Re-Prioritising

Less than 10 entries for the whole of 2013 so far and nothing without so little of a mention of work in (nearly) every single one of them. I used to scoff at people who had problems with their work-life balance but look at who's the one being laughed at now.

It's the continual assessment week right now and that could be the reason why I seem to be having slightly more time on hand for now.

It's been nothing less than awfully quiet in this little online space for the past few months. Thank god my 'offline life' has been much more exciting. Phew.

Saw some of the most amazing underwater sights and creatures up close while blowing bubbles in Moalboal back during the June holidays; definitely significant enough to have hit some kind of milestone in my personal scuba journey.

Breath-stopping to see such a large school/ball of sardines swarming towards me.

The sheer enormity and their wonderful synchrony truly blew me away.

Thanks to Bun's awesome recommendation, ST and I made our ways down to look at this little large fella and his group of friends. I guess I'll remember the experience of being flicked absent-mindedly by his/her tail for a long time to come; it was one of alarm, followed by relief, and finally amusement.

And this pair of mating Mandarins!

Didn't have a clue what I was looking at until I snapped a shot and saw the beautiful colours appear on my camera screen. They are probably smaller than half my palm and were darting into safety of the staghorn corals so quickly whenever the flash came up. Very comical and funny experience.

Apart from the awesome dive trip with ST, I also managed to squeeze in a 2D1N trip to Malacca over the long National Day weekend with the girls. In retrospect, I simply find it hard to believe we'd spent such crazy durations queueing for nearly everything; from entry into JB, to chendol and laksa, and a satay steamboat. 3 hours (or was it 3.5?) just to get a table at the famous satay celup place. Woah. You know they say there's always a first for everything... I believe that's also the last time I'm going to be heading to Malacca during their national holidays. All of us learnt that it's truly a terrible time to visit Malaysia (via land transport) during the Raya holidays. Mad queues aside, I had a good time catching up with our little 'support group'. And to be honest, most of the food that we queued up for were really well worth the ringgit. The only exception was the Peranankan cafe just beside the Peranakan museum around Jonker; I'm not that fussy when it comes to food but that's honestly a place I don't think I'd ever want to go back to; for dining at least.

And voila! That's just a glimpse of my 'offline life'.

I'm feeling slightly accomplished that I'm able to touch a little on my social life instead of solely work (again) this time round. clapforself.jpg.

Until the next entry (who knows when will that be), tata and good day.

Gilis, my way.

2.5 hour flight from Singapore to Bali, Denpasar Airport.

The Gilis (=island) are actually part of Lombok, Bali's next-door younger sister. When I tell people I dived in Lombok, I don't actually mean mainland Lombok, but I'm actually referring to this little cluster of three offshore islands: Gili Trawangan, Gili Meno and Gili Air. Gili T, the largest of the three, is also known as the party island, with the most number of pubs sprawled along the beach-front, and has most number of resorts/home-stays as compared to the other two Gilis.

There are a few ways to get to the Gilis, the most convenient (but most expensive) way will be to take a speedboat from Bali. It takes approximately two hours from Bali once you board the speedboat, and what's nice is that the speedboat companies usually provide pick-up service from your hotels/hostels in Kuta to the harbour. The last time I looked at the prices, it was 1,200,000 Rp for a return trip; that's about S$200 and a little out of my budget.

A slower but much cheaper alternative would be to take the public/chartered boat from Padang Bai. From Kuta, it's a 2-hour long bus/taxi ride to Padang Bai and another 6 hours of travelling on the public boat before finally arriving at the Gilis, 8 hours of transport time in total (not a lot actually if you're not in a hurry, but definitely not for the ones who get sea-sick easily). Perama Tour is one such operator that offers chartered trips to the island. If I hadn't read wrongly, the public boats are the ones where all the locals get on (hence, much cheaper), whereas the chartered ones are more for tourists.

