Adventure Time with Keri!

After a few days of not doing much except for studying my DM book, filling out secondary grad applications, and hanging out with my family, I was getting a bit bored. Being lazy for a long time isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. Hahaha.

The food is always good, though. =)

Running around the plantation...getting stuck. Haha.

Skipper loves to nibble.

Chilling outside enjoying the breeze.

The dogs like to chill with us too. Haha!

Thursday I got to go assist Sandrix who is the newest DM at the company…and by new, I really mean he started working there while I was here last time…but I never got the chance to really meet him or dive with him until now. These past few days we’ve had a big group from Hong Kong (HK) come to dive with us, and by big, I mean more than 8 ppl. There were 13 guests and 4 DMs so we took two boats. Since I had never really met Sandrix, much less dive with him, I was a bit hesitant as to how we’d get along…thankfully he’s the loud, obnoxious, and hilarious type and we got along just fine, even teasing and beating each other up by the end of the day. Haha.

So anyway, as I said, we took two boats. DMs Roslee and Black were on the other boat with half of the guests. We did our first dive at Kapalai and it was quite nerve-racking to have two groups in the same area and have to watch your group. The phrase my brother (a DM as well) told me when I started training last week came to mind, “Don’t count fish, count divers!!!!” Hahaha. I am forever counting divers!! We ended up losing two divers to the other group b/c they weren’t paying attention…and then there were two others that mingled with our group for a while. Lol. It was quite hilarious. I found out quickly that they are all good divers (meaning I don’t have to go chasing after anyone or dragging them around), they love taking pictures and taking their time doing so (which means they are forever dawdling), they don’t like to come up when it’s time to surface, and they love to be loud (on land…not in the water…haha). But, they are a great group and are entertaining, which always makes for a good time.

It's diving time!!

Roslee!!

Our second dive was at Mabul (under an old oil rig that’s been transformed into a dive company where you can stay) and this time we admonished them to try harder to keep with their own group. Haha. They did better, thankfully, although their dawdling almost killed me. Hahaha. I hope they got amazing photos! Speaking of photos, they love taking pictures of EVERYTHING….including me. Hahaha. It’s really funny b/c almost every one of them wanted a picture with me and there were cameras all up in my face at random times. It was hilarious b/c we were joking that Sandrix needed to be my agent, but thankfully they took pictures with the other DMs too.

After our second dive we had lunch and docked at one of the homestays at the island. I got to finally see one of my friends, Dendy! We walked a bit around the island b/c they wanted to buy fish for that night’s dinner…which they also invited us to (a common Chinese custom is to invite the DMs to have dinner with you…or something along those lines, I forget…haha). They had forgotten to bring their money so since I had some with me they borrowed mine to buy two nice fish. It was pretty funny watching the kids try to catch the fish in the cage.

Our group infiltrating the island...haha.

Trying to catch the fish.

Mabul island.

Our third dive was at the same island and the two groups dived pretty close to each other so it wasn’t as nerve-racking to keep track of everyone…until another dive company came along. I was quite annoyed with this group until I looked around and spotted my friend guiding. Haha. I was hoping to see him when we were docked at the island but only got to wave to him after we left to go diving so I wasn’t able to talk to him. I swam up to him and we “greeted” each other as much as you can underwater…haha. I’ve spent a lot of time and dived many times with this guy so it was a happy reunion. I’ve decided that it’s easier to meet your diving friends underwater than it is on land. Haha!

Unfortunately, after the dive, one of the guests lost her camera. We searched the boat inside and out as well as searched on the surface of the water for quite some time. They finally decided that it was totally gone and just wanted to file it as missing so they could claim the insurance when they got back home (I’m not really sure how that all works…haha). 

After we got back, carried the tanks in (those busters are HEAVY, but I apparently have enough muscle to carry two at a time like all the big boys…boss!), and washed the equipment, I ran (more like drove) back home to shower and change into nice clothes (not diving related clothes…lol), and then ran back to the office to gather the group for dinner. We took a company van and my truck to cart them over to the restaurant. Ok, so this restaurant is one that my family always goes to, but I never really pay attention to what we order. So when they were encouraging me to order for them…I totally blanked. Haha. Thankfully we got it all sorted out and the food was good, as usual. =) Since it was already a huge group plus us, it got LOUD in there…and it’s an open door restaurant! What I mean by that is that the front is totally open (there aren’t any doors) and this particular restaurant’s side is open too since it’s a corner store. Chinese ppl can be super loud in general. Lol. It was slightly weird for me because: I’m usually there with my family…not with friends, my uncles are almost always there…so I felt like they were spying on me…haha, this is one of the first times I’ve been asked to go out to eat b/c I’m one of them (and by that, I mean staff/DM, even though I’m not officially one yet). They ordered SO much food and the four of us gave up before the HK group did. Haha. Since it was already late when we got back, it was super late when we finally finished, and THEN I had to go with Sandrix, Roslee, and the guests who lost their camera to the police station to file the claim (since I was one of the staff on the boat…acting as witness if they needed it). Roslee and I ended up almost falling asleep on the couch in the lobby. Lol! I was, however, astonished at how many of the police staff the guys know. Lol. Guess it pays to know the right people? Haha. By the time I got back home, it was almost 10:30pm. I left the house at 7am….therefore putting in 15 hrs that day. Being a DM is exhausting!! Now I know why they’re always tired and sleeping whenever they get a chance! Hahahaha.

