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.

As I am still working, there is no social distancing and no extra cleaning of classrooms or work areas – they don’t clean at all. So I have Pine O Clean disinfectant to clean my desk and the two desks near mine.

I then go up and clean the classroom before class, there should be people cleaning all the door handles, hand-rails and other shared areas. Unfortunately, there wasn’t so I had to do myself during the day. They pretty much aren’t cleaning, the rooms are not even cleaned at night as I notice the students leave their books and papers on their desks overnight and they are in the exact same position in the morning.

Then that all changed, the education unions met with the state government and they called an end to classes in the lead up to Easter and school holidays. This was a good move and not unexpected, hence why I rushed to finish my class early, it was final year apprentices and now they are ready to be signed off as they come out of contract.

I have no issues with working through the coronavirus pandemic. All I ask is the management procure the required safety equipment, create proper procedures for running classes and ensure the required products like hand sanitiser is available to everyone. Don’t forget the cleaning, that means getting out of their offices and walking around to see how everything is working. This is the role of management, they cannot offload their responsibilities anymore.

The Australian National Cabinet is a governing body devised at federal level to provide bipartisan leadership to address the national emergency of COVID-19 consisting of the seven state Premiers, two territory Chief Ministers and Prime Minister as chairman.

There is a saying I have just learnt working for a Chinese company, never trust the Chinese and based upon my personal experiences, I have to agree. I would like to add to that definition, the Chinese are devoid of ethics, values and integrity.

You only have to look at their trademark infringements, counterfeiting of products, theft of intellectual property, currency manipulation, forced transfer of technology, lack of access to Chinese markets and lack of safety standards for counterfeit products. So where does this leave me? I have Chinese friends so I can’t be accused of hating on Chinese, I certainly distrust Chinese corporations and Chinese managers in general. When it comes to Chinese corporate ethics, I have no respect for Chinese corporations and the people in charge of them.

It’s hard for me to purchase TWG Tea in Perth, usually my best option is to make my acquisition at Singapore’s Changi Airport where I was a frequent traveler, they have boutiques in Terminals 1, 2 and 3.

I am able to purchase a narrow selection of TWG Tea from the David Jones department store in the city, although this is a fairly expensive way to purchase an expensive product. This doesn’t mean it will break the bank, I just don’t like paying way over the expected retail price for what is basically a cup of tea. I was able to purchase TWG Tea from David Jones at Karrinyup shopping centre, whilst that was a limited range it was convenient. That all changed when they took the product off the shelf and I was left with going to the city as my only option.

Due to their limited range I had to try Red Balloon tea, not a first choice for me but since Red of Africa and Eternal Summer tea was not available I wasn’t left with too many choices. Red Balloon comes in a rather strange container, a light blue box with of course a red balloon as the design feature. Red Balloon tea is made from red rooibos tea, an African tea blended with blueberry, you can actually see the blue pieces in the mix. Naturally, this accounts for the blue container although I am a little unsure where the balloon comes from but is pretty good for a change.