Bali - Lombok - Gilis

I was almost going to decide on taking the public boat when I realized that the domestic flights from Bali to Lombok were not that expensive and not that long either. Looked up a few domestic flights schedules online and finally decided on Merpati Air. I paid 660,000Rp for return tickets in total, but that wasn't the end of it. After a 20-minute flight, I arrived at Mataram Airport in Lombok. From the airport, I took a 45-minute taxi ride to Bangsal Harbour; the road was long and winding, if I stayed another 15 minutes on the taxi, I'd probably have puked due to car-sickness. It cost me 80,000Rp; I'd initially bargained it down to 70k from 100k, but I was so afraid of all the touts at the harbour that I forgotten about what I'd bargained for that I just handed him 80k. Blah. Shrugging off the touts, I walked to the Port Office (white building) and paid 10,000Rp for a public boat ticket. There was also the shuttle boat ticket that cost 28,000Rp. Public boats leave once there are 20 passengers, whereas shuttle boats follow schedules (the last shuttle boat of the day should be leaving at 6p.m.). I didn't have to wait long, probably 20 minutes at most, before an announcement was made for people taking the public boat to hop on. The boat-ride took 40 minutes.

Finally on the island, I headed up to Manta-Dive to register for my dives the next day, dropped my bag there temporarily and walked along the street to find lodging. I ended up at Milani's Homestay, paid a 130,000Rp deposit and chugged my bag into the room. The room (actually, one building by itself) was big and spacious, and I got to sleep on a double bed(!), but there was only going to be electricity from 6p.m. to 8a.m., and I had to shower with cold, salt water. Not such a big deal anymore, when you have a comfortable bed to sleep in for the cold night, I guess. I was quite happy with both the owners (local family of four, with one more member on her way) and the room anyway.

I had most of my meals at a local warung called Kiki's, and the price ranges from 10,000 - 15,000Rp (S$2+). It is much cheaper as compared to many other eateries around the island that serves big seafood feasts.

lombok boat.

Most of the boats (local ones) I've seen on Lombok have two metal poles sticking out from their sides, supposedly to help in stabilizing on choppy waters, I presume. The one that I went diving on had those poles too. Before my first back-roll entry from the side of the boat into the water, I was so afraid that my head might knock into one of those poles. My fear was unfounded, the distance from the diver to the pole is too far apart.

My first dive-buddy of the trip was Bev, this English lady in her 40s. She works as a nurse back in Brighton, England and lives just beside the sea. By the time I met her, she was already in her 3rd week of holidays with her partner. When I told her I felt that smoking's like a social skill, she went like "Nah, it's not! It's a filthy habit!" even though she was probably onto her 3rd cigarette in less than an hour. Haha... funny lady.

My other dive buddies were Liz and Mandy from Holland, and Joel from Canada. Joel was there with his wife and baby for a short vacation (from working their asses off in Saudi), and they took turns to look after the baby so that either one of them could go diving. I think that's such a good idea; who says you can't bring your baby along for vacations?

first shark sighting in the wild in my life; reef white-tip. quite a number of turtles too; managed to get really close to some of them.

My divemaster for most of the dives was Kandar (or DJ, he tells me that's his clubbing name -.-). I like diving with him because he's really funny most of the time! On one of the dives, he forgot to take his packet of Gudang Garams out of his boardshorts' pocket. The moment he entered the water, he was like "Oh shit, my cigarettes!" No prizes for guessing right who went cigarette-less after we came up (okay to be honest some other smoker offered him a few sticks la).

christmas-tree worms; not that many of them actually. lobster; another first!

Most of the Caucasian divers that I've met on Gili T use air rather quickly underwater. They like to ask how much air do I have left after each dive and it usually goes something like that (a few variations)...

#1

buddy: ... so how much air do you have left?

me: Oh, about a hundred bars. What about you?

buddy: Whuut?!! I only have fifty left! Don't you breath underwater??!!!

me: ....

#2

buddy: ... so how much air do you have left?

me: Oh, about a hundred bars. What about you?

buddy: Whuut?!! I only have sixty left! Were you sleeping underwater??!!!

me: ....

buddy: ... so how much air do you have left?

me: Oh, about a hundred bars. What about you?

buddy: Whuut?!! I have seventy left and I thought I've done well! Do you like have gills or something??!!!

me: ....

white leaf scorpionfish, and an anemone crab. yet another two Firsts! Both were really tiny, probably like half the size of my palm.

