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It felt like I have not done any writing for months now due to the limited time online thanks to all the festive weeks of February. My Chinese New Year celebration went really well and the family dinner just happened to be on the same date as my birthday. So I could actually take it as my 30th birthday gift. The days after happened to be chain of partying events and getting pissed in much civilized way if you know what I mean.
Anyway, after all the parties and the freelancing in Kota Kinabalu, it was finally time to go back to Layang-Layang Island Resort for another 6 months. The only downside to this was the waking up at super early in the morning! Not joking, we had to be at the airport before 5 in the morning. The best thing was I live 1 hour and 30 minutes away from the city so early morning means 4 in the morning for me.
Honestly, it is all worthwhile if you are heading to this island of paradise for avid scuba divers and underwater lovers. Arriving on the island at around 8 in the morning, I was greeted with the fresh breeze I have not been breathing into my lungs. It felt great. It could be even better if you are only here to enjoy your dive holiday.
The first few days were all about preparations. All of the stuff I had mentioned in my previous posts were completed. It was fun to be a part of the incoming action and excitement next month.
Today however was what I really had in mind since I stepped on the runway 4 days ago. We were finally ready to do our dive in Layang-Layang water. It was not exactly the kind of dive you expected to be, it was actually more of a search and recovery dive. The mission was to locate all 10 mooring buoys for the dive boats to anchor on. The water temperature was just around 27 centigrade and just nice for me. The visibility however was slightly less than 10 meters since it was inside of the shallow lagoon. I am very sure the visibility can be better as much as triple of I had in the lagoon. The dive started around 2:30pm with maximum depth of 12 meters and ended successfully at 3:45pm.
If we are not to busy tomorrow, we might be able to do 3 dives around the dive sites to do some checking on the reef condition and might even bump into mantas and sharks which is going to be really cool. Stop by my blog site again if you are curious about the dive sites.
See you on the next posting.
After a week of resting from doing any dive or teaching I was finally offered by a friend to teach 4 enthusiast diver to be on Friday. It was a great news since I still have few weeks before going back to Layang-Layang Island again for another 6 months of bliss and excitement. The only down turn for this course was the weather. The last open water course I conducted was great. The weather was on our side, the visibility was amazing for Kota Kinabalu water (10 to 15m).
Today however, has been raining for almost 3 days now. Even though it was not as bad as 2 days ago, the drizzles just kept on showering even now as I am writing. The sea was a bit choppy in the morning with a lot of annoying surge and murky water. Amazingly, the rain and the swell did not shut their excitement which had provided great help to me and my assistant. Even the 27 centigrade of water and the less than 2 meter visibility failed to stop them.
Fortunately, the water got much calmer right after lunch when we were set to plunge into another session. even though the rain still went on, visibility improved to 5 meters at least and the session went well in the end. They all managed to complete and had gotten more than halfway to open water diver certification. Well done guys. Another day tomorrow and you all will be proud to claim yourself as scuba divers and join the colourful diving community. Maybe one day I will get to dive with them again somewhere in the globe where there are infinite possibilities.
A friend of mine bought a pair of running shoes the other day and ended up hating them after 3 days and kept on complaining. I asked him the reason for all his ramblings about his newly bought branded shoes and he said the fittings was bad. The first thing came to my mind was the big question “Did he even tried the shoes first?” And yes, for being such a brand conscious, he spent his money on a good brand that did not give him what he expected. So what had he learned from the experience? Good brand name does not necessarily means great product for you. What I am trying to say here is you have to try some products before you can decide whether to invest in them or not as the results may be different for different individual.
The same thing applies when you decide that you are going to buy a pair of diving mask for your personal use. There are of course many great brand names out there for you to choose. However, the question is which one fits you the best. In scuba diving activity, other than having a great diving skill, you also need to have equipment personally good for you. Mask play an important role. Bad fitting will only allow water to keep sipping into your mask making uncomfortable dive.It does not matter if you own a cheap pair of mask if it works perfect for you. You saved more and you gain more benefit from it. This is one piece of equipment that needed to be tested first before buying, just like a wetsuit.
