My birthday month this year is going to R-O-C-K!!

 

The end of Sept / early Oct is Albert and Doreen's Instructor Exam date, so hopefully I will be off with them to Redang, just for some moral support.  Especially since I just found out yesterday that I have spent two sessions teaching them how to use the Wheel version of the Recreational Dive Planner, which was apparently made obsolete as of January this year.  I felt SOOOOO bad when I found out!!  I should have KNOWN this!!

 

Then my Prince and my Princeling will be HERE for slightly more than two weeks.  The Prince is old enough to understand what getting on a plane and flying to Malaysia means - so he is ecstatic - and the last time I saw the Princeling, he had to be carried or put in a stroller - but now he is mobile!!  And I get to adore them in person all over again.

 

At some point in between, there's my b'day, and my mom's 70th b'day to celebrate - with the WHOLE family present. 

 

They leave Malaysia on the 19th, and guess what?  Instead of staying at home and brooding about their departure, I am OFF to Lembeh again!!  Our Air Asia return flight cost us only RM125 per pax, all charges inclusive.  El-cheapo!

 

Is October going to be KICKASS for me or what??! 

 

Feel free to envy me.

 

 

 

 

Although I am not a big fan of Michael Jackson, there's no denying that he's headline grabbing.

 

Being dead though does awesome things for a music career. 

 

Think Elvis.  Everyone talks about how great The King was, but no one ever mentions that he was found dead, in his bathroom, having fallen off his toilet bowl, into a pool of his own vomit, caused by a drug cocktail overdose.  I can think of a million better ways to die.

 

So now that he's no longer alive, MJ will be a revered music icon instead of a freakish cosmetically-altered pedophile.

 

Welcome to the world of pop stardom!

 

 

 

 

I dreamt of being chased by a snake last night - I didn't feel fear - I was just trying to get away, but everytime I hid, it would find me.  I googled 'Dream Interpretations', and it said, in part, that "snakes represent healing, transformation, knowledge and wisdom".  Apparently, it is also "indicative of self-renewal and positive changes". 

 

But that's not the point I'm writing this blog.  Dreaming of the snake reminded me of what happened during a dive at Lembeh.

 

We were about half an hour into our dive, and there was a black-and-white banded seasnake on the sand. 

 

 

No biggie, we see seasnakes all the time.  Some divers were photographing it, and I was maybe about 10 feet away, just waiting for them to be done so that we could move on. 

 

The snake then started swimming towards me.  Again, no big deal.  It's happened before.  I just don't move, and it usually treats me as some object in its path, and then swims around me.  But for whatever reason, it came straight for me.  By the time it dawned on me that it was not going to veer off it's path to avoid me, it was too late for me to switch my position.

 

I held my breath, not wanting my bubbles to freak it out or anything.  I felt the dive guide grip my arm on the left side, probably as a signal not to move.  The other guide was gripping my right arm.  They were holding their breaths too.

 

It swam across my fin, up my leg, slid across my stomach, kept going up the front of my chest, then right up my face and up my mask.  I ducked slightly until I felt it's tail leave my hair.  Both the dive guides on either side let out a huge audible sigh - which was my signal that it was okay to move.  I turned around and looked up, and saw it continue its journey to the surface.

 

Seasnakes are generally passive, and only bite when provoked.  So I wasn't afraid of it.  I was more in awe of the beauty of it's movements and it's proximity to me.  I was also reminded that although we can generally know how a marine animal is going to react under certain situations, we cannot accurately predict their behavior 100% of the time.

 

Which is to say that though the ocean can be an immensely beautiful place, with amazing creatures and the opportunity to observe them - we should never go in without total respect for it.

 

 

 

 

Another week has come and gone - and it was another FULL-ON week!  My schedule has been chockablock with classes and pool training - and although I am pretty much exhausted - I am happy!!

 

Yay me!

 

 

 

 

I left the house at 8:30am yesterday, and returned home at 5-ish.  My whole day was spent teaching, both in the pool and in the classroom.  As I was reflecting on my day last night, I realized that I was smiling.  I've said it before and I'll say it again - teaching diving is one of my biggest passions!

 

I can recall clearly my three days of Instructor Exams - the stress, the adrenalin-rush, the satisfaction - and I can still remember the first Open Water student that I certified in October of 2003.  I remember how thrilled I was - how it made a big impact on me - how I felt that finally I was doing what I was born to do.  How everything seemed to fit together.  How I was so in my element. 

 

I felt a lot of things, but the one thing I never was was nervous.  Diving just felt RIGHT.

 

That was six years ago.

 

Diving STILL feels right today.

