The 7 Crew l-r: Geoff McCann, Me, Geoff Mortlock, Danny Piccin, Tim O’Dea, Ross Argyle, Con Michael, Geoff Stewart. Probably a collective 250 years’ experience there.

As promised, eight of us had dinner last night at North Beach. It was partly to remember our former colleague Len, who died recently at 64, unable to enjoy the retirement he’d worked so hard for.

It was also to talk about the good times we had at TVW7 and to chew the fat about electronics and TV generally. Wow, the technology’s moving fast. Something that seemed amazing a year ago has been surpassed and we’re on to the next new thing. It’s exciting.

A general theme is that there are no new young guys coming up. The stations don’t train anyone, the old diplomas and certificates are not attempted any more, the Control Board is defunct and the BOCP and TVOCP are not required any more.

If doctors, nurses and dentists weren’t required to have qualifications any more, would that be OK? How about accountants and financial planners being allowed to practice without needing qualifications?

It’s upper managements causing this. They just don’t care.

Why does this matter? Because we are being left in the dust by the Asian tiger economies in STEM areas. South Korea is a giant in electronics, cars, ships, medical equipment, cameras and lenses etc. Taiwan makes much of the world’s PCs, laptops, semiconductors, motherboards etc. China is coming to dominate all these areas of manufacturing and it won’t be long before their cars are acceptable. Singapore is another giant in electronics, computers, medical and so-on.

Even Hong Kong is now making high quality lenses, among all the other electronics they make.

All these except China are countries with no natural resources. The one thing they all have in common is that their people regard education, particularly the STEM subjects, as an absolutely vital part of their maturation. They will sacrifice everything to get uni degrees, not just piddly TAFE certificates and diplomas.

We really are becoming the White Trash of Asia. We’re not doing well enough because we’re not trying. The standard of education is not good enough.

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Pictures in these posts are usually clickable to see the full sized image, but Word Press have changed the software today and the image above won’t enlarge. The one on the previous post will. C’mon Word Press!

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Holy smoke. I’ve just opened a box in the garage that I’d missed before. In it I found a plastic bag containing two trays of old photos. They’re mostly Dad’s, mostly prints but many with negs (hurrah, I can do high quality scans from negs), but also many of Uncle Darcey’s too.

Thank goodness, Dad was diligent and annotated the backs of the photos with names and places. You must do this for posterity if you make prints.

And among them are many of me that I recognise as having seen before, but for some reason I don’t have scans of them.

Kerrumbs, this means I’ve got weeks of work scanning all this new stuff, and it means my Croft History books will need to be revised. I’ll need to do a new edition of volume 1, The Sydney Years, I think. There are dozens of new photos to add.

I don’t mind. I love doing this.

I finished My Life yesterday and sent it off for printing, but only one copy so far. I think I’ll have to revise it before sending the second copy off.

This is very odd. I’m sure I’ve seen all these photos before, but I don’t have scans of them. I thought I’d scanned everything I had. Clearly not.