Thursday, September 29, 2005

Dive Photos from Dive Trip 16-18 Sept

um. i forgot to post the pictures. not that there're a lot. but still. better late than never. oh well. here they are.

wen was dreaming at 12:08 AM

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Wednesday, September 28, 2005

diving related post, ignore if irrelevant.

not feeling very wordy. hence.

www.tony-wu.com

go visit. he's a diver photographer writer. and his pics are pretty cool. plus i love the way he writes.

i'd take photos too.

but diving photographing is pretty expensive.

and i'm broke and jobless.

anyway, torts is over.

and my contract essay still sucks.

and it's due tmr.

hurhur.

waiting for lawr.

wen was dreaming at 3:10 PM

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Monday, September 26, 2005

it's always raining in my head...

current mood song: epiphany - staind

current location: bumming in library. no, i am not mugging, and no, i'm not a closet mugger. (besides, i can't mug and post at the same time. actually, i'd be rather impressed with myself if i could)

thoroughly disgusted. i've just finished my contract essay. on consideration and promissory estoppel. and i consider it the worst piece of crap i have ever officially written. (minus random poetry and sappy notes) for one, i wrote it over 5 days. so i forgot what i was doing when i started all over again. and so i just carried on with a new train of thought. and 5 different trains don't look very pretty together. plus these trains were borrowed from all over. i have anson's train, mckendrick's train, walton's train, high trees' train, and a random train from all over. so basically, the ideas repeat themselves. and nothing makes sense. and i don't know what i'm writing about. just that it's a disgusting piece of crap.

and you know what's even more disgusting? i'm actually happy that it's all 'completed' and i don't plan to touch it anymore. not even with a long stick.

i suspect this melancholy was brought on by an onset of monday blues, extreme cold in the library, pure frustration and sheer boredom. however, it's nothing a good round of squash won't cure. or a nice supper.

wen was dreaming at 5:32 PM

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Thursday, September 22, 2005

because

wen was dreaming at 2:31 AM

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Monday, September 19, 2005

Aur (Sebukang) - NUS Dive Club Trip 1!!!

I'm aching all over. Especially my heart.

Just got back from another dive trip, this time with diveclub and while the dives were good, the rest sucked. As I commented to some of the learner divers, everything that could possibly go wrong is going wrong, except for the dive equipment. Such as the fact that the tide was too low, and we had to wait at the jetty for 5 hours for the tide to get higher so the speedboat could come in to bring us out to the big boat. Such as the fact that my first dive was 2 hours later than it ought to be, so I missed out on a possible dawn dive (not that I would have done it, seeing as the water's freaking cold, but it's always nice to have an option open). Such as on the return trip the bus had no aircon. And we had to wait for it to be repaired. And it broke down again after the causeway. And the place we wanted to eat dinner at? They were having a wedding banquet. (But I learnt something new...in Malaysia, their wedding dinners actually start on time, and end before 9! I wonder...is tardiness for weddings just a Singaporean phenomenon?)

And everything that went wrong? We came up with a one-size-fits-all irrefutable argument for it. It's all the new comm's fault....

Anyway, my first two dives more than made up for it. Here's an excerpt from my dive log, edited of course.

Dive 1 (Sebukang Bay): Saw moray eel. Eel posed for a shot. Saw 2 cuttlefish. Played with
them. They posed for a shot too. Saw a cute little turtle. Turtle was shy.

Dive 2 (Lang Bay): Saw moray. Someone kicked up lots of sand. But moray didn't hide. Saw BIG turtle. Like, the size of Mark. Big turtles swim really fast. Saw school of barracudas. Pretty sight. Saw triggerfish chasing bumphead.

As for my other dives, they weren't particularly noteworthy. I should've just stayed on land and played mahjong. Especially since my mask kept flooding (and I still can't figure out why...)

