About
I'm a hardcore teacher and natural life coach who inspires students to believe in their abilities and reach for the skies.
Navigation TeacherTeaching English isn't the only tutoring I've done. I used to teach navigation to Filipinos when I was working as a marine navigator for a Hong Kong outfit. Many of the students had purchased fake certificates of competency but didn't have the confidence to take up officer positions. I've also taught Nigerian, Cape Coloured and Polish crew, with some of them going on to get professionally certified and becoming navigators themselves.
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Environmental Science TeacherFurther, at the Polish middle-school, I also took it on to myself to teach the kids about the science of climate change, which I consider to be an existential threat to mankind. The concepts were more university-level, but most of the kids were able to grasp the science and were generally fascinated by the subject. However, even after all these years, the subject is still not part of the Polish curriculum. What hope is there?
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Marine NavigatorI spent a good quarter of a century globetrotting. Circumnavigated the world seven times, and worked for countless companies, all of them pretty respectable. I spent most of my career as a 2nd officer but did work my way up to Chief Officer on middle-trade vessels.
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CartographerThis was an extremely cosy number at the Plymouth Land-Registry. A government job, with no commercial pressure, where I spent most of my time telling jokes, and the others spent most of their time, listening to my funny stories and getting drunk at lunchtime.
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These are the subjects I intend to blog about, in some detail, in the not too distant future. Check the BLOG PAGE for new posts regularly. The target audience is the general public, however, I'd be kidding myself if I thought that Joe Bloggs would be interested. Nevertheless, these matters are and will have profound effects on the public, so I'd like to think, that one day, this blog will be printed into a handbook for politicians.
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EducationIt seems that everybody and his dog has all the answers to education. Every year there is a new fad claiming to be the only methodology worth following, yet a few years on, everyone has forgotten about it. It reminds me of the expression, "Every complex problem has a simple solution [long pause] which doesn't work". Anyway, I don't have all the answers by any means, but I am convinced the world is moving in the wrong direction.
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EconomicsHere, I'm particularly interested in monetary economics such as banking, money creation through credit and the inflationary pressures such easy-finance has put on the housing sector over the past few decades. I also hold novel theories on competition and how it leads to discrepancies between real value and actual prices.
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Business
I'm continually looking for novel business ideas that could be extremely lucrative by legally cheating the system. Ideas I'm presently attempting are using virtual currencies for the second-hand market, and pyramid schemes which don't build up any debt at all. The latter, I like to think of triangular at the top, but circular at the base!
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Climate ChangeMankind's response to climate change has shown me, that us humans aren't half as evolved as we think we are. The inaction from the economists running this show is either due to their fear of slowing economic growth or they are currying favour with the big energy conglomerates - or a bit of both. Later, in my blog, I'll explain why I think carbon trading is throwing a very expensive lifeline to big energy at a cost to ordinary citizens. I'll also discuss how oil, gas and coal are still hugely undervalued (which is the reason for humanities addiction to it) and how a carbon dividend, paid to individual citizens and companies from big energy is the best hope we have of diverting a climate catastrophe at this incredibly late stage.
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CodingInformation technology and programming are important because businesses not using a network effect are hard work with little margin. Presently, I am halfway through Harvards online 'C' programming foundation course (CS50) and have completed a few Javascript tutorials too. It's not that I'll ever be a programmer, but if ever I do gain traction on one of my novel startups, it'll be necessary to discuss my ideas with developers without coming across as some dick.
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Wave EnergyHaving worked at sea for a few decades, I am also interested in wave-energy. An invention I put forward to an MIT competition came runner-up a few years ago. I'll post the link on the BLOG PAGE later.
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ScienceI'm always interested in the latest research and development, after all, it's only science and oil which keep us from slipping back into the dark ages.
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