I can’t say I am a huge James Blunt fan, but what I really like about the guy is how he takes down haters online.

James utilises smart and witty responses to poke fun at his legion of haters and make them the butt of his jokes. What James does is reply to individual posts, he uses his sharp wit to publicly humiliate trolls. He doesn’t engage in trolling himself, he just responds to the ugly side of the internet.

As the story goes, he was asked by his record label to gain an online presence on Twitter, the record label also asked him to tone it down but there was no chance.

We all know the style of music he plays, I won’t be racing out and buying his next album but I do like how he humiliates keyboard warriors.

It is often said that money can’t buy happiness, I think this is a myth perpetrated by people without means and motivation. Being poor doesn’t necessarily make you any happier either, more than likely you lack medical facilities and opportunity. This is just an excuse to explain a lack of means – a cop out.

What money buys is life experiences, I am a diver and I have had the opportunity to dive in a number of countries and regions. Likewise, I am into sailing and have sailed in different locations and I hope to do more in the future. I am not travelling first class, I stay in humble accommodation and use local transport as much as possible. I have worked as a dive guide and dive instructor in a number of countries and whilst the money isn’t fantastic, the life experiences are.

I don’t own the yacht, I know how to crew the various positions, set and trim sails and I race yachts throughout the summer months. When required, I always make my time available to work on the yacht to support the boat owner. I sleep on the boat or stay at cheap accommodation without running showers instead using a small saucepan to tip cold water over my head. You wash yourself and cold water during the summer months isn’t an issue, life experience is everything and you don’t need to travel first class to experience it.

One of the positives to arise from the Chinese economic slowdown is that it may substantially damage their economic growth. Let’s face it, they caused this mess and they should be the ones to pay, there is no trust with China. China relies on exports, they have now wiped out the major economies of the developed world due to their carelessness. They shut down their country early, well before the rest of the world and now they are opening up production again.

But where will this production go? The very markets they export their goods to are caught up in the mess they created. They are a long way from becoming a consumer economy, maybe they will realign and ramp up domestic production. No one can believe that these wet markets with exotic animals can go on without government knowledge in such a totalitarian state. They know and for too long they have allowed this to continue, this must be the point where they shut this down or face economic sanctions.

They monitor and mark their very own citizens for their adherence to strict communist guidelines. Therefore, it is implausible that they could have these markets operating without official sanction. The Chinese government must swiftly move to close down these cesspit markets for the sake of not only China but the world. Their lack of hygiene has caused the developed world to endure this calamity – get your act together.

Returning to dive Mactan Island, I have to check my memory as it was some time ago, the best way is to check some old certification cards. I was passed out as competent based on the dives I did back then for the cost of PADI registration.

The walls are pretty much vertical, there is nice soft coral growth and some pretty decent gorgonian fans. The grey sky encountered on every dive really didn’t allow the walls and corals to light up as well as they could. That being said, the walls were pretty good, the marine life was pretty decent and the currents not too savage. What I did see was a build-up of silt on the wall, corals and fans, there were suspended particles from the water movement that clouds visibility but I still found it fairly decent.

As Mactan Island is the site of the international airport, flights from Asia are landing on a regular basis. Chinese, Hong Kong, South Korean and Japanese tour groups are regulars on the Mactan walls after arriving on short haul flights, spending a couple of days in a resort diving before jetting home. Mactan Island is a fairly decent place to dive, it is not really world class diving, but more than acceptable for a short-term dive holiday. The Mactan walls are well preserved, there are numerous dive boat operators moored in the bay and from what I experienced, they don’t have to travel far to drop divers on a decent site and they use moorings.

I was pretty athletic before, mind you I had a couple of things going for me. I was young, I trained like a semi-professional athlete and I had very active employment.

I am older now, I traded the outdoor lifestyle to study and I have an office job. That being said, I completed my study over a year ago yet I haven’t regained my fitness. I was working full-time, studying part-time and trying to get some fitness activities in where I could. Even though I was studying I got to the gym twice a week, ran 5 km twice a week and did some extra weight sessions at home. That wasn’t enough, the study commitments got the better of me and I reduced the weights to one session a week before finishing all together.

Weekends were about study and writing up assignments, there was no social time and what time I did spend out was always getting done quickly so I could return home to work. I stopped driving to work so I could use my time more efficiently by catching the train to work so I could read required text and note take. So now I embark on a career change, a new job includes a new lifestyle and I am positive I will change my lifestyle and regain fitness. I will be back in the gym, back running and I have purchased a new mountain bike to start cycling again. I am really excited about my renewed vigor and outlook.

Our retirement savings are taking a beating, I haven’t lost my life and so far none of my family have and that is the primary issue. What has happened in Italy is just terrible, while I don’t know anyone who lost their life, I cannot imagine how their families feel.

At some stage we are going to have to take a look at the financial ramifications of this mess, my and everyone else’s superannuation fund is looking very sick. Sure, you don’t make a loss until you sell so I am in no distress in that regard. What gets smashed is earnings and dividends, I will seek to buy quality blue chip shares with the cash saved over a long period. I thought the market was overpriced and coming to the end of a long bull run.

