There is one lesson I've learned after spending years as an international maritime journalist. And that is, one does not need any special talent to be successful in the business. News writing is not like writing a treatise or a serious novel. It does not require a...
Money makes the world go round, the song goes. As far as shipping is concerned, it can make the world go up and down and even sideways. Money or the love of it is what fuels the expansion of shipping fleets and port facilities and the development of new...
Why do officials of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) talk of seafarers being invisible? It's downright silly. How could they be invisible when the English language itself has been enriched because of them? Consider some of the words used to...
The shipping industry is rich in platitudes, buzzwords and rhetoric. They shoot out like water and steam from a geyser on World Maritime Day and the Day of the Seafarer, two annual events during which the organiser, the International Maritime Organization...
For many years, I was contributing to leading international shipping and port journals until I quit in 2009 to become a blogger. You can say I am battle-scarred. I saw the culture in the maritime press up-close and witnessed its sad, downward trajectory...
It has been almost a year since I last posted in Marine Café Blog. For those of you who were wondering, I was busy with my studies and working on my second e-book, 'Close Encounters in Maritime Manila'. With the new book out of the way, I can go back to...
This week Maritime CEO, the flagship of Singapore–based Asia Shipping Media (ASM), came out out with a review of my newly released e–book, Maritime Double Shots. It is the first public scrutiny of my entrée into the world of book publishing. To say that I was...
Yesterday I took the plunge and released my first e–book, Maritime Double Shots. It's a collection of aphorisms and reflections gathered from hundreds of articles posted in Marine Café Blog over the past several years. This little project was not motivated by any...
For sure, there are still some maritime journalists around who follow the old tenets of journalism. They take the time to gather information, cross-check the facts, interpret events and write news stories that help readers make sense of it all. But the maritime press...
Corporations as well as persons thirst for recognition. So it should not surprise anyone that maritime awards have become as common — and as cheap — as Starbucks coffee. The thirst needs quenching. But what business does the maritime press have giving awards to...
The maritime establishment — the groups that exercise power and influence over industry policy and opinion — is not only as resistant to change as the rock in Ivan Aivazovsky's 1885 painting 'Rocky Island' (pictured above). It is also often regarded as sacrosanct. As...
No, I have not joined a monastic order. The reason this blog was not updated for more than a fortnight is that I have been immersing myself like a 15th-century monk in an exciting new project. I am writing a book entitled ‘Close Encounters in Maritime Manila’. If all...