jazzy lil' dives
the clarke quay riverwalk outing was fun. sure, all was my colleagues and as crazy as we could be, i guess everyone figured it was wise not to smear our reputation too bad to someone who could end up being our boss in the future.
the result? a very business-like outing, the only thing missing was a notebook.
still it was a breath of fresh air to see them eye to eye and not mentioned about the yields. we stayed at the Jazz bar till almost midnight before i had to take leave and collect my car in my company, somehow feeling a bit like friday-night loser.
but again, maybe i was just not being soberly myself...
anyway, i opened my mailbox yesterday and there was a letter from PADI, piled in between junk mails.. i mean, bills.it was my open water diving license! issued by PADI asia pacific which is based in australia.
sounds cool huh? i almost secretly wished someone was beside me while i opened that, so i could shrugged away and say, 'nah it's nothing, just my diving license' as if i got this everyday.
it seemed quite a world away when i was on that diving trip. ok it was actually a 4D3N diving course, held in aur island off johore's east coast shore in early june.
Aur Island Diving
07-10 June
to be honest, i've never heard of aur island before. apparently it's located not far from tioman island, but have much lower profile (thus much cheaper) because this place isn't really developed as a tourist spot.
for a start, we were stranded on boat early morning ~5am just offshore because of low tide. the beach looked ugly with lots of rocks, shells and dead coral pieces alongside a narrow white sandy area. the water looked clear though, i could see colourful fishes, even squid from the boat.only at about 7am the tide was high enough for us to get ashore using a transfer small speed boat.
the place we were going to stay was just consist of few dorm rooms, a couple of chalets and an eating hall. full stop. my friend asked beforehand if the room has aircond and stuff, and this organizer guy said, divers don't really care about those stuff.
huh really? guess i got my first sense of culture shock.
Day 1
at about 10am, all the open water students gathered and we met the instructors properly for the first time, a french guy named christophe and his helper, nas. ok they looked friendly enough.
they asked us to each took a bundle of instruments and introduced us piece by piece. it was the first time I saw a bc, regulator and of course, the tank. it looked complicated at first but we managed to put them together and headed to the water.
first lesson in the water was to kneel, as in doing a confession but to some god of sea or something. not that i do that, but just to give an idea. you'd be suprised how difficult it was to balance. we kept on being pushed by the current.
next, to clear water from inside the mask. chances are, water is gonna get inside your mask while you are deep underwater and you won't wanna surface up everytime to clear it. it was kinda tricky because water kept getting into our nose but it was pretty simple actually.
then, how to search for the oxygen tube in case it got knocked over and how to share oxygen point from buddy when ours somehow cut off.
after lunch we got back in the water. this time we practised how to completely opened our mask and put back on. having the mask nicely and secured was so our comfort zone, thus having to purposely opened it felt like a torture.
even more so, when we were asked to open the bc which kept us afloat and put it back on. i bet the instructors were enjoying this because i so wasn't. i mean, it was like when you are on a parachute and they asked you to fold it and open it back on while on air. evil? i think so..
the controlled emergency swimming ascent, or CESA as they called it, was more fun. we just need to take a deep breath underwater, then screamed Aaaaaaaaaa while paddling rigorously to the surface. useful when we are running away from sharks. haha ok that was actually in the event when we are out of air and no buddy in sight to share air nearby. the scream was supposed to even out the pressure in our lungs to the surroundings.
the highlight of the day was when we did buoyancy practise. by the way, the instructor always pronounced it as beyonce, which was kinda funny. he would be like, 'ok let's do beyonce today' haha.. anyway, we did the practise by swimming around following the instructors while starting to enjoy underwater scenery.
i had some problem to stay afloat at static level because i would either sinked and threating the corals towards extinction, or floated too high. the view was not as clear as in the morning, at one time i could barely even see the instructor.