The next day we went to the other side to dive…around Tun Sakaran Park, which has beautiful coral. It was a beautiful day compared to the day before…it had been raining like crazy the day before and we were all miserable in the morning. Haha. I was assisting Roslee and Sendrix this day and we had a lot of fun. I always say it matters not only where you dive, but also who you dive with. Part of the reason I dive is because I get to hang out with awesome people and I get to meet people from all over the world. I can honestly say I love my dive family here and I wouldn’t trade them for anyone else. We had ten divers (if I remember correctly) so it was a huge group, but it was better since we didn’t have to worry about them joining another group since we were almost the only ones diving there…and the visibility was great too!

The day following we went back to Mabul island. We had half of the the HK group plus three extra tag-ons. Two of the extra tag-ons were noobs from China…I’m pretty sure they only had the required four dives (from their certification) under their belt. I was put in charge of them and right off the bat we had trouble. One of the guys didn’t have enough weights and couldn’t descend. So after waiting for a bit to see if he would finally get down I had to go up and help him. We put two extra kilos on him and he still had trouble, although he did manage to finally descend. I had to watch him like a hawk b/c he showed signs of shooting up one too many times. Haha. DMing pretty much means babysitting underwater. Haha, no lie. Other than that, nothing super exciting happened, thankfully!

The day after, I finally got to go to Sipadan, a famous island nearby (made famous by none other than Jacques Cousteau…if you don’t know who that is, then shame on you!). There’s tons of creatures there and you never know what you’re going to see next! There’s a whole history of the island dealing with pirates, resorts being kicked out, and coveted permits, making it hard to go dive there now. It’s a long story so if you want the complete story, comment or message me and I will give you the whole run down. Anyway, this island is near and dear to me b/c I grew up going there all the time and I’ve done half of my dives there. I love it!

I was assisting Letter this time and the first two dives were great, despite the fact that: 1) it started raining heavily when we left and we all had to jump on the other boat b/c it was covered more (we had two boats go out to Sipadan from our company), and 2) I had to escort 1-2 of our guests to do a safety stop and surface 15 mins earlier than planned b/c they were low on air. We did, however, get to see the huge school of jackfish and the huge bumphead fish. Those are always cool to see up close and personal. The three Europeans that I was looking after cracked me up b/c they were SO excited to see the sharks and turtles. It made me smile on the inside. After the second dive we went on the island and had our lunch and then all of a sudden a huge storm rolled in. There was strong wind and some raining, and then lightning and thunder. The waves got huge and it was quite entertaining seeing all the boats battle against the wind…ok, maybe not entertaining, b/c you could see them all struggling to not get blown away. Lol. We were all huddle on one side of the pavilion trying to escape the wind. We were shivering b/c the wind was blowing so hard and we were all wet from the dive…these are times when it IS possible to freeze on the equator. Haha! We were about to cancel the last dive when it let up a bit and we decided to go for it. We jumped in with the intent of ending up at a different point but then the current from the incoming tide was too strong and we had to turn around. Then a little bit after that we encountered very bad visibility from the big waves stirring up the sand from the top (we were doing a [vertical] wall dive). We decided to finally surface since we couldn’t really see anything and much to our chagrin we realized that we were where we started and our trusty boatman was where we were supposed to be and nowhere near us. The waves were so big that he couldn’t see us either. We bobbed in the ocean for about 15 mins before another boat finally came by and went to go tell him where we were. Sigh. All in a day’s work, I guess. Never a dull moment!!

Sorry there weren't any pictures for the last two days...I was too busy babysitting ppl....hahaha.

Also, good news! I'm off on another exciting adventure, which I will disclose to you all later. Check back for more updates later...if I have internet. I might be in the middle of nowhere next week. We'll find out. If I don't update at all next week, you'll know why. Haha!

PS: Congrats to my good friend and DM, Apong, who was part of the recent Longest Underwater Clean-up in Kota Kinabalu. They broke the world record and was acknowledged by the Guinness World Records!