ISIL's Toyota fleet

In what must still be a branding nightmare for Toyota, the prevalence of ISIL to wantonly parade around in Toyota branded vehicles must have been more than a little disconcerting. The Hilux was so popular with Daesh fighters that it has become a central fixture of the ISIS brand strategy. Whilst ISIL is all but defeated in Syria and Iraq, the splintering of terrorists to other areas especially in the Asia-Pacific region impacts us all.

The utility vehicle is fast and maneuverable packing plenty of firepower with a 50-calibre weapon mounted on the rear easily defeating soldier's body armour and penetrating lightly armoured vehicles such as the American built Humvee. The United States authorised a probe into Toyota to determine its sales strategy to terrorist organisations, a serious international business like Toyota wouldn't jeopardise its international reputation for what is relatively minor sales; however, they could be doing more to track the third party sales though.

It is fair to ask, how is ISIL getting its hands on new Toyota vehicles? One expects brokers are buying vehicles and forwarding them to the fighters; however, as every component is stamped with a serial number, it isn't difficult to trace the distribution channel and then shut down the broker/buyer. Toyota has a very strict policy preventing buyers purchasing their vehicles with the intention of para-military use or for terrorism. This supply chain is no doubt sophisticated and new vehicles are getting through; combined with the durability of the product and the availability of spare parts - this vehicle is perfect for their activities. This needs to be shut down and shut down quickly.

Diving the Padang Bai cruise ship jetty

Heading up to Padang Bai on the west coast of Bali is a pleasant drive from Seminyak once breaking free from the hectic Legian and Denpasar traffic. Padang Bai is the ferry staging point for Lombok's Gili islands and is also a pretty good muck diving location - I like the place. 

The cruise ship jetty was constructed to attract cruise ships further up the coast from the usual port of Benoa and around to the eastern side of the island. Unfortunately in an almost laughable case of poor design and mismanagement, the jetty was designed too short not extending into deep enough water for the draft of cruise ships. 

Instead, on the one occasion a cruise ship did arrive, the tender transported the passengers to the jetty but as the jetty was constructed for cruise ships, it required passengers to climb up from the tender. After their day out and passing through immigration, the passengers were left on the unprotected jetty in a tropical downpour, no more cruise ships docked at Padang Bai jetty instead providing an expensive fishing and diving structure.

A spring weekend at Rottnest Island

I was lucky enough to be once again be invited out on the boat of a sailing colleague for a weekend at Rottnest Island during what is the sailing season. We were at the beginning of the season with summer approaching, it is time for a little fun and relaxation combined with a few drinks.

We were skipping a sailing weekend, this was the Governor's Cup with all classes sailing together in in race with a handicapped start. The yacht owner hates this race as the start is confusing, we are all bunched up and fighting for space, rounding buoys are a fight with collisions and damage galore. We sail in a restricted class with identical yachts, the racing is close and competitive.

While I was there, I began to reflect on what Rottnest Island means to the locals. What gives me some hope is successive state governments have not buggered up the island for the common people. Rottnest Island is not an exclusive enclave for the movers and shakers of the business world or Perth high society - Rottnest Island is truly for the people.

Naturally, an invitation on board a Riviera 48 is a pretty exclusive ride. The owner usually moors in Thompson Bay on a permanent mooring he owns. Thompson Bay is the main bay on Rottnest Island with only a short trip on a tender to the main settlement. The Perth weather in November should be consistent, so some time spent on a reasonably sized boat on the water in an idyllic location can't be beaten.

On calm winter days, Rottnest Island is marvelous, what makes this experience even better is the lack of crowds in the off-season. The Christmas to New Year break is the period when the majority of businesses are closed for summer holidays and Rottnest Island is flat out with activity, this is our summer holidays. Mid November, Rottnest is still busy but not over the top so I was happy about this invite, it would be fun without the crowds.

I have to question the logic of heading over to Bali at Christmas time during the middle of the wet season dealing with the crowds and heavily increased prices. Rottnest Island is assessable to just about everyone, there are so many families spending their days in harmony with the island, I was amazed with the laid back approach of the floating residences from large to small, everyone was friends with everybody else. What a great place, maybe it is time for me to invest in my own floating holiday house.