Day2
our morning session dive did not start until 1015am. what i like about this arrangement was that we were not forced to wake up early and stuff. everything felt laid back and relaxing. after all, this was supposed to be a holiday too, right?
the weather was still cloudy and very windy. it even rained lightly when we got underwater. can you believe that? it could rain for another 364 days and it had to fall today.
this morning we did the yesterday's mask clearance, regulator drop and find, and buddy secondary air source sharing. by now we could do those with ease as if it was our second nature. ok most of the time anyway.
then the instructor led us swimming, or rather, diving through the sea bottom towards a deeper area.
man, so that was how diving feels like. it was like being on drugs, not that i've tried any but that was how i imagined it, being enclosed in another world with colourful sights and only air bubbles in our ears.
the visibility was not superb but pretty good. i could see various shapes of corals ~hard, soft, salad shape, mushroom shape etc.. you name it, it was there. ok i might blindly treat anything static underwater as corals but hey, who cares? you could not find these on land anyway.
the fishes were colourful but nothing too big. halfway through the dive, i lost sight of my buddy so I kept going up, down and around to search for her, feeling every bit like marlin searching for nemo. except i did find her later, she just had trouble descending.
we got back to shore by alternately towing each other with our buddy.
which i don't understand why. the basic concept of swimming is to stay afloat above water. what's the basic of diving? to stay submerged underwater. now tell me why we need to do the swimming test during this diving lesson?
plus, i'm not a good swimmer.
but my brain must have been affected in some way by nitrogen poisoning from the morning dive or something, because i found myself willingly jumped into the water and did breast stroke as if i have been doing it all along.
in fact, i was starting to feel proud of myself when i realised my mask was blocking my nose. i could not breathe properly but i could not stop to adjust it. ok this was so not good.
my heart started to pump heavily as i got more panicked. my head got lower and lower during inhalation when i got more tired from struggling to stay afloat. some water made it through my mouth and that was when i realized i was going to drown.
you know i saw a lot of movies with people drowning so i was very convincing when i cried for help. a diving friend was nearby so he let me hold onto to him but he started sinking as well. wait, this too was so like in the movie. or was it in the accident news?
anyway, i lived to tell the story after the dive instructor jumped down and saved me. never had i been so relieved being in a man's arms before. ok scratch that but the point is, nobody was harmed in making that little scene around the pontoon on that particular afternoon.
Day3,4
basically we just did dive after dive and learned along the way. there are few different dive sites around aur island with different water depth, but generally we did not exceed 15m. the weather started to improved too, and for the first time i was worried about getting sun burnt.
the highlight of the dive was when i spotted a blue spotted lagoon stingray on the sea bed. at last something big, and i know the name of (obviously i only knew it as just stingray, i checked the complete name thereafter), and then i saw a giant sea cucumber, which i thought was a bolster dropped out from the titanic.
before returning to the surface, we learned to do a buddha pose and hovered about 5meters under water for a few minutes to neutralize the pressure and get rid of access nitrogen in our blood. it was for safety precaution but for me, it was fun doing acrobatics like nobody's business when we were supposed to stay still like a yoga posture.
in total we did 6 dives altogether, which was pretty a lot for a diving trip. partly because after we were certified, we joined the rest of the experienced divers who mostly were hardcores. seriously, these people were like a whole other species. i guess when we evolved from sea creatures onto the land animal a gazillion years ago, some of those behaviour left inside some of us.
we were fortunate that we had help in getting those tanks in and out of boats, because those things were darn heavy. during the first day when we did the initial underwater practise near the shore, we had to walk back to the beach with that thing on our back. i felt very much like a turtle that inched towards the sand to lay eggs. seriously.
the final photo before we left the island.. satisfied and certified but just without the official license which was just arrived recently. i was glad i did it you know, it was a totally different experience and moreover, one step closer to our dream visit to sipadan island.
till i wear this flippers again... in the meantime i'd be just content in spending time in some Jazz bars humming kelly clarkson's chivas.
...ed
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment