Aches and pains after deep air dives

Long exposures requiring mandatory decompression stops using air as both a bottom mix and decompression gas usually results in aches and pains post dive that are difficult to explain.

I attribute this effect to asymptomatic bubbles kicking around the system despite executing the ascent flawlessly to the prescribed dive plan. Naturally, the best combination is nitrox or trimix for the bottom mix (depending on depth) with nitrox mixes for travel and EAN60 - EAN80 or 100% O2 for decompression gasses. 

For the travelling diver to remote areas, this isn't always feasible in both terms of logistics or cost. Once again, the highest percentage decompression gas is preferred, but you sometimes take what you can get.

I feel unexplained (low key) pain in my left elbow and shoulder that may remain during subsequent repetitive dives; I feel this is the so called slow tissue compartments off-gassing probably around the site of scar tissue from previous exposures.

Incidentally, I don't tend to feel such low-key pain when diving with nitrox as a bottom mix for dives in the 40 - 50 metre range despite low nitrox mixes for deeper dives.

If I am able to off-gas on higher oxygen mixes I feel no such pain, so I have attributed this phenomenon to the high nitrogen loads of deep air diving. The obvious answer is to avoid deep air dives decompressing on air.

Slow ascent rates and extended shallow stops may lessen the impact but does not fully negate the phenomenon, nor does short duration mid-water stops lasting for 1 - 2 minutes in length.

So when diving in remote areas, if no nitrox is available I will continue to utilise air as a bottom mix and decompression gas and continue to exhibit mild asymmetric symptoms attributed to the so called silent bubbles without exhibiting actual decompression symptoms.

Global warming estimates - are they flawed?

Reviewing material from global warming estimates, anyone who questions the validity of the figures or the methodology used to obtain these figures is immediately decried as a climate change skeptic.

Science is all about robust debate, the people who are trying to shut down debate really run against the principles of science. The debate to question the methodology of the estimates must be questioned, has the scientific community used flawed models to reach these conclusions?

Citing a different source, there is little doubt atmospheric CO2 has risen in line with advancing industrialisation, the question is, is it purely carbon dioxide in the atmosphere or are other factors affecting the climate? One of the byproducts of industrialisation is the building of infrastructure, is the decrease in forests and more importantly the trees that absorb CO2 the issue?

Union corruption must be eradicated

I am at a total loss to explain why any union member would not want to investigate and eradicate corruption within union ranks.

The majority, but not all of union funding comes from member's pay packets; therefore, members have a vested interest to ensure their money is spent in their best interests.

The protection of corrupt union officials building personal empires at the cost of the lowly member who pays their wages must be eradicated.

The Fairfax/Reachtel poll tells us in round figures that about half of all respondents want the Australian Labor Party to distance itself from the union movement.

However, this will not happen as the union movement funds political advertising for both the Australian Labor Party and the Greens with enormous political donations, this is where a large part of union member's payments are spent.

About a quarter of all respondents don't want the Australian Labor Party to distance itself from the union movement with close to a quarter of respondents unsure.

We need unions, I don't think any sane person would disagree that a balance of power is not required, what we don't need though is militant union officials forcing the cost of major projects up costing everyone in the community.

Coopers dive resort - Palawan

This post was not written online whilst at the resort; with the 30 - 45 minute average download time for a single webpage, it is not difficult to guess this posting was a copy/paste exercise from a document. The free WiFi is a misdemeanor; there is no way they could charge for such a slow service. So WiFi aside, how does the rest of the resort fare?

The rooms are large and spacious, so too with the bathroom, my hot water system didn't work but no issues really as it wasn't required. Same with the TV, the only show I needed to watch was the Mayweather/Pacman fight; I wasn't able to see a replay until I arrived back in Manila on Friday night. I unable to read any analysis of the fight until a week later due to resort download speeds - damn.

I was in Palawan to dive, so other issues aside, that's what I was mostly concerned with. The dive centre was run by the son of the owner and I was diving solely with Kevin during this time. The dive sites were unfortunately unspectacular, they were run of the mill dive sites - nothing more. Still, I was in the water so I was happy, away from the stresses of work that three flights afforded me.