I can’t say I predicted this financial meltdown, I thought there would be a slowdown and a six to eighteen month bear market. There is a US presidential election this year, I expected the bull run to continue throughout the 2020 election year and into 2021 before the inevitable correction. But this has all changed, I will follow this market down and look to buy. This time I will be all in and although I won’t find the bottom, this could be the buying opportunity I have been seeking. We have mass unemployment, people will be glad to go out again so restaurants and bars could pick up.

The international economy will be depressed for some time, growth will be slow and I am sure some economies will seek to rebuild their manufacturing base. We have binged on cheap imports from China too long and neglected national supply chains. The world was in a slow growth phase, wages were stagnant across the world fueled by debt and the growth of money. What we have seen from this virus pandemic is more sovereign debt so unless nations engage in infrastructure investment I just can’t see any changes in the short term.

One of the great American trucking brands, Mack is a robust, no-nonsense prime mover, the Americans call a tractor, built on a foundation of rugged Allentown engineering is undoubtedly the best known truck brand. So Mack is now in the fashion wear business moving from industrial themed advertising Mack branded caps, jackets, shirts and boots into more mainstream fashion – they call trucker apparel. I have lightweight Mack safety footwear with protective top capping so I can wear in heavy duty workshops.

These were once built steel caps but with technology flowing into safety products, a carbon fibre protective toe is both strong and lightweight. We all once wore heavy duty work boots and this added to the fatigue at the end of every shift. I’m glad Mack is moving into fashion wear, Mack clothing is no longer restricted to the Pennsylvania heartland. Mack products are being identified as cool by the young set and worn out as casual wear – a great product is now moving mainstream.

For those of us who are office jockeys and able to work from home, Zoom is the new program we are all using. Actually, it isn’t bad as you can have everyone loaded on screen and have a meeting so information does not need to be repeated.

While I have only been involved in a couple of Zoom meeting so far, using the program on my laptop computer was relatively straightforward. So far we haven’t been Zoombombed, then again, the level of meeting I was involved in wouldn’t be up to a hacker’s standard – these meetings were really a waste of time. Major organisations such as Google, NASA, SpaceX and Australian universities and beginning to stop Zoom meetings citing security issues. When you get Zoombombed hackers jump into your meeting and sprout hate speech or post pornographic pictures – I can safely say none of my meetings have been so exciting.

In Western Australia we escaped the bulk of the bushfires, the major cause was the dry conditions caused by the Indian Ocean Dipole and was more severe in Central Australia and the East Coast.

There was still bushfires in Western Australia, it is bushfire season after all and a  fact of life for many of us. The week before Easter saw some great autumn weather, 36 C on good Friday with stunning weather over the Easter break so the fire that raced through our area on the Monday/Tuesday before Easter was a concern.

People were told to pack up and leave immediately, their lives were at risk so we followed the fire via newsfeeds, our block is long and backs out into thick scrub. Only just in 2019 we had a fence put on the back to stop motorbikes riding through our property and a gate was erected. We have kangaroos feeding on the grass at the back, there is possums up in the trees and bandicoots all in the area. When a fire races through, you first think of human life, then your property and then the wildlife in the area.

While it is too early for us to survey the wildlife lost as we are still locked down, it was interesting as the bush at the back of our property was too thick to walk through, the fire took out all the scrub and left the trees. This is a usual occurrence, Australian trees seems to grow better with fire sweeping through. The whole idea of burning off is to remove all the debris, low intensity firs lit under the right conditions remove all the fuel and damage to wildlife is minimal. We were lucky, the fire pretty much burned past our back fence and while it did burn on our property, there was minimal damage with just our wood heap burnt.

For those of us lucky enough, we are now able to work from home, we set up our home offices and we get to work. We save on fuel, avoid traffic and travel time – this will be the new way of working into the future once this social isolation is over.

I was fortunate enough to be able to work from home one day per week as it was, now my full 5 day week is from home so I am loving it. I work from an open plan office so while they try to say it is great for collaboration, it isn’t – it is great for distractions. So, I have YouTube playing all day in a minimised window with music, when they upgraded my computer and I lost my sound then I brought my tablet in and connected to the office WiFi. With my headphones on, I can drown out all the background noise, whining, complaining and useless discussions and just get on with it.

At home I am more productive, you have to be disciplined so I get up at 6 am like normal, as it is now autumn, it isn’t really light early and I go for a 7.5 km run, water the lawn and garden by hand, a quick weights session, shower off and still start before my standard 8 am official start time. You get more done, you set goals, create a tracking sheet to monitor progress and go. I am coordinating others from home so emails, zoom meetings and phone calls are common practice without interfering too much with my personal goals.

You end up working more, that is a given and can end up working well into the evening as the distractions are gone. As businesses see the benefits and increased productivity, there will be more of home offices. For those who lack the personal discipline, they will still have to trundle off to work every morning – for the rest of us, this is a new beginning.