Just to clarify, the conversations were between a few buddies, not just one. I was down for a good whole 71 minutes for my second last dive, and when I got back into the boat (with probably 40 bars of air left) with another DM, Pamela, everyone was like... "Exactly how do you do it?!! We've been waiting for you for the past 30 minutes." Quite funny, come to think of it. Do Asians really have smaller lungs? Or smaller nostrils? Or narrower windpipes? Ahh I really can't figure it out. Maybe it's really just the breathing technique!

batfish, a few different kinds there. and divers!

So while we were on the topic of 'who uses air the slowest', DJ suggested the two of us have a competition on our next dive. The one who has lesser air left a.k.a. the loser, has to buy the winner 2 large Bintang beers. Then he talked about how he would cheat by pumping more air into his tank kns. Lol. I was sooooo excited about the competition... but then I realized I was set to leave the island the next day. And he volunteered to bring me trekking to see the island's beautiful sunset but then the sky turned gloomy and he was appointed some duties last minute. Oh well! I hope the competition'll still be on the next time I visit them again.

beautiful gorgonian fan, and a scorpionfish.

In my humble opinion, I thought the visibility that I've had for almost all of the dives that I've had were pretty good, ranging from 10 metres to 15 metres. Dives were not that hard either, though there were a few sites where the currents were quite strong; though this has got more to do with the lunar calendar and the moon I guess? I saw a lot of creatures that I've never seen before in most of my previous dives even though you still get pretty much the same kind of tropical fishes. This must either mean that I'm finally more observant (just a little la), or I had really good dive guides. Seems more like the latter hur. Anyway, I felt more relaxed on all the dives I've had at the Gilis, save for the ones where the currents were really strong, and I'm really happy about it! Relaxed diving = Happy diving!

young lionfish and a moorish idol.

When the dives were over for the day, it was Kiki's with Mandy and Rene, and Rudy's for a drink after. Rudy's a pretty nice place, with a number of beach-shacks by the sea, some cushions, and really strong breeze. If you are interested, they also serve magic mushrooms and weed (as do many other drinking/eating places on the island). We met a really cheeky waiter at Rudy's.

Him: Hi! Where are you from? (to Rene)

Rene: Hi... I'm from Holland.

Him: Want some weed?

Rene: No, thanks. And where are you from?

Him: From my mother. -big, cheeky grin.

Don't know if he was high on drugs or something. Guai lan can. lol.

DJ and John, my other dive buddy (the one who said I have gills!)

Before I met Mandy and Rene, I had dinner alone at this place called Juku's. I thought I was going to walk back to my room for an early rest but this table of three invited me to sit with them. An Indonesian lady, Emma, a Caucasian guy, Raoul and a Japanese dude, Kano. Turned out the Caucasian guy is the lady's husband, and both the guys are doing Bahasa Indonesia at Mataram University.

After checking out ferry ticket prices back to mainland Lombok, the couple headed back to their room while Kano and I bought a bottle of local spirit (wine or something) and sat down by the beach to chat. It was really nice, the island didn't have much lights so the sky was clear and star-studded. We saw a few shooting stars in between our conversations in broken English, and I learnt that some words have similar pronunciations in both Japanese language and Mandarin. It was really nice, writing characters in the sand with the sea-breeze and clear night sky.

And that was the day (or night, rather), that I decided to invest in my very first bottle of OFF because I was getting stung so badly. I made sure it seeped into my every pore on every exposed area and my limbs were glistening wet with it okay. When I was doing research on the island, I read somewhere that there were not a lot of mosquitoes on the island as the air was dry. Bluff one, you have been warned that there ARE mozzies around if you ever decide to drop by the Gilis...

ps. I'm missing the place already as I'm typing this entry...

Mum's Birthday Present for Me

It was an all-expenses-paid dive trip to Redang the weekend just before school started! After about 10-odd bumpy hours on the coach and a 30-minute puke-inducing boat ride (not me), I finally arrived at Redang Kalong Resort.

For this trip, I brought along the new underwater housing for my G10 that the Ktowy gang got for my birthday. Just to play safe, I placed tissue paper in the interior of the housing instead of the camera itself for my first dive. Once we surfaced and the tissue paper looked dry enough, I replaced it with the G10 and brought it down with me for my second dive.