Beating the street

As a young guy, I purchased Peter Lynch's Beating the Street to assist with my share investing education. the lessons in this book are squarely aimed at the New York Stock Exchange on Wall St. 

I took some of the lessons learned and tried to apply them to the Australian Stock Exchange, whilst this was good advice to seek out value following smaller capitalised shares. I soon learned that the ASX at the time didn't have the liquidity of the NYSE and the superannuation funds providing the liquidity for trading the leading 50 companies in the index and forget about it if the company wasn't in the leading 100 companies.

Sure, there are some specialist funds trading in smaller capitalised shares but they are in the minority. Even the larger Australian mutual funds tend to invest 30% of their fund in international equities and 25% of the fund in Australian equities with international funds cashing out when exchange rate risks bite. I quickly learned Wall St strategies didn't work out as well in the ASX as they did on the street - but then again, it might have been my execution. 

The yes vote succeeds

So the plebiscite has been decided with the yes camp winning the popular vote 59% to 41% The Parliament has been given the mandate to push the legislation through the lower house without any hindrance with the bill to then likely to pass through the Senate without any obstruction.

The people of Australia have returned their survey questionnaires, it wasn't a vote apparently hence the Bureau of Statistics managing the process but it offered a pretty good indication of what people wanted. The survey asked a simple question leaving either a yes or no box to tick and a return postage envelope for the response. More than 80% of survey forms were returned offering a definitive answer - the yes vote wins. So we are going to have same sex marriage legislated in Australia probably before Christmas.

I hate National Mutual

Back in 1989 as an apprentice I decided to look after my financial future and invest in a retirement security plan, a precursor to mandatory superannuation. I didn't know much about investment back then and signed on the dotted line for the worst investment of my life.

Skip forward to 2017, for that 28 years of investment I am now the proud owner of exactly half a year's current salary. So much for their claims of the magic of compounding interest and investment returns. If I had just waited a couple of years, I would have been able to invest directly though my personal self managed superannuation fund. Based on my personal investment returns, I could have grown that sum of money into a high quality investment stream for my retirement.

So where did my money go? Their high fee structure sapped all the investment returns, they didn't post the investment returns and the fund was closed to new investors but wasn't combined with other funds to gain a critical mass of funds. Running a self managed superannuation fund isn't a cheap option but at least you have control of the investment criteria, returns and asset class selection. Why pay a manager to do what you do only to under-perform your actual returns for an outrageous fee?

Furthermore, they did not open an online account for this fund informing me that this is an old fund and they will not build an online portal. I would have to ring and make a personal appointment with their adviser during business hours to find out any information or wait until the annual report was mailed out. When I asked for details of how much I had contributed, the exact fees deducted and investment returns I was told I had been sent paper based copies annually and I should work it out myself. Now there is some excellent customer service for my outrageously high fees.

Pretty much all other funds have online access accounts including AXA and AMP accounts as the fund has been sold a number of times. It was pretty much this account that didn't go online tending to indicate the importance of this fund, I was always told this was an old closed fund but wasn't allowed to change funds within the group. Why would they?

They had a cash cow and I had signed on the dotted line all those years ago. I had always maintained my contributions, albeit these were minimum contributions for most of the period although I had made two large lump sum payments during the period. I had also allowed the monthly direct debit payments to be inflation adjusted but I knew these payments mostly went to management fees, this basically prevented a negative return.

So why didn't I get out earlier? Well, there is a clause where they keep a percentage of the account and that percentage reduces every year. I waited until now as the US market has been on a fairly large bull run and I needed to lock in those profits to account for the percentage of the account they would keep. Also keeping in mind how difficult it is to actually withdraw your money, they placed every difficulty and road block in my path.

I have never tried to leave the Church of Scientology, an outlaw motorcycle gang or the NAZI party, but I can only imagine it wasn't as difficult as getting out of the old National Mutual Retirement Security Plan and I have never felt the inclination to move to South America.

