Saturday, April 19, 2008
Losing My Virginity Part 5 (finale)
Albert had problems with his ear. Trapped air. Everything he heard sounded echo-ey. It hurt too. Underwater, he said it felt like there were amplifiers attached to his ear as the bubbles he produced sounded real loud.Jasmine had problems of being too buoyant, and was constantly hovering above us. Rizal had to hold on to her BCD to keep her down. But on our very last dive, she aced it and was swimming alongside us, and not above us.
Lewis dreaded the surface skills cos he got drowsy from the rocking of the waves. He hated BCD recovery on the surface too, finding it a problem to climb atop a fully-inflated BCD, position his buttocks and to slide the thing back on his back. He did it eventually, so yay! When asked to do navigation skills with use of a compass on the surface of the water, he took one look at the compass on his left wrist, and then pushed his arms aside and started swimming, breast-stroke a.k.a. frog style! We all burst out laughing.
And me - After one of our shore dives, was walking on the beach, heading back to the dive centre with all the gear still on me, felt my tank slipping out from my BCD! Guess I didn't secure it properly earlier on. Thank goodness it only came off when I was already out of the water! After that incident, for the rest of the dives, I was extremely anal about tightening the clasp that held the tank, fearing it coming lose underwater.
But, despite all the drama that ensued, we had a blast, an ABSOLUTE BLAST. Each and every one of us.
Yes, I look like a ding dong here don't I? But a happy ding dong.
On our last evening in Tioman, we proudly donned our 'Certified PADI Diver' tee shirts.
Basking in the glow of sunset, we logged our last dive, which was coincidentally, the best of the 6 dives we had.
When it came to calculation of the pressure group and the RNT and all that, we required some jogging of the memory and directions from the instructor. Heh, we conveniently let it slip from mind after passing the theory paper.
While we busied ourselves writing down our comments and noting the things we saw, Lewis, being the visual person that he is, produced sketches of the types of fish. Of course, while logging the last dive, I wondered when I will be doing this again.
To Lynette - A big, big, BIG heartfelt THANK YOU to you for being an awesome instructor, for sharing with us your passion and love for the sea and its inhabitants, for showing us a whole new world, for being YOU. Looking forward to the many dives we will be doing together :)
To my new diving buddies - Jasmine, Lewis and Albert, we had fun didn't we? Let's dive more, and don't any of you ever stop! I also look forward to the many, many dives we will be doing together in future. The sea awaits us! And oh, I think we should spread the love :)
To Rizal - Good luck with your Advanced certification and have fun in your upcoming Tenggol trip!
To you reading this - are you a diver yet?
If you are, I look forward to dive with you too. And yes, I've still got heaps to learn! But if you're not, THIS is a good place to start.
I still keep to my word - scuba diving is the best thing I've done in my 27 years, and it will probably be one of the best life experiences I've had when I lay on my deathbed doing my reflections.
God, I can be so morbid.
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Photo Credit - Lynette Yee
Posted by Doreen at 6:28 pm