The cost is 1500 php for a single dive with own equipment supplied, the cost per dive comes down to 1250 php for a 10 dive package, that is what I decided on as I had five days worth of diving planned. They tried their best to bugger up the diving, on my arrival I was informed the boat was to be chartered out out to a group. 

I complained as it was pre-arranged that I would be diving, a solution was reached as the group never eventuated and I went diving after all. This was however poor management, it was just luck I was able to dive due to the cancelation - nothing more.

The boat was good, it was mostly empty - the crew members were excellent, these were seriously good guys constantly jerked around by the son of the owner.

A French group had an issue on a tour, whilst the tour was conducted by a third party, the complaint was poorly handled in full view of every guest and continued for hours. It was a textbook case of how not to handle a complaint, this really damaged the credibility of the resort.

Corporate finance completed

Managing finance was by far the most difficult unit I have undertaken to date, I am really concerned waiting for my results as I struggled to complete my assignments.

I sometimes wonder on the value of this unit, should this be a core unit or an elective unit as this is such a specialised area. This unit does have applications in regards to corporate structure and capital funding; however, seeking a manager's role in a government department, this knowledge will be in excess of what is required for the position.

As this course is fairly expensive, I wonder if a more specialised MBA is the answer such as human resources, project management, marketing, operations, organisational effectiveness or finance. What I do know is I have to put in a whole load of extra study in to really feel competent in this area - because I don't think I am at the moment.

Balancing narcissistic behaviour for team cohesion

The art of leadership is fast becoming the science of leadership. The United States has the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Leadership at the US Military Academy at West Point.

Likewise, the Australian Defence Force Academy is a partnership between the Department of Defence and the University of New South Wales educating military leaders in a range of skills from critical thinking, critical reasoning, reflection and decision making - all under the stress and pressure of simulated battle conditions.

In military circles, leadership has been an integral process of maintaining both morale and discipline. The principles of military leadership processes promote selfless service for the team; this is the essence of the servant leadership principle.

Military leaders are conditioned to focus on team members, placing personal safety and well-being behind that of the people they are leading. Military leaders share a common lifestyle with followers developing high levels of trust, loyalty and respect.

This tends to be the opposite to business leaders who tend to distance themselves from team members through tall hierarchical structures, taking credit for team successes - the domain of the narcissistic manager.

Military leaders are classically trained; they are equipped with the knowledge and tools required to effectively and selflessly lead under pressure. Regulating narcissistic behaviour in commercial enterprises promotes team cohesion for mutual goal achievement.

The academic argument to employ instructional designers

Adult learning institutions such as state government training providers suffer from a lack of professionalism due to their cumbersome academic structures. 

According to their job descriptions, lecturing staff are training facilitators - that is exactly their role and most perform it well given their lack of professional training. A Certificate IV in Training and Assessment is more than often awarded over the course of a weekend and does not constitute a professional qualification in any way shape or form. 

Advanced Skills Lecturers are tertiary qualified academic leaders supporting rank and file lecturers; they undertake standard full-time facilitation roles as well as part-time academic leadership duties - a dual role.

Likewise, Principal Lecturers advise full-time lecturers on academic matters undertaking part-time curriculum development and part-time training delivery. The Head of Programs is a part-time academic role and part-time administrative role managing enrollments, student issues and timetabling.

A Head of Programs requires no academic qualifications and is essentially a supporting role as they hold no decision making capabilities whatsoever.

The Advanced Skills Lecturer, Head of Programs and Principal Lecturer are academic roles with both the Head of Programs and Principal Lecturer requiring reduced teaching times to perform their role, the Advanced Skills Lecturer is a full-time teaching role with extra duties attached.

All three positions require written applications meeting selection criteria adjudicated by an independent selection panel, should the applicant be successful in the written application process, they are invited to a face-to-face panel interview where they are required to perform a project to prove their suitability. 

Naturally, should the selection panel not perform its role correctly, the process may be questioned and formal grievances lodged.

