Pay And Dive In

After much hard work, nerve-wrecking moments, little panics in the pool..etc...YES I GOT IT FINALLY!! (and my dearest ah lin will go "I waited four years!" haha I am so sorry girl!! but we can FINALLY go diving together!!!!=D) 

I am still waiting for photos to be uploaded on facebook for me to kope, so I will keep my Dayang Trip for another post:) So for now I should just share my experience during the lessons,not so much the theory but more of the pool session.

After much procrastination and delay..we finally got down to signing up for the PADI Open Water Diving Course with DIVENTURES!! (Much thanks to my sister's colleague for her good recommendation!!!)..I cannot say if it is better than other dive centres/schools (cus I have not been to any others), but I can say for sure that my experience with Diventures was one helluva GREAT one=D

So since my sister had her colleague to be the "middleman", we did not even need to go down to the dive centre to settle the stuff..we had our books collected for us, and she kind of liased with the instructor on our behalf...so it was really fuss-free for us:) I got the textbook about one week before the theory class..and IT LOOKED LIKE A PRIMARY SCHOOL SCIENCE TEXTBOOK=( It was quite a pain reading through the entire book..So came the theory class on Hari Raya Puasa public holiday..we spent almost the entire morning and early afternoon watching the video that covered the contents of the textbook..totally sleep inducing *eeks*..we were supposed to do our quiz (we had to pass these before taking the actual theory test), but when the instructor found out we did not finish our homework, he suggested another day!!! To be honest, I was one of the culprit, and only read 1 out of 5 chapters!!!hehehe...

About a week later, on an early Sunday morning, we trudged down to Outram Secondary School for our ONE AND ONLY pool session..the thought of cramming the things we learn in 5 chapters into 1 pathetic sessions chokes me..But I guess we survived it:) Ah Loong thought us how to gear up, and to be true, halfway through I was lost so I just follow whatever everyone else was doing..tsk tsk..Then we were split into 2 groups, I was under Felix with dear and my elder sister. And in to the pool we plopped. He told us he would go through the hand signals with us first so that we could understand him underwater. But before I knew it, he told us to get our heads down. Did he even go through the hand signals?! I really don't think so. The moment I got in, breathing through my regulator, I could feel my heartbeat racing!! I thought he will allow us to ascend after each drill, BUT NO!! He went through all FIVE drills in "one breath"..I was praying so hard for the moment he will give us the "good" sign to ascend!! And the 5th drill had to make the already traumatising 1st experience worse, we had to fill our mask with water and clear it. Okay it dosen't sound THAT scary. But trust me, after breathing through my nose for a good 21 years of my life, its not easy to switch to breathing through my mouth and having my nose exposed to water. I literally breathed in the water, and choked on my 1st attempt, failed on the 2nd one as well. And finally cleared it on the the 3rd, though still not that confident then. As the morning went on, I formed a better relationship with my regulator, and breathing the unconventional way got easier. I was more concern about water sipping into my mask and "drowning" my nose..Other than that, everything else went rather smoothly, plunging my head into the waters and depending on your equipments was not that traumatising after all, its just the matter of trusting them=) So I guess my boohoo during the 1st time, is because I did not know them well enough. 

Throughout the pool session, Felix kept encouraging us to complete our drills by saying "Do not worry, just do it..now you are still in the pool, so if anything happens or goes wrong, just lift your head up above the water." That is actually very true and kept me going and trying, I was more daring to go for it, because I knew that I could just easily bring my head above the water and I will be safe and sound. But how true is this for actual scuba-diving? I will be many many metres underwater, how can I just pop my head out so easily?! What if something really happens or goes wrong during the actual thing, what am I to do?! This got me really nervous for D-DAYS...D for Dive OR Dooms?!=S

Till I get the photos...TOODLES~~

♥ silence fall upon
1:30 AM