Descending with the housing was a problem at first. I didn't know what to do with all that extra air in my hands, and let it hang loose and allowing it to pull me up towards the surface when I (later learnt that I) really should have kept a tight grip on it.

let's go diving!

The visibility of the waters at Redang is the best that I've had in all three locations in Malaysia that I've been to; 15-odd metres when it was good. Anyway, we spotted quite a few bumphead parrot-fishes around; one or two smaller ones when we first descended, and a group of twelve really huge (!) ones for the third or fourth dives. They were chomping on coral when we spotted them, and looking at how they feed made me wonder how scary it'd be for one of them to suddenly come charging at us. Anyway, I had a really nice dream of them (and some sawsharks) two days back... it was beautiful.

in b/w so that it shows clearer

Another big creature that was seen was this big, brown ray lying on the sandy sea-bed. The usual rays that I've seen are the blue-spotted ones so this was really a first for me. I think they have a really bad reputation after the Steve Irwin accident, but seriously, they're pretty harmless if you leave them alone and just observe them from a distance.

can you spot the blue-spot?

Another first for me was the porcupine fish. I think it's one of the cutest fishes that I've ever seen, and I'm sure it'll be too when it blows itself up. My dive-mates and me were trying to decide if it was a pufferfish, or a really big boxfish (they're all in the same family)... until I saw the spines on its body while taking a look at the pictures. Stare hard enough and you'll see the spines too.

I spotted my first spanish dancer (a little pink one with yellow feelers) for the trip right after this shy, spiny fellow decided to hide under a coral plate. The porcupinefish must be my lucky fish or something!

Some of the smaller creatures that were spotted...

not too unfamiliar?

This is probably the one species that everyone is more or less familiar with, but they have cousins who look a little different from them too. Anyway, I think clownfishes are a beginner's favourite photography subjects. Reason being, they never wander off too far from their homes (the anemones) and they always look at divers so inquisitively and adorably that you cannot help but want to take a picture of them. Hur.

it retracts into its hole when it senses danger.

I think this is a tube-worm; the feather-like looking creature, correct me if I'm wrong. They remind me a lot of christmas tree decorations; I guess its christmas tree worm cousins gave me that idea.

And presenting to you....

the fattest starfish that you'd probably have never seen before! I didn't even realize it was a starfish until I saw there were actually 5 sides to it. This is the Pincushion Star, and it is usually mistaken for a rock of some sort (who is to blame though, really). One of our divemasters picked it up and there were tiny shrimps scooting around on it; cute.

And when there weren't any big interesting creatures around, I was busy looking for smaller creatures... like this nudibranch!

one of the more common ones around

People seem to like taking pictures of these sea slugs, and that's probably because they make really interesting photography subjects, especially the spanish dancers. They're quite fun to look for; it becomes something like a treasure hunt sort of thing.

angels.

Moorish Idols used to be one of my favourite fishes when I was 10 or 11; I used to think they look really elegant and graceful, with their long fins trailing above them as they swim about, like angels.

I had really nice dives there, though the variety of fishes and creatures spotted were more or less the same as what you can get at Dayang/Tioman, the visibility was much better, and I'm looking forward to heading back soon! If there's any way to arrive in Redang without the long bus ride, that'll be perfect.

underwater playground.

Till the next dive trip!

Tioman 8th - 10th May 09

My short getaway has finally arrived. This will be my second visit to Tioman, and my fourth dive trip. I was too lazy to whip out my camera, so credits to Shiqi, Cheelong and Chenghong for all the pictures in this entry.

the water looks welcoming, don't it?

The trip didn't start off very smoothly. We shared the bus with another three divers from Apache (I think), of which one guy was late, super late. I was totally looking forward to the petrol kiosk toilet break to fill my nearly empty (and rumbling) stomach with some hot instant noodles so you imagine my dulan face when one of the dive masters told us we had no time for a stopover because of that guy.

The rest of the group brought up that the driver sped throughout, but I thought it wasn't that bad. I guess I'm more or less accustomed to such driving... Hm. Or it could be that I was sleeping quite comfortably (due to my hunger) half the time. Heh. We reached the jetty about 30 minutes after we were supposed to have boarded the ferry, and lugged our stuff onboard to meet up with the other half of the group who were already there.

