Life Underwater

This article has been published in the Onam issue (2012 August) of 'Ithalukal' magazine.

"It feels strange the first time. Your mask. Your awkward gear, a bit heavy. You ease into the water and your face slips below the surface. Inhale; the air comes with a reassuring hiss, and for the first time, you breathe underwater. In moments, you forget your mask. Your equipment transforms to light and agile, and you're free like you've never experienced before. With that first underwater breath, the door opens to a different world. Not a world apart, but different nonetheless." - PADI OPEN WATER DIVER Manual.

Indeed it opened a whole new world when I descended to the depths of the sea for the first time. I was barely able to believe my senses, and for a moment I thought I was dreaming. With that first underwater breath, I realised, my world would never be the same again.

Even though I loved any form of water sports from my childhood and wanted to try scuba diving for a long time, I wasn’t able to, until I moved to Singapore. South-East Asia boasts some of the best warm water dive sites in the world. I had an extra privilege. I worked in a place where there were more divers than non-divers. Also, the nature of our work required us to spend as much time in the sea as that on land. That was my motivation. From the information I gathered from my diver friends, I set out and joined an open water course in 2009. My first dive trip, for Open Water Certification, was to Tioman Islands, Malaysia. I've got to say, I got hooked after that.

Even after 3 years, I vividly remember how I felt when I descended for the first time. Once completed with the initial checks, my instructor gave me a final OK to descent. I deflated my BCD (Buoyancy Control Device) and began to sink slowly. After dealing with few distractions like equalising, orienting myself, I looked around. It was like the entire world had turned blue. And very quiet. It took around a minute for me to touch down (~ 6-8m). Since it was our first dive, we were descending into a patch of white sand. As soon as I was done with the basic skills, while waiting for others to finish, I began exploring the small reef near me. I found an anemone there inhabited by a school of clown fish (commonly known as Nemo) so beautiful with their orange and white banded bodies and their graceful movements in the corel. It was my first close encounter with any sea creature. From that point onwards, my world was never the same again, the sea never stopped surprising me. For the remaining dives, I swam along a variety of colorful fishes, saw some weird shaped creatures, all of which forged an even stronger bond between me and the nature.

Shy Nemo trying to hide from my camera, a snap I took while diving in Bali.

Me ‘n my buddy under the wreck of USAT Liberty, a World War II transport ship

A scorpion fish trying to blend in with the reef

I have gone diving in some interesting places, met people from different parts of the world and most importantly, seen some really unique creatures in the sea which sometimes were beyond my wildest imaginations. Each and every time I go underwater, I find something intriguing or learn something new. Even then, I know what I have seen so far is only a fraction of what the nature has to offer. Now that my better-half has also joined me in my passion for diving, I know I will be able to discover more and more secrets, the nature has been holding back from me and that the real adventure is only beginning.

For those who are interested in pursuing this amazing activity, here is some useful info.

Even though there are some introductory course which helps you get a feel of what its like without taking a proper certification, I recommend you start with the certification which enables you to dive anywhere in the world. There are many certifying agencies, but PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) is the world's largest recreational diving membership and diver training organization.

It’s relatively easy to find a dive shop/operator in the South East Asia as some of the best dive sites in the world are located here. Either you can join a trip organised by a dive operator in your region who will arrange all the logistics or you can travel to the specific place you want to dive and sign up with a local dive operator there.

The main prerequisite for diving is swimming. You don’t have to be a world class swimmer, but you need to be able to float/hover in the water for 10 minutes and need to be able to swim 200m, non stop. In my opinion, even if you have to enroll for a swimming course, it’s worth it.

Once you take the first level of certification - Open Water Diver - you can dive up to 18m. The next level of certification is Advanced Open Water Diver which lets you to dive up to 30m. It also lets you do some of the fun stuff like night diving, drift diving, underwater navigation etc. If you are only looking for leisure dives, these two certifications are more than necessary. But there will always be a next level like Rescue diver, Dive Master, Instructor etc which takes your diving skills to a professional level. If you want to push your limits and cross the boundaries of recreational diving, technical diving is the one for you.