The pseudo promotion of people willing to perform these roles under the guise of mates promotions when selected staff fail to perform the roles what they are paid to do. This is an internal process that reaches far outside the formal structures in place - this is a stunning example of state government nepotism and wastage.

Furthermore, as these roles already have reduced teaching hours to perform the job, what are the incumbents doing? The unlikely scenario of the Head of Programs not performing any teaching duties now exists where they hand their timetabling duties off to lecturing staff.

These staff  have been selected by virtue of friendship instead of competency who are supposed to be undertaking full-time teaching loads must stop. Naturally, they then receive reduced teaching loads to perform the duties essentially double dipping.

This all sounds good in a perfect academic world and is enshrined in formal job descriptions. At a strategic portfolio level this structure falls apart due to poor management practices that sees nobody performing their role as per their job description - this is where the nepotism creeps in.

Although a defined job structure is in place, many unscrupulous team leaders create special roles for the favoured few bypassing independent selection processes.

What really happens in an environment swimming with nepotism and dysfunction; the art of delegation sees everybody handing their paid role off to the next poor sap in the hope that someday they might get paid for their work so they can hand it off to the next unsuspecting fool.

In comparison, universities and private tertiary colleges employ instructional designers to develop in-house cutting edge learning materials. They fully understand their competitive advantage relies on top quality delivery via a variety of methodologies supported by top notch resource materials.

Naturally they invest in learning management systems and charge a premium for quality tuition. Universities and private tertiary colleges fully understand the ramifications of strategic planning and management and the need for differentiation in a highly competitive and increasingly global educational market.

In a contrasting style, the ramshackle approach of state government colleges sees untrained facilitators throw together a course that has not been professionally designed packed with resources littered with inaccuracies not tied to individual learning styles, adult learning strategies and are unfortunately of marginal educational value. 

This is due to no one performing their roles as set out in formal processes agreed under formal enterprise bargaining agreements lodged with the industrial relations commission.

The assessments are now so dumbed down and not aligned to course outcomes that are thrown together by people who are neither trained or experienced in such professional skills. They do not hold any academic value whatsoever - this is such a tragedy for the students and the industries they serve.

Japanese atomic bomb target selection

This week marks the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb detonations, the term anniversary is a bit of a misdemeanor as most people celebrate an anniversary; this is a week of reflection of the enormous human toll extracted by a single weapon.   

Upon reflection, I am looking at the selected sites for targeting for maximum effect, one has to remember, sites were chosen not for revenge for Japanese military atrocities in Nanking, Singapore, the Philippines or their treatment of POWs, comfort women (which is a sanitised word for government organised wholesale rape); but for military impart to bring a cessation to hostilities to the greatest conflict and loss of life in the 20th century as quickly as possible.

During mid May 1945, Physicist Robert Oppenheimer led a committee to select a list of cities most potentially suitable as targets of atomic attacks. The Oppenheimer led committee arrived at four target the recommendations of Hiroshima, Yokohama, Kyoto and Kokura. Importantly, Tokyo was not selected due to the extensive damage already inflicted during fire-bombing already undertaken.

The city of Hiroshima was selected as the primary target by the Oppenheimer team due to its military and industrial importance to Japan's war effort. Hiroshima was the site of a major army base housing the headquarters of the 2nd Army and the 5th Division; as such, Hiroshima was an important port in southern Japan and strategic communications centre. 

The surrounding mountains of Hiroshima contributed to the city being a first choice target of already short listed targets. It was hypothesized by the Oppenheimer committee that the mountains would contain the destructive forces of the blast in the selected target area increasing the level of destruction.

Worth noting was US Secretary of War Henry Stimson campaigning against the city of Kyoto as a target; he argued that the city held cultural importance to not just Japan but the world. Also worth noting was that Stimson had an endearing attachment to the city after he and his wife had spent their honeymoon in Kyoto.