On my boat ride back (I lost at mahjong and had to take the smaller boat, but hey, at least I got to see flying fish!!!) I had a insightful conversation with this IANTD instructor. Btw, IANTD stands for International Association of Nitrox and Technical Divers, which is a different form of diving, like there's PADI (the commercial one), NAUI (the NUS one), and SSI (the other one). IANTD's rather technical, cos instead of air, you breathe a mix of oxygen and nitrogen (yes that sounds like air, but trust me, it's different), and that allows you to go deeper, stay underwater longer, and have a shorter surface interval. Basically, there's a higher composition of oxygen in the mixture. And that prevents you from getting decompression sickness and nitrogen narcosis. Strange and obscure diving lingo? Basically, those are bad things. It sounds really fun. But the course is like $600 plus. And that's not including the equipment you'll probably need. But I might learn it one day. Suffice to say, we spent about 4 hours on the boat discussing diving (he was talking, I was listening, mainly because he's got 13 years of diving experience and I have 6 months) and I learnt that he's really lucky, because he's a full time diver, and his work is diving. And he gets paid to dive. And I wish I could just do that as well. Throw away law school and spend my life sailing. (this goes back to a long discussion I had back in JC....)

It's really strange what you learn on dive trips. Like where the good dive sites are. And how much you still don't know about the underwater world. And how girls these days are awfully odd. Like how they refuse to let you carry their heavy dive bags when they're obviously struggling and you're just watching with nothing in hand. But hey, who's complaining? Chivalry's dead anyway. Hooray for feminist rights. Or maybe I didn't ask enough times. Someone once told me about the 2 question rule, which is like when you ask a girl something, you have to ask twice or more. So she can politely refuse the first time out of form's sake. But maybe I got it wrong.

I also learnt something new. You never know what you really have until you lose it. Like love. And affection. Like how you've always counted on someone being there for you, such that you end up taking said person for granted, and totally neglect the person. And when said person leaves, you realise how much your world relied upon that person, and there's a gap that nobody can fill. And no matter how much you try not to think about it, the emptiness is always there, like an ache that won't go away. The empty seat beside you, the echoes of lost laughter, the missing camaraderie. Well, it happened to me too. My Oakleys, I miss you so....

Moving on, you get strange dreams on the 4 hour boat ride there. Like my friend dreams of manta rays. And I dream of staring at the sea, seeing flying fish and enjoying the waves. Oh wait. I wasn't dreaming. It's funny sometimes, how when, staring at the sea, with nothing in your mind, the things you thought you forgot come back to you. Like the dreams you once had. Like how you planned to be happy sailing around the world and with nary a care in the world. Or to be a beach bum and spend your days suntanning. For that brief 4 hours, reality's suspended and you're a kid with dreams and hopes again, and the horizon's endlessly stretching forth. It's like you're on a high, eventually, you're gonna hafta hit the earth hard, but while it lasts, savour the moment. Then you get back to Singapore, and the dreary reality hits. There's no time for dreams here, no time for clowns who have their head in the clouds and listen to Disney songs all day. People have to study hard so they can earn big bucks in future.

You're a law student, with a closed memo assignment due today when you're still happiliy blogging away.

wen was dreaming at 2:02 AM

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Sunday, September 11, 2005

Diving Photos (Advanced@Aur)

As promised, here's the photos from my last dive trip (still no camera, so the photos're all courtesty of my nice dive buddy...) Though I'm sure I'd take a whole lot more photos to post if I had an underwater camera....*hint hint*

wen was dreaming at 2:12 PM

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Monday, September 05, 2005

ups and downs

I went diving this weekend. Atlantis Bay Resort, Pulau Aur, 2nd to 4th Sept. Back to the spot where I first got my Open Water, this time, to get my Advanced. For those who don't know, here's what you need to do for PADI Advanced Open Water: learn to navigate underwater (I believe they do this in NAUI Open Water...at least, I saw people with compasses walking around with pails on their heads during Dive Camp), do a night dive, do a deep dive, and a multi-level dive. Most of which I'd done before, rather illegally I might add. But then again, rules are made to be broken generally right?

So, some eventfuls before I wax lyrical about the beauty of the undersea world. (By the way, most people travel overseas for a holiday. I do things differently, I go under the sea...)

