Engineers and deck officers may not always see eye to eye…

AS it is Chinese New Year and as China looms large in just about every aspect of our lives in shipping (its 2009 exports were recently confirmed at $1.2 trillion!) let's begin this month by looking at the five necessities of ancient Chinese culture and traditions – food, clothing, housing, transportation and education…

Do you know what the average technical superintendent earns in the US or a market-leading chartering manager in the UK or an upper quartile demurrage analyst in Singapore?

Book your place now, before it's too late, at The Chemical & Product Tankers Conference, one of the biggest and best gatherings of tanker folk…

LAST month we witnessed the opening of the world's tallest building. Two days after it was completed, the world's largest ship was beached at Alang in India, ready for scrapping…

It has been said that the true test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves. So began issue number 1 of Changing Course, some 80 issues ago. Now, over 17,000 people receive Changing Course. Gosh, most of you actually signed up for it as well…

DON'T you just love those stories about mad political correctness? A government job centre last month refused to accept an advert for a “reliable and hard working” cleaner because it could be discriminating against unreliable workers…

EVERYONE hopes they'll be one of the lucky ones to be headhunted and welcomed with a golden hello by their generous new employer. It does happen, even in shipping…

THE golden handcuffs are melting away but what are employers going to do about pay rises in 2010? At the moment many simply don't know and are casting around to find out what others are doing…