AOWD Certified! (Part 1)

Hahahahhahhahahahahahahahahahaahahaaahahahahaa.... I'M AN ADVANCE OPEN WATER DIVER NOW!!!

So now i can go as deep as 40meters underwater and can go for night dive! My next mission is to go Wreck Dive. Actually it was because of my curiousity for night dive that i persue my Advance and now after i have my Advance, i would want to try Wreck Dive because of curiousity. Underwater World is amazing! Trust me!

Well, overall, i did enjoyed my diving trip. We have 8 people doing Advance (Team A - Sim, Joshua, William, Eddie) and (Team B - me, Greg, Gin, Stanley) and 4 people doing Rescue (Odett, Siew, Dave, Yew Hong). Altogether 3 girls and a bunch of guys. Actually this trip is organized by mostly Shell workers, i just tag along so i only know Odett and Stanley and well, i had the opportunity to meet other passion divers like me. ;) so now i will have kakis (legs) if i want to go diving!

Pic 1: Our dive sites

1st day - 31 Aug 2006
The first day was terrible. I only had 1 dive and it was a refresher course, my instructor, Richard Tang just taught us the basic techniques that we used to do during Open Water Dive which i have forgotten most of them. So the 1st dive was a struggle to me especially doing the mask removal technique, i'm really lack of confident in doing this even during my Open Water dive last year and this year is even worse. After removing the mask and holding it with one hand, somehow or rather, i keep on feeling that the water went into my nose whenever i exhale so i will use another hand to close my nose, so no more hand for me to put back the mask (*all this are done underwater at about 5meters and below ok!*) Goosshhhhh... i was so afraid, sure will drink some salt water, water goes into my nose and eyes! And i have to do this techniques few times during my dive this year coz my instructor just want me to have my confident to do it, everytime when my instructor wants me to do it, i will show him that i'm very scare. It's an important technique just in case your mask really came off during your dive, you know how to put it back.

So my first dive was sucks. I was disappointed and upset at my performance because last year i did it well, i'm considered quite a good diver among my other diving friends who took Open Water with me. But well, looking at my 1st dive this year, i wanted to give up. Finally i told myself, i will give myself another try tomorrow.

2nd day - 1 Sept 2006
We had 4 dives today. :D And it was FANTASTIC!!! Of course tiring. Actually most of the time, we are all in our swim gear, never take our proper bath till late at night coz all of us need to gear up for diving when it's time for us to dive.

1st dive for today is early morning at 7.30am. We gear up, set up our equipments, wearing our wetsuit, putting the BCD properly with the tank with the regulators on it, making sure we have our weight belt, mask, fins and did our buddy check and there goes, up to the boat early morning to do our DEEP DIVE! :D We went to Nibong Laut for Deep Dive to 29.5 meters deep and did some maths at 29.5 meters deep water to test if we have Nitrogen Narcosis which will cause us to do some silly thing and to see how fast our reaction can be at the deep water, we tend to be slower in our thinking. We were only at 29.5m for 10 mins then we go higher up coz the deeper you are, the more oxygen you will take. :D During this dive, i saw 3 huge puffer fish.

Pic 2: Puffer fish

Then, did our safety stop at 15 meters 3 mins and 5 meters 3 mins and up to the boat. But well, my buoyency wasn't that good yet so i didn't enjoy as much as i can coz i don't know how to go near to the things i want to see.

2nd dive is a shore dive where we do our Underwater Navigation with compass of course. So my buddy, Gin and i will have a bearing given by my instuctor and we go our way out in the sea to find our way back to where we begin our dive in a square pattern, clockwise and anti-clockwise. So when i do the navigation, my buddy will have to keep me at the bottom and make sure i don't swim to the surface because i will be busy looking at the compass when i swim, then we will change position and when my buddy is doing the navigation, i will assist her so that we stay at the bottom. :)

3rd dive for today is when we do our PPB (Peak Performance Buoyency) and it's the skills that i'm most satisfied off learning in my dive trip this time. I thank God that i catch the skill, this is the skill that i can control my whole self underwater, how close i want to get to the corals, how to stay at that position to look at something without moving. We did a practice with our buddy with plus and minus one weight of ours and give it to our buddy to see if each of us still can stay at our position without moving. It was fun and i really want to thank God that finally i catch this skills, it's the most important skills i would say for a diver.

4th dive, the dive that i'm anticipating for since last year, NIGHT DIVE!!! Because of my curiousity, that's why i take Advance for Night Dive only... hahahhahaha.... We need to use our torch of course and we have to do underwater navigation alone underwater in the dark, our instructor gave us a bearing, we are suppose to go out alone in the dark with our torch one hand and another hand with compass, swim 15 kicks and come back to the position we start ALL ALONE! Well, i'm not afraid of this and i manage to come back to my position. Only one girl get lost during this navigation so my instructor have to go to find her... hehehhee... After all of us done with our practical, we swim around and spot for different species that swim out at night. To my surprise, we sawwwwwwww a HUGE HERMIT CRAB!! Bigger than combining my 2 palms together.
Pic 3: Example of a Hermit crab. The one i saw is with a white shell and red body. HUGE!!

