Another weekend underwater :)

Life is full of contradiction.

How can a dive trip be LEISURE and yet so stressful???

This past weekend at Dayang was so fun and relaxing, and yet at times so challenging when suddenly great responsibility was placed on the shoulders while underwater. Here are a few snapshots in words… pictures to follow soon!

Ø Thomas had high fever for both days – so high that Kim and I took turns skipping dives so that we wouldn’t leave him alone, so high that his total number of dives over the weekend was an outstanding two, so high that there was actually the possibility of his being stopped at customs on the way in due to the current H1N1 epidemic. Thank God we reached home uneventfully.

Ø We saw two morray eels in one day! A rare treat...

Ø Jason’s sinus was blocked so badly that on the second day, he skipped the two dives totally because it was too painful. Ben and I led the dives instead, using his dive computers to double-check for each other. Ben was the lead man, I was the last lady. It was fun, exciting, scary, and totally thrilling. And we had a whale of a time.

Ø Grace L dropped her fin on the second last dive. I whipped on my mask and looked down to see it slowly sinking away from us, pushed away by the current. It looked like a scene from Titanic or Bourne Supremacy. Because we had been diving at 20+ meters for about half an hour, our tanks were all low on air and I had to chase after Kacey who was descending after the fin, to stop him. I tugged at his BCD, pointed to his meter gauge which registered 20 bars of air, and signaled to him not to go down. It would have been dangerous because by the time he reached the bottom, he would have run out of air. Instead, the two of us boarded the boat, changed tanks, and then went back down to 26 meters to search for the missing fin. Faced with strong current, bad visibility, and no decompression time, we limited our search to five minutes before ascending back up. It was the singular most stressful moment of the diving trip for me, but it was definitely a good experience. Too bad about the fin, though.

Ø There were several pleasant surprises to and from Dayang as well, in the form of glimpsing an occasional dolphin or friend. :)

Ø I realized that you can learn a lot of interesting things when talking to DMs.

Ø We took pictures, I got to meet and make new friends, and we reached back to SG at 9PM.

**She had to drag herself to work today...**