After the Hiroshima bombing, the B-29 with the already primed Fat Boy flew from the airfield of Tinian to the primary target of Kokura; however, poor weather conditions in the form of dense cloud cover saw the bombardier unable to successfully sight the target and the B-29 flew on to Nagasaki already low of fuel, a strategic target due to the industrial base and port facilities to deliver the destructive payload and end the second world war.  

70th anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bomb

As the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bomb passes; the question is still being asked, did Hiroshima really need to happen?

There is no question of the total destruction the atomic bomb caused on the inhabitants of Hiroshima, but were any other options available to the American political leadership? It is also argued that Hiroshima was not a military target; however, as a military target, Hiroshima housed a major army base that were the headquarters of the Japanese 5th Division and the 2nd Army Headquarters. Furthermore, Hiroshima was an important port and communications centre in southern Honsu.

The Japanese political leadership was so frightened the divine emperor Hirohito would be tried as a war criminal, they were unwilling to accept an unconditional surrender. The Japanese political leadership were more than willing to sacrifice the people of Japan to shore up their personal political ambitions and power base.

We need to remember the D-day amphibious landings occurred on the 6th of June 1944; Germany refused to surrender even as the feared Russian forces entered Berlin. The German forces fought hand to hand the whole way against the allied forces on their western flank and the Russian army approaching from the east, the casualties were extraordinarily high. The German surrender finally came on the 8th of May 1945, 11 months after the Normandy landings after Hitler committed suicide in his heavily fortified Berlin bunker. 

How much death and destruction occurred across Europe between the time on the D-Day landings and the German surrender? There was nothing to indicate that anything but a full scale invasion of the heavily defended island of Honshu would yield surrender and the end of World War II. The experiences of the marine landings on Okinawa and Iwo Jima indicated that a determined and heavily fortified enemy were more than willing to fight to the last man with estimated casualties exceeding a combined one million people with the Pacific theatre of war extending into 1947. It is difficult to fathom that the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki actually saved lives given the terrible deaths the inhabitants had to endure. 

The need for learning organisational behaviour

I didn't need this unit to complete my leadership degree, I chose this unit purely for the insights that undertaking organisational behaviour affords me, this was an extra unit and just means I undertook for this personal knowledge. The unit will count towards my GPA but not for the minimum number of units, this is just extra work and extra money, but why?

I unfortunately deal with a manager in title only, he is nothing more than an overpaid bookkeeper; in a drive to increase efficiency, they should pay a junior to do his bookkeeping job and restructure the strategic portfolio as a self-managed team. If my manager had undertaken organisational behaviour, the organisational culture issues we now face would have never manifest themselves in such a manner. How could one person be so inept at managing a bunch of decent, motivated, knowledgeable and performing people?

He needs to take a contemporary management unit, then a human resources unit, but, one step at a time. I may never know, how could this person firstly get this job but more importantly, how does he keep it? There have been rumours circulating of him holding polaroid pictures of the director and a goat; that's probably not true, it's more likely to be a married woman with excessive facial hair growth.

The fact is, the strategic portfolio is very successful from the hard and dedicated work of the team, well before he came on the scene. It does gall me that he is now taking credit for its success; he has no shame whatsoever. The fact that this fool does very little is actually a bonus, the more he touches, the more he messes up. So his hands off lassiz faire mode of operation, although not planned actually works in our favour. I have named him lassiz faire Larry, the admin staff know him eloquently as lay down Larry.

I work in the government now after twenty years in private enterprise, I am still amazed that these people can luck out in a management position, don't try to pull stunts like that in private enterprise. Every government manager should be qualified to management level with organisational behaviour forming a mandatory unit of the qualification - they still might be useless, but now they might understand why.

Swings & Roundabouts chardonnay

I purchased a case of Swings & Roundabouts chardonnay, for the price, this chards is drinking well now. The current style is less oak, more fruit and a lighter finish - I think they pull it off. For about $18 a bottle, this Margaret River offering is pretty competitively priced.

The crisp lightly oak style has taken hold for a number of years now, a positive maybe is that it could cut into unwooded chardonnay market; the domain of the professional woman grabbing a bottle on the way home from work to drink over dinner. What it isn't is a big kick arse chardy with big oak flavours ready to lay down for a decade to increase complexity with layer upon layer of fruit, wood and developing in the malolactic process. Just enjoy this easy drinking style now for what it is.

The right of the people to keep and bear arms

In Australia, we view the American love of firearms with much trepidation. We understand that the constitution of the United States of America specifically states the needs of the age required an armed militia. I would not as an Australian attempt to lecture Americans on gun laws, I do ask the simple question, why are such powerful weapons found on the streets these days?    

The rifle of the age was a single shot musket; people just didn't walk into public areas and start shooting up. If the authors of the constitution foresaw such events, surely they would acted differently to protect the people from needless violence. 

The second amendment to the American constitution was adapted in 1791 and influenced by the English Bill of Rights of 1689. The second amendment reads A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. 

The last time I checked, the US no longer requires a militia; instead a professional military complete with aircraft carriers, ballistic missile submarines, F-22 fighter jets, B-52 bombers and armed drones among other hardware - what would a handful of people running around with rifles do really? 

The United States constitution was written after the War of Independence of 1775 to 1783 when the United States did not have such a mighty military for self defense; in such a case, a militia was justified. If you want to overthrow the government, why not head off to the polling booth? 

The constitution may be amended if the will of the people is strong enough. I am glad the Port Arthur massacre allowed a strong government fed up with Hoddle Street, Surry Hills, Strathfield and Queen Street mass shootings to act decisively removing unnecessary firearms from the community in Australia.   

The PADI educational design process

As a college lecturer and instructional designer, I view the PADI educational system as actually pretty good. As the college system is competency-based and not time-based, I see many similarities in the concepts and application. 

PADI has expelled considerable time and effort to design functional dive courses based on contemporary learning theories, their learning materials are linked to course objectives and are naturally of a high quality.

As an instructor, you don't need to qualify to become an instructional designer; you just need to qualify to become an instructor in the world of PADI. This will not allow you to teach at college, it won't even allow you to teach scuba programs from other scuba certification agencies. 

At the end of your seven day instructor course, you must attend a two day instructor evaluation run by PADI and you are off and running, your career as a recreational dive instructor just hit hyperdrive.

Armed with slightly below a rudimentary level of teaching knowledge, you are now slightly more knowledgeable than a layman and able to earn a living as a dive instructor.

Naturally the hours are long and the pay is low, but hey, you can't complain, in seven days you went from a novice diver to a certified and qualified professional. Try doing that with a law, engineering or medical degree.

But in all fairness, most instructors already have a profession such as a marine biologist, retail assistant, boat skipper or trade. What you are purchasing from PADI is a lifestyle change and the former occupations of dive instructors are pretty diverse.

I do feel for the young guys straight out of school who have no other background to fall back on when they burnout - you certainly do burnout.

Stuff up and injure or kill someone, you will be deemed and held accountable just as any other professional, don't expect PADI to come running to your rescue, they will throw you under a bus at first opportunity.

As a PADI instructor for 15 years, I may not teach dive courses anymore as time constraints required to undertake further study now are just too great. Just finding the time to go and dive is difficult enough.

Committing to teaching people to dive is unfortunately unattainable for the next couple of years at least. I went from a part-time instructor to a full-time instructor right back to a part-time instructor again.

During my time as a full-time instructor, I was a dive centre manager, tour guide and retail salesperson. Actually, I wasn't a full-time instructor for all that long, six months actually.

After I resigned my full time dive centre manager position, I went on holiday for half a year before going and working for a rival full-time for six months before heading back overseas again for another six months. I then returned and started my own dive business that was ironically part-time too.

I maintain a degree of isolation from the recreational dive industry now; I do view courses and programs from afar these days. PADI courses offer college level credits in the United States and other nations for a reason.

They had to be evaluated to qualify for the program and their eligibility has to be renewed every couple of years. This can only be a positive, as you will never hear a PADI instructor reciting educational theory and application unless they are a qualified teacher that is burnt out and seeking a lifestyle change.