connected smartwatch.

As a comparison, the Frederique Constant is connected via bluetooth to a smartphone but I was having difficulty downloading the app so I wasn’t able to fully appreciate the functions of the smartwatch. So I went online to find what I could actually upload from the smartwatch and found it is pretty limited. This is an early version and I believe the idea is sound, this is a watch connected to a smartphone and not just a pure smartwatch.

Functions such as sleep patterns, heart-rate and step-o-meter are fairly limited for a smartwatch. So as much as I like the standard quartz watch design, the integrated printed circuit unfortunately has limited functionality. I think I’m not going to recommend the Frederique Constant smartwatch to any of my friends as the style of the watch is good but the functionality is lacking compared to a genuine smart watch.

What we may find out is future models may well indeed include enhanced options so I hope Frederique Constant sticks with this concept and builds on the existing architecture. This platform has plenty of upside – the concept is good. I would rather recommend a cheaper mechanical watch and a dedicated smartwatch for connectivity. I would tend to think this is the probable future of the quartz/smartwatch and as functionally improves will become more popular.

The latest incarnation of the Tissot heritage range is the Visodate based on the 1950s version of the timepiece. For my tastes, this is a pretty elegant timepiece that isn’t over complicated or over-powering.

I received my father’s old Omega Chronostop and had the movement replaced for him. He wouldn’t accept it after I had the watch repaired so I decided on the next best option, I purchased him an old style timepiece that would suit him. The Visodate with the silver dial is best suited to my tastes, the 40 mm diameter isn’t too large for a dress watch, the 11.6 mm thickness allows the watch to slip under a shirt sleeve. I think the older style logo really adds substance to the dial with the silver dial well suited to the brown leather strap.

The Visodate was based on an innovation connected to the date function of an automatic movement. The ETA 2836-2 automatic movement has a fairly standard power reserve of 38 hours. The sapphire crystal display case-back allows viewing of the automatic movement, naturally the domed dial crystal is sapphire. Generally speaking I don’t like the date function on watches, on this occasion I really love the day function as it adds to the dial. The indexes add simplicity to the dial allowing for the day/date windows to not over-power the dial along with minimal writing on the dial where some watch manufacturers seem to overdo it.

What we are seeing is the rise of conservative politics worldwide from the Donald Trump phenomenon, Boris Johnston returned to power after another Brexit failure and Scott Morrisson coming from behind to win the apparently un-winable election.

So, where does this leave socialist parties and their policies? Whilst there are differing opinions in some countries, currently the major industrial nations are following capitalist ideology. This will eventually swing with a return to socialist policies at some stage, but we are unsure when this will occur.

In an American presidency, there are two four year fixed terms, a president cannot call an election whenever they see fit. Nor can a president extend into a third term, their administration may remain in government with the vice president running. This was last seen by Republican president Ronald Reagan with two terms before Republican president George H.W. Bush administered a single term in office. George H.W. Bush was seen as a single term government; however, this was really a 12 year Republican government in office.

Whilst we are seeing a Trump impeachment, this appears to be a desperate move by the Democrats who believe they hold no hope in beating Trump outright. They believe an impeachment will leave a smear over the Trump presidency and deliver the Democrats power again after one term. What I would expect to see is Trump re-frame this feeble attempt to smear him and use this to reinvigorate his campaign. The socialist policies of Bill Shorten, Jeremy Corbyn and whoever wins the Democratic nomination look to fail again.

Well, it was all over very quickly, after just 8 months it unraveled like a train wreck. To be honest, I was glad to be out as the new management was anything but professional.

This was not new to Africa, Chinese interests were purchasing existing mining operations propped up by government funding without having the knowledge and skills to manage these operations. I can comprehend their base strategy of backward integration but you need to have a plan after buying in. They would terminate the existing management and workforce, spruik about their superior management skills whilst running the operation into the ground. They would then import low wage and low skilled workers in and totally bugger it up.

Even the managers were clueless, they had no idea apart from their own self-inflated ideals of superiority and would then blame every person and every failure on the mistakes of the former management. Cheap low-skilled workers generally exhibit minimal productivity, this was certainly the case at TFM.

At no stage did they ever take responsibility for their own actions, the blame culture inhibited any innovation whatsoever or free thought. But I’m ok, after the Chinese influx of workers, I was in no mood to stay, I had already begun to search for work and secured a position on an upcoming project – I just had to wait for the project kick-off later in the year.

The new management told premeditated lies and created distrust, teamwork and collaboration immediately evaporated – there was no incentive to perform. A culture of laziness abounded by a lack of leadership and accountability, the national workforce saw the lazy managers and staff immediately deciding to emulate their lack of effort and application.

Developing and sustaining a values driven culture was what made Tenke Fungurume Mining a valuable asset. The new Chinese management destroyed the corporate culture in a matter of months, terminated (without compensation) the contracts of the expats and begun demobilising efficient leaders and replacing them with low quality profit squanders.

Then they scratched their heads when productivity rapidly declined, costs soared despite undertaking an aggressive cost-cutting program and revenue and profits plummeted. How do I know all this? As the Maintenance Training Coordinator, I was developing the core competence of the maintenance workforce and I directly viewed the decline of machine availability.

But here is the best part, instead of searching for the brightest minds and most efficient workers they just imported more low-skilled workers from China displacing the highest performing national Congolese workers until the whole knowledge base was destroyed. It is difficult to operate a mechanised mine when all the machines are broken down and inoperable and that is exactly what happened. This is interesting to watch unfold, as we all transition to new employment, we are in contact with the nationals who remained and they are pretty unhappy how the new culture of undermining and distrust has arisen.

I had one, it was some time ago and if I recall correctly, it was purchased at a service station, probably on the way to the airport as I didn’t want to take my good watch on an underground project where I was contracted. I never used to wear it on my wrist, I had broken the strap and carried it in my top pocket, the Casio F-91W is a simple digital watch with few features. This was a cheap plastic wristwatch that sold well allowing Casio to build a reputation for well priced technology.

Maybe not the precursor to the G-Shock, the F-91W is a low cost timepiece that allowed branding at the entry level. Now seen as a classic, many watch collectors are seen wearing the F-91W as an anti-snobbery accessory. I really can’t believe these are collectible now. Whilst I won’t be following their lead with the P-91W, I do look for lower cost options to add to my collection. I do like the dual digital/analogue aerospace timepieces and may look there for inspiration or field watches.

Will we see a second term Trump presidency in 2020? That remains to be answered until later in the year, but as he is travelling at the moment – you would expect so. Joe Biden appears to be the front-runner for Democratic nomination, but I would love to see Bernie Sanders receive the nomination. I would love to say I was able to foresee the Donald Trump presidency emerge, but I just didn’t honestly see how he could win.

When he was successful, I was interested to see how he would fare. I never believed any of the slogans such as “drain the swamp” although I did expect him to be unorthodox. I am not American so I can’t vote in US elections, I do follow US policy insofar as as an investor, US policy and actions affect financial markets. Bernie is an old socialist and I would love to see some of his policies enacted, this would shake the US up a whole lot. I thought it was a mistake to run with the Hillary Clinton nomination, Donald Trump certainly had a field day with her.

For me, Bernie is an interesting prospect, the US might adapt some more social policies as opposed to their current trajectory. The US has wild variations in equality and I would love to see the US adapt social policies and look after its vulnerable citizens. I would love to see Bernie endorsed as the Democratic nominee, that would really shake the US up. Bernie is pretty old though, I think he missed his chance four years ago when Hillary was selected over Bernie. Elizabeth Warren might be popular but billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg could give Donald a real hard run.