"Got No Troubles, Life Is The Bubbles"

Hey folks,

It is quite amazing to think about the achievements of the human race sometimes, and of nature even more so sometimes! I have seen so many spectacular things over the past few months that it often makes my head spin how it is all possible. But human beings have a unique ability to do things that merely seem impossible, or if not impossible, against nature's will and therefore quite exceptional. The two examples that come to mind the quickest are underwater exploration and space exploration, but since I don't count on joining NASA or being able to go on a public tour of the moon anytime soon, I guess I'll have to settle for scuba diving. And after the past week of exploration, I can say that it is one word... exhilarating!

My home base beach on Perhentian Kecil

Before beginning my scuba diving course to become certified as an open water diver, I was quite nervous because it would cause me to be severely out of my element and there are extra risks involved for a diabetic diver. Add to that all the risks included in the PADI manual and I was beginning to wonder whether diving was for me. The three major risks involved in diving are: holding your breath, squeezes, and decompression sickness. Holding your breath is incredibly dangerous because air is compressed when you are deep underwater and when you ascend, if you have held your breath, that air will expand and cause lung injuries. Squeezes occur when you don't pinch your nose and blow when you are descending because your nose and ears are air spaces and the air needs to released. Otherwise, you can end up with a ruptured eardrum and an uncomfortable healing process for several months. And finally, decompression sickness occurs when you spend too much time underwater and have so much nitrogen in your system that it doesn't release naturally when you emerge from the water, resulting in nitrogen bubbles in your skin all over your body and some painful symptoms. All these warnings got me into worry mode, something further accentuated by my Jewish upbringing...

But once I had my first experience underwater, my fears and anxiety dissipated because I knew I was in capable hands and I would escape not only unscathed, but very enriched for having put myself outside of my comfort zone. Turtle Bay Divers made me feel calm and relaxed throughout the whole experience, and supremely curious and motivated to learn all I could to advance my skills quickly and complete the course confident and desiring to dive at every opportunity. I enjoyed the reading about diving and ended up scoring a 98% on my final exam for the course, my only mistake being one so silly, I have to attribute it to still being half-asleep at 8AM. For those of you who know nothing about diving, this next paragraph is for you. For those of you who have dived before, I apologize for stating the obvious...

The basic equipment for diving consists of a tank, a regulator used for breathing, a secondary regulator as a backup for your buddy if he/she runs out of air or has a problem with his/her tank, a BCD which is like a life jacket but you control the amount of air that it contains in order to adjust your buoyancy and become weightless underwater, a weight belt to allow you to sink to the bottom, a console which consists of a submersible pressure gauge to tell you your depth and how much air you have used up as well as sometimes consisting of a watch and a compass, and a mask, a snorkel, and fins. Once all geared up, you can enter the water by falling backwards off the boat, after you have performed a buddy check to make sure everything is working properly. You can descend either by using a buoy line at the site of the dive, or by doing a free descent if there is not much of a current and you are a confident diver. Throughout the course, I learned how to clear my mask of water, what if feels like to run out of air, how to adjust my buoyancy with breathing (breathing in makes you float up, breathing out makes you sink down) and with my BCD, how to ascend without any air at all (and without holding breath of course), how to hover in one spot, how to use a compass underwater, twenty-five different hand signals to use with my buddy (excluding those used for different kinds of aquatic life), how to share air with a buddy, and how to retrieve my regulator should it come out of mouth...

When I started my first dive, my breathing was a little quicker than it should be. I was assured this is normal because everyone is a little stressed when they first adjust to breathing underwater. After all it's not "natural"... By my fourth dive though, I wasn't using as much air and could extend my dive by about five minutes which I was quite happy with. I hope to get even better with each subsequent dive because I know I have big lungs and use up my air faster than others and I want to be able to find a buddy to dive with who won't be mad at me having to surface early! I even found out how to treat low blood sugar underwater (although I didn't get the chance to practice the task) and I developed signals with my buddy if I should need to surface for some food...

The 180kg Humphead Parrotfish

The underwater world is quite incredible, and once past all the skills and worrying about my breathing (and simply surviving!), I took in all my surroundings, plenty of which were completely unique and new to my eyes. I got the chance to swim alongside beautiful coral and tons of marine life including: blue-spotted stingray, cleaner shrimp (which clean other fish like a carwash), blue-ringed angelfish, map pufferfish, titan triggerfish, raccoon butterflyfish, blacktip reef shark (not at all scary!), a school of yellowtail barracuda, flatworms, beaked coralfish, orange spine unicornfish, and a humphead parrotfish (which weighed about 180kg!). Now that I have completed the course, I am hooked and I plan on heading out for a fun dive tomorrow!

I am so happy I took a chance and became certified as an open water diver! It is a great life skill to have and I picked a beautiful location to get the training. The Perhentian Islands are quite spectacular and I will be sad to leave in a few days although I know Malaysia will continue to treat me well and I still have plenty of things to look forward to!

Ciao for now,

Max

P.S. Easy one, but try and guess what song the blog title comes from!