Friday, October 30, 2009
Halloween party tomorrow night, yeah!
I just realised that hosting a Halloween party is very hard work - one of the most difficult ones to host, if you ask me. You need to be in theme. And the trouble is, everyone knows the theme, and have some sort of expectation. Some think of a costume party, some like to have the sh*t scared out of them, some think it'll be cheesy neon lights and fugly lame costumes. Oh dear.
My decor isn't great. Just the usual cobwebs, a little creepy music that Yx found (I'm actually thinking of the songs from Pan's Labyrinth), and of course my skeleton, Stan. Hmm. We're getting some dry ice for a bit of effect, and there's also the food.
Freak. It's a lot of work.
Wenky
10:30 PM
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Tuesday, October 27, 2009
This is an irritating time to get sick. Down with a cold, and aching everywhere. I suspect it's part of the reason why I was so irate yesterday. Had a shouting match in my clinic with some dumbass.
Read all about Marcus, the ophthalmologist who passed away in a diving mishap this week. Too young, too soon - hope he rests in peace. According to the press and hearsay on dive boards, he was using a rebreather instead of the usual open circuit scuba that most people are familiar with. I don't know - he's really experienced, and if you ask me, I would say equipment malfunction probably has a lot to do with what happened. I think the dive operator needs to be hauled in for questioning and the rebreather seized and inspected. And it doesn't help that the press makes the whole sport look like it's some high risk thing.
Just out of curiosity, I went to dig out some figures. According to statistics from DAN (Diver Alert Network), the annual accident rate for diving works out to be between 0.011-0.02% per year, while US data from the National Safety Council reports an incidence rate of 0.094%. These numbers account for both fatal and non-fatal incidents. DAN is a non-profit association providing emergency medical services and evacuation for divers where you subscribe to them like you would for insurance, so the difference in numbers above can be attributed to both different populations (world-wide average vs US data) and demographics (divers who do plan for emergencies vs those who may or may not have emergency evacuation plans). The numbers do look small, but I suppose it's one of those things that are like a comparison between train collision rates vs roller-skating accident rates - when things do happen, they have a higher chance of being fatal in the former, safety figures notwithstanding.
Just as an aside, we had an interesting exchange with Grahame - our AOW instructor - about how some dive shops operate locally. As someone who's been through this before during our basic open water, I can say that it's just not safe, and accidents are just waiting to happen. Very typically of Singaporeans, people want to get certified asap. The basic open water cert requires 4 open water dives. What local companies do is to leave S'p on Friday evening and return on Sunday evening, as locals don't seem to want to take a day off just for this. So you basically arrive at your destination on Saturday early morning (4am, in our case), and go for your very first open water dive of your life at 7am. Safe? I think not. I knew we had a bad time, and it was really not enjoyable at all.
I probably won't stop doing dives, but will still stick with what we usually plan for - shallow dives (above 20m) so we can do a controlled emergency ascent within 1-2 minutes, tight buddy system (Yx, you need to quit swimming *above* me so that I can see you!), prepare to surface as soon as the tank pressure gets to 50 bar, and of course reputable operations with competent divemasters/guides - that extra $5-10 of savings per dive just isn't worth the risk.
Our next trip should be somewhere in Feb next year. We can't afford Palau (or rather, *I* can't afford it), so we're making do with the Gili Islands in Lombok instead. Not world-class diving for sure, but I don't need spectacular cliffs and drop-offs to make my day.
Wenky
10:30 PM
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Been feeling sort of disgruntled lately. I think it's a post-holiday kind of thing, and I'm itching to go away for more. Financial constrains, however, dictate that I'm not about to go anywhere till next year at least.
We were discussing places to go for our honeymoon, and I went back to look at the wondrous place we stayed at in Bali. Oh wow .. I never realised it was that expensive. Or maybe I've just gotten used to spending $100/night max recently. Or more likely, my less-than-decent salary these days have changed perspectives a little. I mean, the Oriental goes at >$200 a night for a tiny room. =) Haha, good way to feel better about spending on accommodation.
Time to go figure out how to manage those funds ..
Wenky
7:27 AM
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Sunday, October 18, 2009
Trip Report - Tioman Island 2009Finally back from our trip! OK, other than the diving and meeting up with friends, there honestly was nothing memorable about this trip .. which says a lot about our accommodation and food.