This trip, I went out with a whole new group of people, but one remarkable thing was, I wasn't the youngest guy around this time!! It was a 13-year-old kid. Lucky boy. I mean, if I had the opportunity to dive when I was 13...man....I'm how envious. And I'm terribly impressed, I mean, he came out alone. And how many 13 -year-old kids would forfeit a school holiday to go diving alone with a bunch of strangers? Or to that effect, how many parents would let their 13-year-old son go diving with a bunch of strangers? My parents still aren't comfortable letting ME go diving. Okay, he got seasick and all, but hey, for a 13-year-old kid, he dives better than some people I've seen. At least he doesn't panic underwater. Or murder cute little Nemos.
And talking to the people on this trip, I realised I've really gotta make use of the time I have in NUS to dive dive dive. I mean, yes, I'm broke and all now, but at least I've still got the energy and vitality (sorta...). Past a certain age, you may have the money, but you probably can't find the time, or take even longer to recover from a dive (one of the guys told me he usually aches for 2 days after returning from a dive, which totally shocked me, cos I never knew you'd have a bodyache after diving....)

Some other notables:
We got dropped at the wrong spot (current was pulling us away from the reef rather than towards it) so instead of climbing back on board and shifting location, we opted to be lazy, hang on to a rope and let the boat tow us. Important: Never do something that stupid ever again. Reason being, while it's considered good fun to be dragged behind a speedboat at insane speeds, most of the time the ropes have a nice handle covered in rubber. And not a thin nylon rope that slips through your grasping fingers. So, the next time you see Jackie Chan or some other Hollywood star get dragged through the water by a speedboat and hanging on to a rope, and still find the energy to climb up the rope and back on the boat, remember, it's all FAKE!!! Because merely hanging on to a rope towed by a fishing boat was the most hellish ten minutes of my diving experience. And looping my fingers around the rope nearly got them removed.

Night dives are fun. You lurk in total darkness, and save for the glaring underwater lights everyone is using to see and which makes everything underwater seem as bright as day, the sea is pitch dark, and a far cry from the sunlit corals of the day. Okay, so I'm rambling, but the main thing is, a night dive is really fun, although really cold as well (I actually wore a wetsuit for once, cos it was raining and I was freezing so much in the last dive my extremeties were numb). You get to see a lot of fish sleeping (meaning you could theoretically sneak up behind them and get a free dinner, not that I'd do it of course!) and a whole lot of other stuff that don't come out during the day. Only problem is, it's quite a solo dive, cos whenever you try to show somebody what you just saw, it probably already ran away cos your light startled it. And there's no point going around without a light, cos you can't possibly see without it. So, I guess it's a lose-lose situation, and hence we might as well just enjoy the dive and forget about being friendly...

I'll post the pictures when I get them from my friend (the disadvantages of not owning an underwater camera...), and yes, I've finally managed to upload pictures on my blog again! (for those of you who have been wondering why my posts've been so boringly wordy, fret no further!) So I'll let the photos speak for themselves and save myself the trouble of remembering what I saw. Because I'm lazy. And sunburnt. And very sad.

Sad because life is full of ups and downs. Which is a good thing, because if you didn't go up and down, you'd never be able to dive much. Sad because the roof of the boat was leaking so I didn't get much sleep. Sad because I'm sunburnt. And because I have no more money but I still want to dive. And buy diving equipment. Sad because there's no hot babe who's diving with me (but alright, that's understandable). And lastly, sad because some Malay fisherman (or fisherwoman) out there has my FREAKING OAKLEYS!!!! Yeah, I'm rather distraught here. But I can't really blame anybody other than myself, because I accidentally left my shades overnight on the boat. And just because it was safe to leave the dive equipment on board....didn't mean that it was safe to do the same with shades...apparently. And I got to see some magic in the bargain! I left my shades in my mask case, and the next morning, the shades had transformed into....a hairpin! WOW.... But nevermind. I lost my shades. Which cost a lot. But I learnt a lesson. And life is fair. The person who stole my shades will wake one day to find himself drowning in pork. Or with a pig in his bed. And so there.

I dreamt of you again. I wonder what it meant. But now you're gone, and I won't see you for quite some time. So I wonder.

wen was dreaming at 1:38 AM

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