"What is action? What is inaction?.... He who seeth inaction in...

"What is action? What is inaction?.... He who seeth inaction in action and action in inaction, he is wise among men."

The Bhagavad-Gita

My friends,

In 1665 the Great Plague hit England and raged for two years. Cambridge University closed and students and scholars were sent home. Isaac Newton was a student at Trinity College and returned to Lincolnshire, to his home, for two years. During these two miraculous years, working by himself he worked out gravity and confirmed Keppler’s Laws of planetary motion, developed differential and integral calculus and in optics confirmed the composite nature of light. When the plague waned, he returned to Trinity College Cambridge. Our Isaac was a secretive reluctant fellow and didn't want to publish much. He however showed his work to Isaac Barrow, Lucasian of Mathematics at Trinity College, and Newton’s mentor. When Barrow saw what Newton had done, even though Newton was only 25 years old, Barrow himself a renowned mathematician, resigned his position as the inaugural Lucasian Professor of mathematics, and recommended that Isaac Newton be appointed as the second Lucasian professor. As you know my friends, the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics is the most famous University Chair of Mathematics, which is still extant, and has been occupied by such luminaries as Paul Dirac and Stephen Hawking.

In 2020, when the Covid pandemic hit Australia, Australia went into lockdown. Tiresias was aware that sometime before the lockdown Professor Camile Farah was provided with an Optiscan Confocal Laser Endomicroscope. Reading Professor Farah’s Curriculum Vitae is an exercise in humility for Tiresias. Tiresias has had a long life, but suffice it to say, Prof. Farah’s CV made Tiresias feel that he had not done much at all in his life. Camile Farah is oral physician, histopathologist, an academic with over 200 publications, former Dean of the Dental School of University of Western Australia, private practitioner and much more besides. Tiresias is sure that someone like Camile Farah would not have let a revolutionary Confocal Laser endomicroscope sit in a back room gathering dust. Tiresias has therefore been looking forward to the publication of this probably the best real-world data that Optiscan will ever have had. Tiresias was therefore very pleased when he heard that Professor Farah had been appointed to the Board of Optiscan. But now my friends, Tiresias is positively thrilled that he has now been appointed Managing Director of Optiscan. Professor Farah is the single best qualified person in the world, Optiscan staff included, to understand the real-world applicability of real-time digital pathology. Tiresias also understands what a real commitment and significant sacrifice this must be. The taking up of the MD role almost certainly involves him taking a pay cut. It involves moving states. Tiresias sees that the options package involves options priced at $1.00, $1.50, and $2.00, not anything like the strike price of options given to previous managements. Tiresias loves these options and certainly hopes that Camile Farah exercises them and makes a huge profit, for then my friends, we will make an even bigger profit. Clearly, Professor Farah has seen what Optiscan’s real time digital can do and has a vision for Optiscan and is willing commit to that vision, and put real skin into the game. Shareholders and friends of Tiresias, we should be thrilled by all this. The only question that Tiresias has mused on this week is as to whether previous management of Optiscan had the vision and integrity of Isaac Barrow, and as to whether when they saw what had been done with the Optiscan confocal microscope in these last two years of the plague, they stepped aside, just like Barrow, and nominated Professor Farah for MD to take the company forward. Tiresias of course is not privy to such information, but he would certainly like to think so.