On the road again...

I just can't wait to get back on the road again...
Well, the wait is coming to an end.  Tomorrow I should be heading down to malaysia.  As is I've already overstayed my visa here by five days so I'll be paying a hefty fine when I get to the border.  Better than getting locked up in prison though I guess. 
Not sure exactly what my plans are, but I think I'll probably spend a few days in a hill station in the Cameron Highlands cooling off in the crisp mountain air and walking through the tea fields.  After that I'll head down to Kuala Lumpur to see a bit of the city and then on to Singapore.  There I should be meeting up with Dave -- the guy I'll be working with in Bangladesh -- to help him get things prepared to "mobilize".  After that I expect I'll head back up through malaysia, make a stop at the Thai embassy in Panang, then come back here, pick up the rest of my stuff, head up to Bangkok, get my visa for Bangladesh and then go work on the River.  At least that's how I'm hoping it will work out.  You never really know though.  Things change.
I'll successfully be leaving without finishing my Dive Master training =)  That should leave one person a bit peeved that he has to hang onto my file...  I'll be back though.  Who knows.  Maybe in between malaysia and bangladesh, or maybe after bangladesh.  Or maybe I'll just come back after heading home for September.  Speaking of which, I should really start thinking about those arrangements...
Take care all,
Jf

Die Verwandlung

It's been a good week. I had some really nice dives and the antibiotics I got for my lingering ear ache and cough seem to have helped.  

About a week ago I walked into the dive shop a little before noon intending to have a simple lunch and then go over to the other dive company where the friend I'll be working with works and try on a different full face mask.  When I showed up at at the shop, one of my friends was trying to recruit enough paying customers so that could arrange a spur of the moment afternoon dive on the small boat.  We have three boats -- big boat, medium boat and little boat (pretty much self explanatorily named).  One of them was taking students out for the afternoon and the other one was out for a full day excursion to a dive site that's further than the usual ones.  That morning a Whale shark had been spotted at one of the deep dive sites nearby though and Tom wanted to go whale shark hunting.  He succeeded in finding enough customers, but suddenly realized nobody was around to take them out so as I was eating my lunch he asked if I could lead a group of four.  Hmm...  Sure, why not.  Let me just call and see if I can reschedule my other plans... 

A few minutes later I was packed up and ready to go.  Tom, another DM, 12 or so fun divers and I all hopped on the truck to the pier, got on little boat and headed out to Southwest Pinnacle.  Ok, leading fun dives isn't particularly complicated, but it helps if you know the site and know where all the interesting things to see are.  I'd personally only done it once and that time all I did was take two girls out and make sure they got back to the boat when they were out of air.  The site we were going to is a gorgeous one but I haven't dived it too much so far so I wouldn't be the best tour guide -- fortunately the customers had only dived a few times themselves so they didn't really know any better...  Half way through the dive I heard somebody banging their tank and assumed that was the sign that the whale shark had been spotted.  Unfortunately I didn't catch the signal clearly enough -- five bangs followed by a pause and then the location -- one bang for north, two for east, three for south, four for west.  Fortunately I saw Tom and he had heard and understood the signal. 

So off we were.  We rounded the pinnacle and there in the distance I could just catch a glimpse of it.  I turned around and pointed to my divers and tried to hurry them in that direction in hopes they too could see it before it swam too far off to see.  Three spead off after it but when I looked back I saw one was hanging behind -- she had tiny feet and wore small fins that don't do much for propulsion...  Obviously the first rule of taking divers out is not to lose any of them so I turned back, grabbed her by the tank and kicked as hard as I could until we caught up with the others -- unfortunately too late to catch up with the shark...

The two guys in my group were low on air so I sent them back up with another group meandered around for another five minutes with the girls before heading back up to the boat.  That's when the fun really began.  I don't know exactly how it happened but we pulled up anchor, moved the boat a bit and then somebody saw it.  Just off the starbord side of the boat the whale shark was swimming around on the surface -- within 20 seconds everybody was back in the water.  Some actually took the time to put fins on but I just jumped in with my mask.  We spent the next half hour swimming around the surface with it while some other divers swam under it.  Then we hopped back on the boat, got geared back up and jumped right back into the water for one of the most unusual dives I've had here.  Normally you go down on or at least near a boughy line that the boats tied up to and one that's there for a reason -- some formation of coral on a rocky pinnacle, but at this point we weren't anywhere near a divesite anymore.  Just ten of us, a whale shark and the deep blue sea.  Soon after getting in the whale shark decided to descend -- 5 meters... 10 meters...  15 meters...  20 meters...  We followed.  Then he changed his mind and headed up to the surface.  At this point I thought it might be a good idea to find my two divers -- the girls sat the second dive out.  When I saw them and we exchanged our OK symbols and swam after the rest of the divers I noticed the crowd was growing.  We were no longer 10 but now more like twenty.  I looked over and saw one of my friends Sarah waving at me.  Huh!  She wasn't on our boat...  Then I turn around and see Kris.  Kris!!!  Suddenly it all made sense.  I knew he'd gone out on the full day boat to Sail Rock.  Apparently they'd heard about the whale shark on their way back and decided to meet up with us.  Later I heard that they had all entered the water right as the whale shark left us for the surface -- in fact it probably left us to see who the new arrivals were!  So now's where the dive got a bit wierd.  I had no idea where we were but figured we'd be fine as long as we all stuck together.  I couldn't see the whale shark but I assume up at the front somebody could and was following it because we were swimming.  Thirty euphoric divers swimming through the nothingness joking around with their unexpectedly reunited friends.  Eventually we all just stopped.  Tom went up to the surface, came back down, borrowed somebody slate and wrote "Southwest 60 degrees".  We all looked at our compasses and like a flock of birds flying in a formation 30 divers turned northeast more or less in unison and headed back to the boat. 

