Italian drinking fountains

If my memory serves me correctly, in 2001 during my last Roman trip, I recall water fountains throughout the streets of Rome. I never carried a water bottle then, whenever I needed a drink.

I would just saunter up to one of the many fountains for a drink. There are still fountains in Rome, this time I needed a water bottle to fill up as they are few and far between. Are the wonderful Italian drinking fountains in decline?

A manager in action

Ten week timetables, session plans, lesson plans and schedules is the basis of my working life as a college lecturer. Planning, planning and more planning is the order of the day, preparation ensures outstanding outcomes for both students and employers in my world.

What hinders our organisational outcomes is the lack of management direction, authority, decision making and laissiz faire attitude. I was in the Munich train station waiting in line seeking to purchase rail tickets to Prague, Vienna or Budapest when approached by what was the manager of die Bahn asking how he could offer assistance. In his softly spoken American accent, he listened to my plans and offered not only advice, he was back and forth to the counter grabbing brochures for me to read. It wasn't only just me, he worked his way down the line helping everyone.

He told me to wait for a certain booking staff as he was a guru for booking these particular fares, when it was my turn, he walked behind the counter and gave his booking agent a full run down on what we had discussed and he started looking for the best and cheapest solutions. He then grabbed his copy of the International New York Times newspaper, placed it under his arm and headed off for what I guess was a well deserved coffee.

The role of the manager is of course to manage budgets, accounts and financial statements, however, their role is more than this. Here was a manager who knew his product well, what he didn't know, he sought advice from frontline staff who did, he treated his staff with respect and understanding not encroaching on their technical domain and micro-managing their job, he possessed excellent communication skills and demanded respect by his actions.

I look to the management I am forced to endure with their poor communication skills, petty attitudes to team members, lazy demeanor and condescending attitude; they don't need to undertake a management course, they just need to spend one day with this guy to learn how to be a hand's on manager, getting out of the office and doing what they are supposed to do instead of just shuffling numbers around a spreadsheet. Yeah, I know you take daily hour and a half lunch breaks.

I am sure both Warren Bennis and Peter Drucker would both agree with me. We walked out of the office in a rush as we had less than 30 minutes to get fed and organised for our rail trip to Prague - now, that is an outstanding result.

Derby day 2013

Derby day was upon us, the 14th of July 2013 - the epic battle between the Fremantle Football Club and the West Coast Eagles Football Club. One could argue a battle between good versus evil, a family club and a club aligned with organised crime and prolific drug use.

My afternoon was spent down the Mount Hospital, right on the of Kings Park, my father had his chest opened up a week or so before, he was out of ICU and in the general wards with the rest of the mob wandering the corridors clutching a small pillow to their chest to make certain they didn't split their stitches open and rupture their sternum.

Eleven months later, I myself was having a heart procedure. Mine, of course, was much less dramatic as I wandered into the hospital at 7 am and out again on the same day at 3.30 pm. My old man had a couple of those as well before the cutter got hold of him, you don't have to be at the game to support the team.

We are back in derby week again, last year's grand finalists are seeking to cement their position in the top 4; West Coast on the other hand is seeking to consolidate their position in the top 12.

Not only did my old man recover, he was able to make the journey to the MCG for grand final day, looking good for 2014 as well, pretty much a year later, he will be at the game cheering from the three tier stand.

My brother-in-law, another long time Fremantle supporter was not so fortunate; his rapid onset of a lung & heart condition ended his life prematurely, he won't be attending any further games.

A year ago, much was happening in the life of my family, it still is touch and go, purple blood flowing through the veins - Fremantle to the end.

Is Lonely Planet as we know it in terminal decline?

A number of backpackers bibles fought for shelf space in bookstoors from the Rough Guide, Frommer's, Fodor's and Lonely Planet. Writing this post in Prague, I see many people still clutching city guide books in various languages wandering around enjoying the sights and restaurants.

However, the number of people with Galaxy smart phones and tablets seems to be far outnumbering the paper based variety? The quality of photograph produced by the Galaxy and iPhones camera also seems to outnumbering digital SLRs and compacts.

I am a member of the Lonely Planet website, this is more of a forum than guide in my eyes. Why would Lonely Planet canabalise their own sales of printed books to provide free online information? However, with the emergence of TripAdvisor, Booking.com and Hostels.com, is the Lonely Planet business plan looking shaky?New travelling websites are appearing along with high profile bloggers, with WiFi all around us, is the paper based guidebook in decline?

