Dive!
19 Sep 2007 – Hey everyone! You are now officially reading the blog of a PADI certified Open Water Diver! Whoohoo! Yes! Yes! I’ve done it! From 16 – 18 September, Marcus, Jason and I took a crash course in diving, and man… now we’re totally hooked! I must admit that on the first day, when we had to do the exercise of removing our mask underwater, I totally freaked out and almost, just almost threw in the towel at that point. But thank goodness my dive buddies, and especially our instructor, Harvey-He’s-the-Man, were so patient and encouraging that I somehow managed to curb my fear, and stuck it out. Yep, and it does get easier and easier with each dive. Of course, drowning down a whole bottle of Rescue Remedy probably had something to do with it.
But panic attacks aside, the rest of it was sheer unadulterated fun, fun, FUN! And frankly, I am sooo lucky to be doing it in an environment like the Maldives because even for our confined water dives, instead of doing it in a pool as you would typically do in a city, we already headed out to the lagoon where there was plenty to see, thus making the experience much less daunting and a lot more colourful. Haha, and I also had great dive buddies (yep, that’s dive lingo, “buddy”) who were just cracking me up all throughout the course, yes, even underwater! Have you tried laughing really hard underwater with a regulator in your mouth?!? Fish aside, the next best thing had got to be doing forward and backward flips underwater. The boys also showed off some sub-aqua Matrix-like moves – absolutely side-splitting hilarious!
It was perfect! The absolute best experience I’ve had since coming to the Maldives. Hey! That’s what coming to a place like this is all about right?!! So yep! Guess where I’ll be come my next off day? Down Below! Rock on!
See what I mean about the boys?!?
Underwater Hand Signals?!?
Haha, gearing up to look the part!