Instead of spending a night at Mersing this time round, we were heading straight to Tioman. I actually prefer it this way, lesser haste in the morning when we wake up. The sky became overcast with dark clouds as we made our way to the island; the lightning that streaked across the skies looked really intimidating and yet beautiful at the same time. Ominous, and foreboding...

in my red bandana, taken with kaiming's G10.

We slept in a different area this time round; I guess that's mainly because the 'Tioman Season' is in full swing right now and the rooms we had the last time round are taken up by the other non-diving holiday makers. The rooms were much bigger (so are the beds), and I can't thank god enough for hot water showers.

The dives this time round were only so-so, as compared to most of all my previous dives. I don't remember any previous dives where the visibility was as poor as this round's, and I didn't spot any turtles or baracudas this time down, or something that's more noteworthy than the spanish dancers. Without such noteworthy spottings, the dives were just not as satisfying. 

Yes, call me a spoilt diver. Nonetheless, I'm still thankful I get to dive okay.

with the Mok sisters, in the bikini that Siao got me from LA

Okay la, less interesting sights is not necessarily a bad thing. It meant more time to play around with my buoyancy. It's definitely better than when I first started; better hovering now, and learnt to make use of my breathing to control the buoyancy. I'm quite happy with two weights now (hey I'm sinking!), but I think I should play around a little more and try using just one the next dive.

Equalizing was quite a breeze this time round too; read: no more nose bleeds phew.

with sx; so nice to bend down eh :p

And after we talked about how we got thirsty underwater (all that dryness in your mouth with the regulator in it) sometimes, our divemaster, Kaiming made it known that you could actually drink Ribena underwater. SX and me brought a packet down each after. It felt so surreal okay; I was marvelling at the whole idea of drinking water underwater as I took my very first sip, and I guess I was too fascinated with the drinking process to notice that I was holding my breath.

Go read page where I linked to, pretty interesting.

deck. lovely weather.

And while I didn't manage to savour enough of the BBQ dinner we had the last time trip because of the night dive we had to go for, I made up for all of that this time round. Loaded my plate with chicken wings, squid, fish and I-can't-remember-what; dinner is the meal I look forward to most on dive trips. I love BBQ dinners la, especially when I'm not the one doing the barbecuing. It might not be the best, but it was definitely tasty enough for me. 

I love licking my fingers clean after a really satisfying meal.

shiqi's bending down to take a shot with me too... I feel embarrassed as I am typing this hahah

And I realized my love for ice lollies with jelly cores on this trip.

yum yum

I had like, seven of these in less than 36 hours. Very shiok I tell you, the ice on the outside is sour and will make your face giu when you suck or take a bite out of it, but the iciness of it makes the sourness alright. And the jelly core... it's sweet and absolutely a delight to sink my teeth into. 

The group started making fun of my appetite after they saw me on my 4th stick. hur.

1 dive instructor, 3 dive masters, 2 leisure divers, 2 advanced divers and 12 open-water divers

First trip to have a female divemaster (bottom row, extreme right lady beside me), and she shared a room with us. She's a really nice person, because she had the ice lollies with me! Felix and Rico didn't join us this time round; Felix is down with some virus that cut him off from scuba (hope he gets well soon), and Rico was diving in Phuket.

SX tried to press me down, I jumped up and hit his chin. This is the aftermath; don't worry, I wasn't in pain, laughing actually... haha

Oh and before I forget, one of the funniest (and probably worst) things to happen when you're on a dive trip is when you get left behind on the island while everyone else is making their way to the dive sites. I couldn't stop laughing when Kaiming asked the other divemasters where one of the two advanced divers was, and everyone realized that he did not board the dive boat in two seconds. (I'm still laughing as I type this) There was no signal out there as we were at sea, so it was impossible to make a call back to the main island to check; and basically, that poor chap was just stuck at the jetty as we made our subsequent dive. Tsk tsk SX...

Shit happens and I guess we're all glad he's stuck on the main island instead of out at the dive sites. Hahaha, don't say I zek ark, it's only human nature.

And that's about it for this trip!