Day 1We set off in the wee hours, taking this dingy little van up North (4 hours including a rest stop), followed by a 1.5 hour ferry to Tioman. The main purpose of this Tioman trip was to complete our advanced water course, plus the enriched air nitrox course - in preparation for an upcoming (real) holiday somewhere early next year.
It turned out that the
resort chalet decent hut we were living in was situated right at the eastern end of the beach, while the dive company was at the western end. In any case, I was slightly disappointed as all the instructors were busy then, and we ended up with no dive at all on our first day - just 2 large books to read and study. The horrid place we stayed in was called Nazri's Place, which for some unfathomable reason was rated as "recommended" by a couple of diving discussion boards. Fascilities were spartan (to put it really nicely), water literally trickles out of the shower, the room smells, and worst of all perhaps, was the indescribably poor fare the restaurant offered - at a premium, no less. We paid RM7 for a plate of "fried rice" .. who would ever imagine that the ubiquitous fried rice could be end up being gross, right? Wrong. Dinner was settled elsewhere, as you might have guessed.
We went out snorkelling at the house reef, and it was dismal compared to Berjaya's (a 10-minute boat ride away, but alas, at 3-5x the price for accommodation). We did see a couple of eels though, plus a nice fat little blue-spotted stingray and some other critters.
Day 2Yay! Compressed air day!!
The usual pre-dive knowledge review, going through worksheets and theory, and then we were in! Our first dive was the Peak Performance Buoyancy lesson, which was taught by this remarkably cheery Australian chap called Michael. He was actually here on a dive holiday, and roped in to teach as well (and yes, he's more than qualified!). On hindsight, this was actually one of the most important lessons we went through, and I felt really good about it at the end of the dive. We got through all the exercises quite well, I'm glad to say - including weighting ourselves down correctly, hovering, breath buoyancy control, and at one point even a head-down position in which we were suspended for a while.
Second dive (Navigation) was taught by Grahame, this elderly Englishman who looks to be about 65 but has a fitness level to put the vast majority of us to shame (refer to our first Nitrox dive the next day). Yx was initially quite intimidated by him, as he was strict and spoke in a booming voice. But as with all things when it comes to learning, strict can be good. And anyway he turned out to be a most amicable chap with a Londoner's sense of humour. We did all the exercises in navigation, and right at the end of the dive, Grahame decided to test us on our buoyancy! He put a weight (about the size of a wallet) standing up on the seafloor, hovered right over it in a kneeling position, grabbed hold of it with his knees, floated around for a while, and replaced the weight - all without using any fins! Ha .. a master at work indeed.
Our last dive of the day was a night dive, one which I enjoyed very much indeed. I was initially a little apprehensive - going into the deep in pitch darkness isn't anywhere on my to-do list - but in the end we did it. The sea was totally calm, with no currents at all, and all the fish were sleeping. We almost trod on a blue-spotted stingray in the shallows though, and when we reached the sea floor at about 10 metres, we blocked off our dive lights and waved our hands in the water - whoa! Bioluminescence! It was really, really amazing. Yx didn't have such a great time though - she got stung by something (maybe an urchin?) and kept pointing at her calf. I got thoroughly excited, thinking she had a cramp in mid-water, and proceeded to do the usual thing for cramps. Anyway, we eventually surfaced after 35 minutes, and floating on my back paddling back to shore in the depths of darkness with hundreds of stars in the night sky was one of those magical moments I had.
Got back to the hut, and studied our nitrox tables and formulae well past midnight.
Day 3Still bleary-eyed, we got up super-early and headed off for our first dive at 9am, which is a deep dive at a small island called Cheveh. Got down to 31m, but neither of us felt any nitrogen narcosis symptoms. Oh well. There were loads of giant seafans around, and we were just a wee bit disappointed cos Grahame actually spotted a manta ray at Cheveh yesterday, but we just weren't lucky enough! Tonnes of great marine life here, with low to moderate current.
Our second dive was done with nitrox 32% at a shipwreck site, and this one was HORRID. I swear, I almost drowned on this dive - at the surface. The surf was horrid, and I ended up battling waves for 5-10 minutes (seemed like forever) to get the the marker buoy which marked the shipwreck spot. The waves kept crashing over my head and getting into my snorkel pipe, and it really seemed a futile exercise cos I'd fin hard to get ahead by 1m, and another wave crashes over and brings me 1m away again. So I really started panicking at one point in time, and by the time I reached the marker buoy, I was puffing away like I just ran a 400m sprint. Not a good start. =( On the other hand, Grahame was perfectly fine and looked as if the surf wasn't there at all! (When I bitched about the surf to him later on, he replied simply with "Those were great conditions! You should try diving the south coast of England ..") We eventually reached the first wreck at 28m, with Yx snapping away at photos. I ate through my air extremely quickly for this dive, partly due to the moderately-strong underwater current running against us, and partly cos of how I started this dive.