Back on the boat we had the brilliant idea of packing up quickly and transferring our gear over to medium boat so we could ride back in comfort like civilized people -- not to mention have a beer (not a normal occurence on the boats but stocked specially for the end of the day long excursion).  It's hard to convey the mood.  Whale sharks are kind of that elusive thing that everybody else seems to see but some people always miss.  I know a girl who's been on the island 6 years and has never seen one.  Other people come for a few dives and see them every time.  So imagine a boat of 30 divers.  Some of them here for a week amazed at their good fortune and others here for longer likewise euphoric about the strange twist of events that brought all of us back together for such an odd and unexpected and fun reunion.

 

The next morning I woke up and headed over to "big fish" to assist on an open water course for another company.  Henrik was taking out two students and during the surface interval between dives I was going to try on another full face mask. This one was bigger, heavier and zipped all the way on and then tucked into my wet suit -- so there were no exercises to take it off an put it back on again under water.  While I was there though he said I was welcome to join them on the class if I wanted to dive.  So now I've dived with two companies here.  That afternoon we went back out on a longtail -- thus named because the propeller is attached to a long stick that the boat boy lowers into the water and maneuvers to stare rather than using a rudder -- and tried out the GPS again.  This time we attached the echosounder to the stick so that it was pointing down rather than the boat...  amazingly the water was in fact deeper than 1 foot. 

 

The next day I was asked to assist on the last two days of a german open water course.  Interesting but a bit frustrating because the instructor was brand new.  The students were great but she had them all wearing wet suits one or two sizes too large and carrying too much weight.  As the DMT though it's my responsibility not disagree with her in front of the students...  Poor guys.  She took so much time to do all the exercises that they never really had any time to dive.

 

Finally spent the next two days just going on some fun dives.  It's the half moon so the difference between high and low tide is at a minimum which tends to give the best dive conditions -- low currents and good visibility.  I ended up going out with a new DMT and here's where I finally come back to explain the title for this entry.  Die Verwandlung -- that was the original title to Franz Kafkas short story "the metamorphosis".  An austrian friend of mine is just about to finish up two weeks of instructor training.  I asked him a few days into it (sarcastically) if he could feel the transformation taking place.  I was searching for the word and thought Verwandlung from the Kafka story was fitting. 

Well over the last week I've been thinking more and more about the transformation I've gone through.  You don't really notice it happening because obviously it's just one of those slow changes that comes with experience.  but then you go out diving with somebody who's new and you realize now you're the experienced one and it's your turn to lead the dive and show the other guy around.  And he's looking at you and expects you to actually know what you're doing and where you're going.  Then you think about it for a second and realize you do! 

"Hmm, White Rock.  This is one of the favorite sites which you'll find we go to so often you may quickly get sick of it.  There's a turtle that sometimes hangs out around 210 degrees off the south boughy.  Wanna go turtle hunting?"  And just like that you realize two months ago somebody was saying pretty much the same thing to you.  Ok, I know that doesn't sound like much of a transformation.  That's more like moving into a new town and slowly learning where all the cool places to hang out are.  It's more than that though.  I don't know exactly how when or why it happened, but a few weeks ago I noticed I wasn't using the flutter kick anymore.  I've almost completely switched over to the frog kick.  I remember when I was a new diver I asked a few people why it was so popular with experienced divers.  One of the answers was it doesn't kick up as much sand.  The other day I was out with a dive master who took two "paying customers" out for a fun dive.  They were new but they were good divers.  They weren't waving their hands all over the place.  They had good boyancy control.  But I noticed when they swam close to the sand they tended to kick it up.  Then I looked down my chest at my feet and noticed I was even closer to the sand but wasn't kicking any up.  "Wow, it's true, the frog kick really is good for that!" 

Navigations gotten a lot easier too.  I know jumping in the water and swimming in one direction, then turning around and swimming back doesn't sound all that complicated, but you have to understand.  When you're down there, you can't see as far.  That and the location of the sun isn't as obvious so it does make it a bit harder to just keep going in a straight line unless you check your compass rather frequently.  And that's something that's slowly becoming more habitual -- constantly keeping track of what direction I'm headed so I'll have a general idea of which way to go back.

Mainly it's just a matter of confidence though.  It's a good feeling.  

 

Ok, I need to get going.  Still not sure when I'll be heading to bangladesh, but from what I hear it sounds like things are finally starting to happen and it should be relatively soon...

ciao,

Jf

things change quickly...

Well a day after I last wrote the guy showed up again.  I guess when he said he was coming back saturday, he meant the saturday a week after I expected because he was indeed back on Saturday...  Anyway, the bangladesh trip is still on, just not sure exactly when.  Last I heard he expected we'd be going late this month.  From life experience though I have to assume that's probably a hopeful expectation.  So maybe later.  Who knows.  Will just have to wait and see.
In other news, I'm now a bar man.  Two nights ago I spent my first time on the other side of the bar!  Woo hoo!  My resume is really shaping up now!  Mostly I just served beer and helped clean up, but I did make a few cocktails.  Next time I'm sure I'll be making more and before you know it I'll be a regular Tom Cruise from Cocktail =) 
Not much else to talk about.  The other day I went out on a boat with another dive company (the other guy going to bangladesh works there) and we played around with a GPS and echo sounder that we'll use for surveying the river before we lay the cable.  Then he took me out to try on the full face mask that we'll be using when we occasionally need to go in the water.  It was different.  About ten minutes under water after taking the mask off, putting it back on and clearing the water out of it I suddenly remembered I could breathe through my nose if I wanted.  I'd gotten so used to breathing through my mouth under water...
That's pretty much it for now.
Take care all,
Jf