Pic 4: Get together to discuss about what we have learnt earlier after a tiring day....

3rd day - 2 Sept 2006
Today, we only have 2 dives, both are enjoyable because no more practical things to do but only mainly focusing on fishes. :)

Our first dive is only at 10.30am so only today, i start taking out my digital camera and take a couple of shots. Today, the Rescue divers are also having their paper test so there goes, Odett, busy studying and each of the Rescue divers will have 4 scenarios to do to safe lifes. So whenever there are people shouting for help, our instructor will call them by name to help the victim.

Pic 5: Odett studying and Stanley besides her.

Pic 6: Greg from UK, another Advance student like me.

Pic 7: Yew Hong trying to safe unconcious Dave

Pic 8: Our instructor examining the Rescue Divers

Pic 9: Doing CPR

Pic 10: Doing CPR

Pic 11: Clap clap... pass pass... :)

Pic 12: Our dive centre, place that we get our equipments ready...

Pic 13: Another scenario for Dave to safe Yew Hong this time... :)

Pic 14: CPR

Pic 15: In the main time while waiting for my dive, there I'm taking pics... Thanks to Greg.

Pic 16: Nice beach...

Pic 17: Odett is the victim now and Siew suppose to safe Odett

Gears up! Is our turn! Diving for today!

Pic 18: Yes, getting ready for diving... heavy!!!

Pic 19: Team B: Gin, Stanley, Beckz, Greg. Another thing, Team B is always efficient, we always get ready first.

Today we are learning Aware Fish Identification for our 1st dive so our instructor wants us to have a competition between Team A & Team B to see which team can identify as many fishes as we can, so each of us will have a slate to write it down underwater and we are suppose to change buddy, each from different Team so we can't copy each other's answer. So my buddy for today is Eddie, good buddy. :) We gears up, did our buddy check and there goes to the boat!

Pic 20: On the boat

The very first thing i saw as i descent from the water was a huge huge turtle. (*Well, i'm good at my buoyency now, so i know how to descent fast after learning from PPB!*) While i'm waiting for my buddy to equalize, i went close to the turtle before the turtle swim away so i had a close look at it. Huge, amazing, pretty! Many people didn't see the turtle because the have problem equalizing.

Pic 21: Turtle swimming away when the camera man approached.

Pic 22: Some stewpit fisherman put a net underwater and caught some parrot fish, really so poor thing, i nearly cry when i saw that...

Pic 23: No no, our instructor wants everyone to remove mask again!!!! :( I'm scare and i failed again!

Pic 24: Our instructor lead us to play something too... somersault underwater. We did it alone first and then we do it together with our buddy holding to each other's BCD.

Pic 25: What are we waiting in the middle?? Hahaha... safety stop looo...

So Team B won for the fish identification competition and i actually jot down the front and back of my slate of those fishes that i see, eventhough i don't know their names, i just put, yellow fish, blue fish, yellow and black stripe, big eye fish... etc. and we won... hahhahaha

Then we had 1 hour break for lunch and continue our 2nd dive (last dive for this trip). For this 2nd dive, we went out using big boat and this time, Siew and Odett becomes Team B's dive guide whereas for Team A, Dave and Yew Hong becomes their dive guide. In this trip, i saw an eel!!! First time seeing an eel who look at me when i'm looking at it.

Pic 26: This is not the eel that i saw, just want to show you the pic but it looks like this. I don't believe that i encounter it myself.

And i saw a yellow box fish when Odett and I trying to look for it under a small rock, Odett peep from one end of the rock and i peep from the other end, and the yellow box fish got no where to go so we saw it... hhahaa...

Pic 27: Yellow box fish! Cute! And believe it or not, i saw it again on the way back from the shore so close to me... oooo.... :) (*Tks Siew, for this pic... hehehe)

Pic 28: After every dive, we are suppose to clean all the equipments... actually we spend a lot of time gearing up and cleaning equipments than diving itself... hehe

Pic 29: Then all of us have no choice but to relax at the canteen because no water in our room, so we cannot clean up...

Pic 30: Final exam for Rescue Divers...

Still no water, so i went sun bathing... ;p slept for a while on the beach and being pulled by our instructor to play volley ball...

Pic 31: Volley ball

Pic 32: And GRADUATION!!! =)

4th day - 3 Sept 2006

Saying bye bye to Lang Tengah, Terengganu for this season!

Pic 33: Team A and Beckz

Pic 34: The whole diving team! =)