Showing posts with label diving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diving. Show all posts

Monday, November 10, 2008

Open Waters - Pulau Dayang

(warning, this is a real long one)


What a complete failure! I am officially a dive drop-out. I went for the first shallow dive and decided to give up altogether, so the dive trip became a beach holiday for me. Let's start from the beginning:

After travelling for 4 hours on a bus and another 3.5 hours on a boat, our whole dive group got to Dayang at 4am in the morning. Barely 4 hours of sleep later, we were woken up and the bunch of us drowsily trooped off to wash up and have our breakfast.

In the first dive we were supposed to run through the drills
1. ditch and don the mask,
2. ditch and don the BC,
3. ditch and don the weight belt
4. ditch and don the regulator

The first dive was the most shallow dive (well, from what I heard, since I only went for just the one) and round about when I reached the bottom, I had a massive headache and my breakfast was more or less ready to come flying out of my stomach. In my defence, I managed to tolerate this general queasiness for quite a while, but when I was going through the 'BC ditch and don' drill, I stuck my hand through the wrong hole and then things started getting bad. Subconsciously I kept finning, which meant I was slowly shooting upwards. Just before I hit the surface I realised I was too high, so I stopped finning and sunk down. When I tried yanking my hand out of the wrong hole again, I subconsciously started finning again...essentially I was shooting up and down for all of 6m. Needless to say, if I was feeling sick before, after that bouncing up and down in the water, my breakfast was ready to be unleashed. I signalled to the instructor that I had to go up and up I went.

I know everyone's going to go on about how it's so beautiful under water and that there are so many different kinds of fish, but frankly the sea is just a big seafood menu to me, when I see any sea creature, I think of how best to cook them, and I end up getting mighty hungry at the end of any trip to the aquarium. Fish just don't interest me all that much.

So I spent a lot of the time this weekend alone chilling by the beach. Thank goodness the beach was lovely. Powdery sand, clear blue waters...Saturday was a beautiful day, so I spent it swimming, sitting in the sun and just being lazy. At night, I watched more football than I ever watched because there really isn't much else to do. Not that I'm complaining. I'm all caught up on football now so I can go back to neglecting it for another month.

In all, despite not diving (which was why I went to this wee little island in the first place) I rather enjoyed this weekend. I made wonderful new friends and I had a lovely time sitting around really, really relaxing and not having a care in my mind. I wish the living conditions had been a bit more 'tourist friendly' though. I didn't feel clean my entire time in Dayang, and sleeping with a sleeping bag on the bed, is not my perfect way to be resting. All that aside though, I'd give this holiday a 7 out of 10, simply because I haven't had a beach holiday in such a long time.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Pool Session

Had my diving pool session yesterday. It felt completely unnatural and was essentially one of those 'why am I doing this? No human being should strap on flippers on their feet and breathe under water' moments. Not that I've had a lot of those moments. I've still got my doubts about whether I'd enjoy diving, but we'll see what happens. It's off to the gym for my personal training now and an hour of torture. Not that I haven't had enough last night!

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Dive Class

I went for dive class last night and I have since learned that there numerous ways I can be severely injured or die from diving. Way to sell the sport! I'm not sure I'm going to be a huge fan of the sport (somehow it doesn't seem like a sport to me, more like a hobby...I'm sure diving enthusiasts would be up in arms now), but I said the same thing when I first took windsurfing and here I am a year later with my own personal (albeit secondhand) board and sail.

I'm going for a short run tonight. I'd go for pilates but I'm really in an angsty mood and need to get some meaningless pounding done. I have these moments full of random pent-up frustration over nothing (which in turn makes me more frustrated) and the only thing that would ease it is mindless repetition. It'd be better if I brought music out with me, but being the scatterbrain, I happily (sorry, angrily...because I'm in THAT mood) left it at home. So I shall be out running tonight, angry and music-less.