Life after Death

After receiving bad news of death for the past few months... It's time for news for some new form of life... Pretty happy to know that Yun, and ex-colleague of mine is pregnant, and a colleague is in the early stages of her pregnancy too. Apart from that, HJ got her first boyfriend.. a cute one in fact.. Ai is getting married in June, and I, myself got a proposal.

Mr. P (Love) brought me to Mt. Faber for sky dining 4 days after my trip. It was a weekly night's out but his constant reminder of what to bring/wear for that particular date did rouse my suspicion. A woman's instinct tells me that it might just be the day. However, Mr. P did not seemed to pay much attention to me when our dinner first started.. It seemed that he was more mesmerised by the senic view and the experience of dining in the cable car more than I did. Oh well, I thought.. maybe it was just another occasional extravagant night's-out.

Dinner wasn't fantastic, but acceptable. It was a 3-course dinner with coffee/tea. We were allowed to go 3 rounds to complete our meal. It took about 2 hours. So by the time we finished our main course, the sun had set, Mr. P sat down beside me.. we talked a while and our dessert was served on our last round. Then.. "tadduh.." Something glimmered in his hands .. and there it goes on my finger... so my instincts had been correct.

A Diver's Luck

26 Apr-3 May Malapascua, Cebu, Phillippines. I din sound as enthusiastic did I? Yes, I just came back not too long ago... Lady's luck wasn't with me... this trip could have been more fruitful with a bit more luck.. I'll tell you why in a while.

Not too many could make it for this trip, so we headed on as a small group, Cal, TY and myself. We planned everything on our own and left a few things unplanned to give us more flexibility to move around. Since it was an 8-day trip, we predicted that our dives could complete within the first 5 days leaving us with some time to explore Cebu mainland. We ended up logging 14 dives, the whole trip on the island, just for one motive-thresher sharks.

So what about Thresher??

http://www.new-brunswick.net/new-brunswick/sharks/species/thresher.html

This shark is commonly found near the island and it's very special due to it's long caudal fin which may be as long as it's body. A lot of my friends asked me... " why did you go there to see a sghark??!! Isn't it dangerous?!!" The truth is... no.. Sharks are not as aggressive as you think. Other than the great white or bull sharks and a few more aggressive species, they are actually more afraid of you than you thought. Movies like Jaws have given sharks a very bad name...

Sometimes sharks mistake surfers as turtles or seals, which prompted them to attack.

Drowned Luck

We weren't really actively looking for the sharks when we first went there.. we just wanna dive and relax.. Since we had plenty of time.. we took 1 dive at the house reef that requires us to travel 5 min out by boat.

Our dive started at 5.30am on the 2nd day to catch the threshers at Monad Shoal. No Luck. We went back in the afternoon to catch Mantas.. No luck.

Well, it was fine.. we still have a lot of time anyway, but you only see the sharks in the morning.

3rd day was at Kemod Shoal to catch hammerheads. Instead of passively waiting, we swam out to the deep blue to search for them. We were a huge group. And I was following cautiously behind the DM, Ervin.

Cal and TY who were behind me got a signal by a couple and managed to catch the sight of a hammerhead. The rest of us din see a thing.. even though I got some pictures of some jellyfish..*duh*..

It was a horrible feeling that only divers would understand. To be so close to seeing it.. and when people around you have seen it when you've not. I began to think that I'm a jinx.

So for the next few mornings, we attempted at Monad again betweeb 5ish -6am. This time I followed closely with my kakis... and true enough all 3 did not get to see a single shark. Groups that went down before or after us on different occasions caught a glimpse of them.. so even upclose. We had the same fate with the Mantas and I really began to believe that I'm cursed....

We got more anxious when people approached us to ask if we've seen any whenever we returned from a dive. Well, all of them saw, eventually and we are labelled the most unlucky team by the manager... Tried all sorts of ways like choosing a "lucky" DM, Ervin and setting off before 5am.. but none of these worked.. Ervin wasn't lucky when he was with us... but he got his luck back immediately after our last dive. Mantas and threshers... both when we already drying our equipment. We requested to be the 1st group to set of in the morning but saw nothing... and yet the last group saw 2 so close to them.

We were just speechless. No affinity with sharks right till our last day. I told myself I'd go for prayers before my next trip.

I was worse off than the other 2... not only losing out in the hammerhead... my camera did me a disservice as well. It gave me a final shot of the Mandarin fish mating and went to sleep. But thank god it did not die of drowning... I killed it actually. The battery was running low on my first few shots and I kept forcing it to work by switching it on and off countless times. I would consider it as a blessing in disguise since we've completed all our macro dives for the trip. And since we did not see any sharks , there was not much to capture too. Maybe it heard my complains... that it was a lousy camera. Time to get a new one then.

But then again, it's not totally fruitless I would say.. we say some devil rays.. in fact on quite a few occasions. One of them actually hover on top of TY and allowed him to take a few close shots... A fellow diver told us that devil rays are un the endangered list of species... so I'm not that jinxed afterall.

Before we departed, we were told to sign the guestbook. To our surprise, the last comment we saw was "no sharks" left my a Jap couple.... We grinned wickedly among ourselves and wrote, " no sharks".

Elastic time

One thing about their concept of time is their no concept of time... we had no problems at our resort since it's catered to divers... but outside the resort, if a local ask u to wait 5 min, it's probably equivalent to 20 min... And the average waiting time for your food to be ready is about 1 hour ( even when you might be the only customer ).

Opportunists

Their public transports tend to drop you a distance from your destination so that their "porters" will get to earn for each baggage the lug for you over the rocks or under the hot sun.

Not ready for Tourism

Service and hospitality definitely have more room for improvement as compared to other equally-developed countries. We need to see more smiles...

Great company Good Time

No sharks but great company.. just thinking about the trip again makes us laugh at ourselves for being so down on luck. Having cup noodles, sharing a whole tub of ice-cream, sunbathing under the tree, movie marathon and dozing off halfway thru, waking up at 4am and slping and 9pm... these are some trivial things that I probably would have not done at home... I had a great time.

Exam Fever

I'm so sorry for slacking again... Been pretty tied up with my exams preparations. Actually started preparing 1 month in advance... just for 1 paper. Good enough to find myself totally prepared for the exams. Our notes were very brief, covered with so many illustrations with few words, thus we have to rely on our journals. As this is my first paper, i took 4 days of leave to prepare for it. Though some others took more days, I find that 4 days are a bit too much for me to stay at home.... Managed to watch Death Note 1 & 2 though... it was good, I should mention.
The exam paper itself however, gave us no time to think. The killer question was a simple statistical calculation that requires you to analyse results from a few graphs which makes us squint. There were so many weeny numbers.... and the fonts were just so small!
That leaves us not much time to cover the other questions which burns more neurons. We left the hall exhausted and grouchy.
I could confidentaly say that I could pass, but I'd not settle for that after spending 4 days of leave. By getting just a pass, would mean that 2 days would be enough... Anyway, I hope to take 3 days, ideally for each paper in the future... Please pray that I'll get good grades.