Joining a trade union

I now view joining a trade union as a penalty incurred for poor and incompetent workers based on my experiences working for the state government. To a degree, government workers represent the last bastion of union influence and power. Union membership is rapidly declining in power, in no small part due to union management and corruption.

However, there is some value in negotiating wages and conditions collectively, the state government has shown tonot bargain in good faith at times and industrial action is sometimes warranted. I have no issues with unions per se, my issue is how they are run, tactics used and how officials are elected.

Hailing from twenty years of employment in private enterprise, I was used to individual bargaining. I am glad I came from private enterprise to the public sector, I would have not liked to have picked up the work practices of some of my colleagues who have spent their entire working life in the federal and state government workforce. They are just plain lazy holding such a poor work ethic, I don't think they would last long in private enterprise where they are held accountable for productivity.

I now don't have to join a trade union against my will, we have choices. Based on my current and past employment, the people who needed union protection were inefficient, unmotivated and antaganstic towards the job. Being self-motivated, I hated being stood over and supervised closely in a manner that offended my personal work ethic, just hand out the job, leave me alone to get the job done and support me in my endeavors to suceed for the business enterprise.

The sad part is, we need unions, workers need representation - so how did we get to our current state of affairs? Instead, we have union officials interested in building and maintaining their personal power base. There is corruption, lots of it with the worker paying a percentage of his or her wage for union representation. Their union dues go into federal political advertising, slush funds and programs benefitting union officials.

There is no accountability, the union pays no tax, in many cases maintaining poor financial controls and not reporting to a federal body, in short, the books are not audited and union officials have no demands asked of them.

Australian unions are run on the same lines as British unions, that is, militent and seeking confrontation. With just 12% of workers holding union memberships, union management has to ask, what did we do wrong? Ironically, the highest proportion of union memberships is in the education and training sector (my job), public administration and safety.

Google Maps and backpacking

The technology travellers and backpackers have at their disposal is mind blowing. A device such as a tablet with GPS independent of WiFi is brilliant, we were booking online and were emailed the accommodation details along with a map from Google.

Getting off the train or bus allowed us to walk to our accommodation without requiring a taxi. The small map from the booking agency isn't great resolution or size, but will show you the approximate location.

The GPS gives you not exactly pinpoint accuracy, I reckon it is within about 25 metres. I found this out in Milan, we had been in the Duomo di Milano and were now standing outside the church close to the wall, the GPS indicated we were still in the church but within the arc radius displayed on the screen.

The only time it caused an issue was in Venice, I was sure we were on the other side of a canal, yet the device showed us to be standing on the other bank, within the accuracy of the device. Not a real problem, we just started walking and all of a sudden, the device showed us to be on the correct side and we were off.

On a funny note, when near the Grand Canal in Venice, the device showed us to be in the middle of the canel, yet I wasn't swimming or even wet. Still in Venice, when we needed to move quickly to the bus station and we were right on the outer edge on the other side of the island, we used the device to plot our exact location and our progress to our destination when we were unable to use the watercraft for transportation due to the strike.

Unfortunately, my older Samsung 7.0 does not give location without a WiFi connection, I knew this from playing endlessly with the device.

It also has different options such as road map, When I purchased the newer 10.1 with upgradable software, I learned the GPS worked independently and could be used without an internet connection. The inability of the 7.0 to upgrade software forced my hand to purchase a newer and larger version, that is a shame as because I used to the features of the device needing to learn how to navigate the newer software and the fact the newer 7.1 models were slimline and similar in construction to the 10.1 model.

My old backpack

It's still another two years until we hit our twenty year anniversary; yanked off the top of the wardrobe and thrust back into action, my old Mountain Design backpack still does the job as required.

These last nine years, I generally travel overseas four to five times per year for short trips. For these mostly diving trips, I take my High Sierra bag that doubles as a small backpack. At 65 litres capacity, this backpack is just too large for short trips lugging diving equipment with me, I choose a much smaller capacity kit. Of course, I have a duffel bag only for dive equipment.

Now I have long service leave, three and a half months on the road starting in Sydney, Dubai, Italy and then onto who knows where for two months before spending the final four weeks in the United States. It was high time we got reacquainted again, it feels like we have never been apart.