After a brief shore break, it was time for our second and final nitrox dive, once again done on EANx32. Thankfully it was a shore dive, and we went to this area called Ghost Town. It's an artificial reef, made up of maybe 10 pyramid-like structures. Very, very eerie. The bottom was super-silty, and we kept stirring it up no matter how we concentrated on buoyancy. In the end visibility dropped to 2-3 metres cos of all the sediment. On the plus side though, as we were heading back to shore past a staghorn reef, we saw a huge hawksbill turtle. His carapace must have measured more than a metre in length, and he was blissfully oblivious to our presence, munching on goodness-knows-what amongst the Acropora. Nice!
By some coincidence and a little planning, one of the airforce MOs was also on the island, and we took a water taxi to visit him at the Berjaya Resort in the evening. What we didn't count on though, was bumping into Freddy too! He's with the navy and they were also doing some exercise there, and it was his land break day. Nice to meet up with friends in the middle of desolation. Loads of drinks then, followed by a spectacular episode where Jeff tumbled right off his chair to land spread-eagle on the beach after a jug of Blue Lagoon. =)
Wenky
10:04 PM
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Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Still on the subject of remarkable mimicry, check out the halimeda ghost pipefish. A member of the order Syngnathiformes and related to seahorses, this particular species mimics the Halimeda plant. In the second picture, there's one of them nestled amongst the Halimeda.
Wenky
8:14 AM
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Monday, October 12, 2009
2 more days to go before we start breathing compressed air again! And this time, it'll be Nitrox. =) As we'll be on course actually, I don't think we'll be having like holiday fun. But still, it's a getaway of sorts. I remember our first trip to Tioman, when we stayed at the Berjaya and snorkelled their excellent house reef every single day - we couldn't get enough of it, even with urchins everywhere. Accommodation this time will be much shabbier, however. Shall see if we can squeeze in some time to do a bit of photography using our new toys.
Dreaming about Bali again. It was such a nice place.
Oh yeah, and I chanced upon this amazing sea slug while browsing through some critters. It's called
Phyllodesmium rudmani, and feeds on Xenia corals. The amazing part? It actually looks like Xenia! Check this out -
The sea slug:
And a typical Xenia coral:
Nature and evolution at their best.
Wenky
11:20 PM
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Thursday, October 08, 2009
Nuts, nuts, nutsBrownie went nuts this week over a bitch, who I believe is a stately lady some 2 times taller than him. Yes, he tried to mount a huge labrador, and is now pining away. Seriously, the number of times I wake up to him howling this week ..
Yx and I went nuts yesterday. We dropped $850 on a lightbulb. And also on a little plastic box to put our camera in.
I am nuts. Period.
Wenky
11:30 PM
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Sunday, October 04, 2009
Spending my time today during weekend call, salivating over some prospective holiday locations. Right at the top of the list is actually Palau, in Micronesia. But alas! It's horrendously expensive (akin to a trip to Japan, I suspect) and getting there is a complete nightmare - expected for somewhere that's in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I suspect the total expenses for a decent trip there (week-long) will cost in the territory of $3000-$4000 per person. I'm really whacked by the thought of swimming in the Jellyfish Lake and the spectacular diving there though. Maybe for honeymoon? Or when I get richer.
Talking about diving, Yx and I will be going for our advanced certification soon. We've originally convinced ourselves that we don't need anything more than a basic open water cert, since we love the shallows, but a look at some of these potential holiday places showed that many of the dives require an advanced certification - at least for the night dives, and deep dives. To be completely honest, I don't think the advanced certification will help very much. And I'm honestly not that fussed about night diving (think "sea monsters"). We did a couple of rather difficult dives at Nusa Penida in Bali such as drift diving, which is only covered in advanced level, and chances are we'll never go diving without a guide anyhow. =) Oh well, at least we're also getting certified for Nitrox at the same time! This one will be really useful, especially for oxygen monsters like me. And maybe one day we'll go back to Bali with an advanced cert to see the Mola Mola.
Still trying to get my paws on the underwater casing for Yx's G10.
Wenky
8:59 AM
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