When you learn scuba diving, your instructor or the long video presentation will give you important tips on how to buy a right fitting mask. Of course I will share with you here as well. It is by far the easiest method to determine your personal fitting. Put the mask on your face, inhale through your nose and hold it for few seconds, look down, if the mask doesn’t fall off you just found a right fittings for you. One more factor to consider is to make sure the lenses are tempered glass. Why, in a very unlikely event, should the lenses break it will only crack all over instead of shattering into your face. Next, check the nose pocket, is it comfy? Does it cover your nose well or is it too small for your nose? Keep testing until you get the right one for you. Remember, for you personally.
It does not really matter if the mask have double or single lens. At this point, you are already sure that you have found a correct fitting mask. So what’s left for you? Choose your colour if you should, get an extra strap or get a prescribed lens if you have to. Want a more sophisticated mask? Try the full face mask if available but I would not recommend those to newbies as it needs more experience and of course they cost more than a normal pair.
That is all for now. Hopefully this article can help you and others too. I did the same thing as I wrote and I had a blast with them until now. Enjoy your dive activity and yes, dive safely, that is the only way to enjoy it. If you want to do more things underwater, go upgrade your level or just keep collecting experience by diving more.
School days have started and the morning drive to work finally got super busy again. I kinda missed those half empty roads at 7 in the morning. But after seeing all those school children so excited to start their first day at school, I think it was not that bad. The road congestion of course can be avoided with strong will power to wake up and start moving literally earlier than usual. I am just thankful that I don’t normally have to rush to work due to the flexibility of being a freelance dive instructor.
Anyway, I have this habit of observing others especially while trapped in a jam. It is very interesting for me to see how many things a people can do while seating in their car during the jam. Some may be seen sending text from their hi-tech mobile phone. Some even try to catch up loss time by taking breakfast in their car. Most will just sit tight and listen to their music or doing some reading. Most would probably be smoking in their car as well.
Talking about smoking in the car, I did noticed one car with 2 children and a lady whom I guess is their mother. A normal sight of parents sending their kids to school. However, something was really wrong after I saw smokes coming out of the car. Being such nosy dude, I made a closer look and to my surprised the lady was smoking, while the 2 kids are in the car! Such an unthinkable action by the lady made me decided to write this post.
What was she thinking? To make things worst, I begun to spot more adults who simply light up in their car while having children in as well. Again, what in the world were they thinking? I myself is a smoker but smoking while having children around especially in a confined space like car is totally wrong! Maybe they want the children to follow their smoking habit at a very tender age. Maybe they only have less than quarter of their brain working. Maybe the brain doesn’t work at all. Some even spotted smoking while holding their babies in their arms! How outrageous.
I don’t think there is need to explain about how smoking affects children as we all know that already. I just want to know are these smoking adults realize how their actions may effect on the children. Or are they just being ignorant. Guys, send me a comment or two about this issue or anything you wish to share with me.
On December 2009, just after Christmas, I went to a cinema in one of the shopping mall in Kota Kinabalu. Me and my friends were planning to watch the biggest movie of the year ‘ Avatar’. As expected, it was crowded and we were lucky not to get the neck bending seat right at the front. We managed to get seats that were okay even though I thought it was a bit too close to the screen which made everything moved so fast.
The movie was after all not disappointing and worth our time watching it. Only a few glitch of course especially when they suddenly changed the Na’vi subtitles into Malay which was a bit confusing and funny. It was also annoying as they put some words into short term as if I was reading a confusing short text message.
To make things worst, right in front of us was a family of 4, the parents and a pair of twins babies which could have been less than a year old. At the other side, another couple with a probably 2 or 3 years old child screaming and whining around. Lucky for us that the audio was loud enough to compensate the extra sound effect around us.
However, what were these parents thinking guys? Don’t they ever realized they should not bring along kids let alone infants into the cinema? They must have no idea on how such loud noises can affect their children. They must have never think about the flashing lights that can damage the babies sight. I bet they want the kids to grow up with eye problem or even worst, hearing problems. I thought it was really inappropriate to take such a young kids to the cinema. Don’t you think so too? Maybe they were so desperate to go out and enjoy a movie but there is no harm being reasonable right. Grown up kids I don’t mind, they can enjoy the movie at least. But these a toddlers! How are they supposed to understand the movie let alone watch it?
They should at least leave their kids to someone to babysit them while they can go out and watch any movies they want. Or they could have just waited until the home DVD is out so they can watch together at home without disturbing others or damaging their kids senses.
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