Fishes are friends, not food

Seeing fishes as your favourite dish served to you and having them swimming around you to a different experiences. Finally taken up my open water diving course after delaying it for more than dunno how many years.

Over the long weekend, went up to an isolated island of our northern territory neighbour. The journey up was tiring, especially when you missed your ferry and got stranded at the jetty for more than 5 hours. Sleep was not an option, since I dun like to just sleep for a short while and got disturbed.

Mistake. The short while was actually pretty decent enough to get some rest. Rest is very important, especially when you are a new diver. Did grab some rest when we finally board the ferry to make our way to the isolated island. But it was no good rest.

It was not very exciting when you feel very giddy,nausea and having bad headache after each dive. That was what happened for my 1st 2 dive on the first day. Between the dive, I just gotta grab as much rest as I can rest. My instructor attribute the sickness to new divers since new divers mostly cannot breathe properly. Oh yeah, all experienced divers will tell you that diving is about your breathing. How well you control yourself in the water attribute very heavily to your breathing.

When you dun move forward in a straight line but bouncing up and down as you move forward, its highly likely you will feel nausea. When you rotate in circles, you will feel nausea. When you accent too fast, you will feel nausea. When you have a lack of sleep and breathing so much compressed air, you will may feel nausea. Too many attributes, one sickness. Damn.

But once you can control it, its really amazing. Swimming freely in the water, playing with tramatizing with nemo, chasing after turtle for tonic soup, poke puffer to see how much it can bloat itself, deciding if you should catch that stingray for BBQ at night adds in to all the fun. Ok, I'm joking. If I'm doing any of those, I'm probably banned from diving very soon by my instructors.

In fact, we were quite lucky for our course. Because there was only 2 of us, me and my course buddy, so things are done pretty fast. In simple words, everything chop chop finish. Do the skills chop chop, we can enjoyed faster. Actually we did. By the 4th dive, we were already going to a diving site that many people want to go and see but was often cancelled due to strong current and other factors. But luck was with me us. Although there was a fair bit of current, and it prove no easy for us who were still on course, we still did it. And best, we even went 18 metres down! Considered a lot for someone still on course.

Really kool! Its worth the energy. Its really a beautiful sight underneath. Since there was a fair amount of leisure divers around, so my instructors let dive first. Me and my buddy were the last. But just seeing those people jumping off the boat and to get to the buoy point was tiring enough. Another open water course fella (from different school) was drift away, can't even make it to the buoy point. You won't understand the feel till you jumped in. I tell you, swimming against current was no joke, and if that is to be considered as mild. Actually once you manage to descend down, it was much calmer at the bottom.

My dive and I were pretty adventurous. My instructor went over to help out with the advance open water divers, so told us to go easy and just swim around and have fun. Wow. So kool! We are still on course and we can swim around liao! Steady bom pee pee lor! He just tell us to maintenance eye contact. We did! We jolly did. Me and my buddy maintenance eye contact. Instructor never mention the eye contact was with HIM wah. Not our fault wah! So we go disappearing on him on that particular dive, scaring him! We appeared and disappeared in front of him 3 times. So when finally back on land, he went nagging on us!

I had my night dive as well. Consider the fact that my first leisure dive is my night dive. But my night dive is not as fasinating. Did get to try a lot of things. But it is also during that dive that I learnt something. Divers taking up advance open water course doesn not mean they are better than you. Does not mean they hover better than you. Does not means they can maneuver better than you.

Marine life that I can recall seeing include a small turtle, plenty of nemo, stringray, bumphead, pufferfish, baracuda, and [insert color]-tip. Time to go reading on those fishes. Recognising them under water is also a good way to impress char boh, especially new divers. Ok, time to plan for my advance open water course.

Oh, did I mention that the is a very small world? First I meet an online friend whom I have not yet for eons at the diving school. He is a diving instructor with the school. Then during the trip, met another salsa personnel. Though I do not know him personally, but he's been blessed knighted honored with a title of power driver. He seems to have use a little too much strength in dancing that he twisted a personal friend of mine. Her hands lah. What you are people thinking? But too bad, no chio bus on this trip. What a pity.