 

I love diving - I love teaching people how to dive - I love the smile and the look in the student's eyes when they take their first breath underwater and - more often than not - give me a thumbs up (instead of an 'okay' sign - which is cool, I know what they mean!).  I love imparting knowledge about the ocean environment.  I love sharing my experiences.  I love taking someone into the sea for the first time, and I feed off their enthusiasm.  Or maybe they feed off mine.  Every dive for me is fun.  Every dive seems like a new experience.  Regardless of how many times I have done the same site, it is still fresh and exciting for me.

 

I took up underwater photography about a year and a half ago.  It is my way of sharing the underwater world with those who do not - or cannot - dive.  I hope that my love for marine life is evident in my photography, and I hope to instill in others the passion to care for our oceans.

 

I have a love affair with the ocean that goes beyond something I can describe.  Being by the sea just feels like home.

 

 

 

 

Woke up this morning, opened my windows, and was greeted by the pervasive and pungent smell of haze.  Was instantly overtaken by a feeling of Ughhhh.

 

I miss being on an island!

 

When I'm by the sea, I feel connected to something primitive and important that I find difficult to describe.  Something that is made more real by the fact that it is less tangible.  It is a time when everything in my life feels connected - and with that connection comes serenity. 

 

 

 

 

So we were at the Manado airport on our return journey, and decided to have dinner at KFC. 

 

It was horrid, probably the worst KFC I have ever had - nothing like what we get here.  For one, there was no mashed potatoes.  And for another, they didn't have coleslaw.  Nor the bun.  It was basically just 2 pieces of dry overcooked chicken and some french fries. 

 

You wonder why, and then you see this on the wall ...

 

 

 

 

 

If the highest honor you can give your staff is "Maniac of the Month", I don't suppose that is much motivation for making good chicken!

 

I love Manado!

 

 

 

 

Before I talk about Lembeh, let me tell you about all the stuff that happened PRIOR to actually arriving at our destination.  Talk about drama!

 

Firstly, when we arrived at LCCT, the check-in counters were in high chaos.  Instead of having specific counters for specific flights, they had seven counters open for ALL flights to Indonesia.  To put that into persepective, Air Asia flies to FIFTEEN Indonesian destinations.  The lines were long, the lines were slow.  It ended up being a mad rush for us, even though we arrived TWO hours prior to our departure time.  We were so late, they were paging for us over the loudspeaker.

 

Then it turns out that one of our group had some passport issues.  I don't really know the details, but the bottom line was that the Malaysian immigration wouldn't let her through.  So then we were all sitting in the airplane for an additional 40 minutes while the ground crew off-loaded the luggage.  We were delayed taking off.

 

Then when we arrived at the airport in Manado, one of our bags failed to arrive.  I kid you not!  So we had to hang around the airport while the person whom the bag belonged to made a report at the Air Asia office.  As they were trying to trace the bag, their computer system failed - so we waited some more. 

 

As we left the airport, we witnessed the aftermath of TWO accidents, barely 100 yards away from each other.  It was a bit too much excitement for one evening, really.

 

By the time we arrived at the resort, checked-in, had dinner and went to bed, it was almost 2 in the morning.

 

If that was an inkling of how dramatic it was going to be, I couldn't WAIT for the diving!!

 

We were up bright and early the next morning - had the dive center briefing - and off we went in search of some spectacular critters.  All I can say is - we were not disappointed! 

 

I had some things I specifically wanted to see and capture on camera this trip.  I wanted to see the mimic octopus ...

 

 

 

I wanted to see the hairy frogfish ...

 

 

 

I wanted to see the coconut octopus (we saw THREE!) ...

 

 

 

And I wanted to see the ambon scorpionfish ...

 

 

 

By the second dive of the first day, my list was checked off!!  Everything else that followed was a bonus.  And what a bonus ... !!

 

Critters that are so difficult to find and see in places like Mabul and Kapalai - and almost non-existent in places like Tioman and Redang - were found in abundance at Lembeh.  Creatures like the sea moth ...

 

 

 

And pyjama cardinals ...

 

 

 

And the flamboyant cuttlefish, which we saw everyday, at different dive sites, at different times, all the time.

 

 

On one dive, we saw 12 pygmy seahorses!

 

 

 

On another dive, we saw 5 frogfish, consisting of 3 different species.

 

 

 

 

 

There were seahorses ...

 

 

 

And more than 20 mandarinfish in just one staghorn ...

 

 

 

It just seemed like everywhere we turned, there was something to be in awe about.  Just the sheer abundance and the variety and the richness of marine life was fan-tas-tic.

 

It didn't even stop underwater.  As we were doing our surface interval on our boat, we were joined by a pod of dolphins - with some of them swimming alongside our boat!

 

 

 

 

It was a trip and an experience like no other.