Finally, I have cashed out now and combined the funds with a low fee industry superannuation fund and even losing a percentage of the fund I will still be ahead. Fortunately, I opened an industry based fund so at least employer contributions were not profiteered into this account. With twelve years left to retirement, I have lost the advantage of compound interest but by combining these funds I may be able to salvage something of a reasonable retirement benefit after more than fourty years of employment.

Line - the messaging app

Working in training and education, I see rampant mobile phone use at the most inappropriate times; the most favoured app for students to chat with during class is Line, the messaging app. I can't say I knew too much about it before except for seeing the logo and green coloured screen when I bust them using their phones.

So I decided to do so research into this app, what I do know now is that this is a pretty popular communication app, these young guys are on it all day and this chat seems to take priority over everything. Fail a class, no worries, chat comes first. I have heard from employers that they answer phone calls and messages during job interviews and during performance management sessions.

For this very reason, many companies have banned mobile phone use during work hours, some employers even go to the extreme of locking mobile phones in a safe box during the hours of work. Can you really blame employers? So I set about and downloaded myself an app as well, I can chat to people when required but I must admit, if I used this app once a month, that would be heavy usage for me. Needless to say, I won't be caught using this app when I should be working.

Andrew was right

I was miserable and I knew it, I had to get out of this job but the redundancy packages, redeployment and finally severance packages robbed me of opportunity as the state government finances collapsed as the mining construction boom derailed the state economy.

My toxic work environment formed a large portion of my personal stress; I hated my job and I knew there was only one option - get out of this place. I read Andrew's advice very carefully and I was determined to put it into action. I am aware I needed to leave, the problem was the individuals who were robbing me of opportunity by their corrupt practices were also exposing themselves to investigation.

Regardless, I believed in myself and I knew I needed to generate opportunities. First, I needed to pick up my certificate from Torrens University. I then needed to network at the awards ceremony when I flew to Adelaide and see what opportunities present themselves outside of the sphere of the Western Australian government.

Finally I needed to check international employment, I originally was employed in the construction and mining industries - I could capitalise on this experience. Yes, Andrew was right, there are opportunities that I need to pursue, I need to find happiness in my work and get out of my current corrupt employer.

Post MBA - where to from here?

So I'm done, whilst I haven't graduated yet, I need to reflect on what's next from here? The Western Australian economy is close to recession and has been in severe downturn since about 2014. The state government has the highest debt in history in both absolute dollar terms and in relation to economic output.

I want to stay employed in the public sector for at least the next couple of years, I have twelve years until I can access my retirement benefits and I have two years until I qualify for my second round of long service leave. In Australia, long service leave is twelve weeks paid leave after fifteen years service to a company. In order to attract high quality candidates, the state government cannot match private sector salaries so conditions of employment have to be competitive. Hence, state government employees qualify for long service leave after seven years of continuous service.

Another benefit of state government employment is the ability to take secondary employment part-time as long as it is authorised. The thinking is the public service wants to recruit staff from the private sector bring job-ready skills, extensive experience and contemporary knowledge to government departments. This allows individuals such as myself to generate a second income, maintain private sector skills and knowledge as well as gain experience in new areas.

As I'm in training and development I would prefer to remain in this field but there are not any current opportunities in the state government as the government has just announced another round of redundancies and plans to rationalise and amalgamate departments. Previously there was an official hiring freeze of six months plus unofficial pressure placed on department heads to not hire as a redundancy pool exists where displaced people sit in a recruitment pool. 

I have nothing to complain about, I have retained my employment and although I will not be receiving any pay increases for the next three years as the state government has capped salary increases. I just have to wait until next year until I get a clearer picture of where I am going, the rest of Australia is moving again, hopefully Western Australia has seen the worst of the downturn. 

The new world tour

As Paul McCartney prepares to return to Perth twenty four years after he kicked off his New World Tour at Subiaco Oval in 1993. I expected a fairly laid back acoustic show - boy was I in for a surprise.

Now, Sir Paul will return to Perth for an outdoor concert at NIB stadium on December 2. I'm really looking forward to this concert and I won't be reading any critic's reviews. The local newspaper, The West Australia wrote a stinging review that was received very poorly by anyone who was at the concert. The next day, my fellow concert goer friend and I were walking around with concert t-shirts and I was constantly asked if the concert was really that bad.

I couldn't believe it as it was a fantastic concert, there was so much going on with big screen monitors arranged around the stage, helicopters flying overhead, flame throwers and all matter of props. That surprised me, I was there for the music and Paul didn't disappoint - he was terrific. Based on what I saw at The New World Tour, I reckon his new tour One on One will be just as good.

Eating out in Hong Kong - Fisher & Farmer

Heading down to the Tsim Sha Tsui area of Kowloon, the interactive mobile phone that was offered by our hotel recommended the Fisher and Farmer restaurant. So off we went on a stunning Friday night in Hong Kong.

This was apparently one of the restaurants in Hong Kong to visit, arriving at 8 pm without a booking was always be troublesome and after waiting for an hour we were seated. There wasn't much of a wine list so the drinks were beer, so the choice was Corona. For the meal, we started with a dumplings as the entrée, the Peking duck was recommended but I can't say I was overly impressed and since desert wasn't on the cards, we left even without coffee.

I'm neither a Hong Kong local or Chinese resident so while I wasn't much impressed with the Peking duck, this reputation of this restaurant is highly rated and the Peking duck is a specialty. It is not difficult to work out the issue stems from my tastes and not their cooking, I wanted local food and not westernised food so in that respect, I got what I wanted and appreciate the meal for what it was. The acid test always is, would I go back and eat there again, the answer is a resounding yes.

A yes or no vote

A same sex marriage plebiscite has been called in Australia, we will now vote on a non-binding instrument to guide politicians on how to vote in parliament on the same sex marriage issue.

To be honest, I couldn't care less either way how the vote goes as it doesn't really affect me. But apparently, it isn't a vote, it is a survey and managed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and not the Australian Electoral Commission. I feel no real connection with the same sex marriage issue but I understand plenty of people feel strongly on the issue. What is ironic is that a civil union exists in Australia where same sex couples are considered in a de facto relationship have property rights just the same as heterosexual de facto relationships.

The brigade of campaigners for the yes vote have been very vocal on social media, when I say vocal, they abuse any person who argues the no vote. Whilst I don't really know the yes/no vote split, the vocal minority are possible attempting to shout down a silent majority. We saw with the US presidential election where Hillary Clinton was the unbackable favourite fall short in actual voting.

Now most of us don't understand the American electoral college voting system, it isn't a majority voting principal but regardless, the system was known before people voted. The fact is, regardless of the voting system, Clinton didn't win. The same could happen in Australia so I guess the yes camp is getting vocal despite the fact that it could be alienating people who are undecided.

Is this how the same sex marriage vote will go? I'm unsure, but the yes camp is aggressive, obnoxious and abusive. This alienates people, especially people who don't have strong views on the subject who could well be willing to vote no to shut the yes camp up. Naturally there is poor behaviour in the no camp as well although they appear to be somewhat subdued. Once the plebiscite has been counted, I just hope we are done with this and the public accepts the survey results either way.

Finally getting an iPhone

So I finally have an iPhone, not a new one but an old hand me down iPhone 4 and I am wondering what all the fuss was about. Yes, the iPhone 4 is small, easy to slip in a pocket and for me - easy to lose.

So I have an iPhone 4 and I do like it as my travel phone; my main mobile phone is an Android and since I am familiar with the Android operating system, that is my preferred operating system. I must admit, I do like the size of the iPhone 4 and since my eyes have been lasered I am able to read the screen now.

What irks me is the only software that runs on the device is Apple specific so I am unable to upload all the music loaded on my computer in MP3 format. What I like about Apple products is the battery life, they certainly out-perform my Samsung products. At this point the iPhone 4 remains my travel phone as I just purchase a sim card at every destination - I am enjoying my first foray into Apple products.