So, what are you waiting for? Get, set and dive!

Finning with the fishes

“It feels strange the first time. Your mask. Your awkward gear, a bit heavy. You ease into the water and your face slips below the surface, Inhale; the air comes with a reassuring hiss and for the first time, you breathe underwater. In moments you forget your mask. Your equipment transforms to light and agile and you’re free like you’ve never experienced before. With that first underwater breath, the door opens to a different world. And your life will never be the same again. You can see more different species in ten minutes there than in ten hours in the most unspoiled wilderness above water” – excerpt from PADI OPEN WATER DIVER manual intro.

I don’t think I can explain the way I felt when I first descended down to the ocean more accurately. It was on the second week of august that I went for my diving certification trip with gill divers to Tioman islands, Malaysia. When I enrolled for PADI certification, all I wanted was to get to know the sea and after my theory and pool session, I really was looking forward for the dive trip. The only downside was that, I didn’t have any friends to come with me. But, I made some very good friends during that trip and that weekend turned out to be one of the best till date in all aspects. When you dive, you enter a completely different world. There were people from all parts of the world with me for diving - US, Canada, Korea, Indonesia, France etc and everyone was really cheerful. After my first dive I promised myself that once I reach back Singapore, I am going to enroll for the advanced course, and yeah, I did. Officially, I am now a PADI certified open water diver.

As always, this is another photo blog and I believe pictures tell stories in more details than words.
We started our trip on Friday august 14th from Singapore by around 8pm. We crossed Malaysian border, had a nice and long dinner and set out for Mersing to catch our boat to Tioman. (Tioman is an island in Malaysia, one of the most beautiful ones, I will say) Usually we are supposed to be starting from there by 11pm, but that day, there was some problem with the tides and we could start from there only by 1:30am. Reached our resort in Tioman around 3 and fell asleep immediately.

The next day, I woke up to see a beautiful resort which overlooked the sea. But the weather was not that good, it was drizzling. We had our breakfast in the resort in nice cool weather. I didn’t want to go out though. Just wanted to stay there lazing around and enjoy the weather.
The resort we stayed is called the Island Reef Resort and it contains small cottages build around a hilly area.

Finally, we got on our boat and started towards the dive sites. Our instructor, Monica told us to streamline our equipments and get inside our wet suits. Since we were trained all these during the pool session 2 weeks back, it was relatively easy for me. Also I was fortunate enough to have the same buddy – Raline – from my pool session. She is a cool and funny person.

Briefing Session - That’s our instructor – she is one of the coolest teachers I ever had. She told what we were going to do and also the possible fishes and corals we may find there.

After the boat came to a stop, other dive master/instructors – Vijay, Johnny and Gray – went in the water to tie the buoy and rope for us to use for our first dive. Even though I had my underwater camera with me, I didn’t want to take it during my first dive. Also I hadn’t cleaned it properly and Monica showed me some hair strands in the O-ring of the casing.

We descended one by one and had to equalize frequently and I was a bit scared about equalization. But once I was down, it looked awesome. We were holding on to a rope and looking around in amazement. Since it was our first dive, we were in a reasonably deserted place. But there was a small anemone and a couple of clown fishes were there. Also there were some sea cucumbers in the bottom and some corals. A variety of fishes were coming and going from all sides and I was not sure what to do there. After everyone was down and we familiarized with the environment, we demonstrated a couple of skills and by that time our air were running out. We went back on deck.

Lunchtime!

Even if there was not much of moving around, we all thoroughly enjoyed our first dive. We had our lunch in the boat itself while our gas tanks were refilled.

Since I loved being in water and also wanted to try my underwater camera, I simply jumped to water and took some random snaps. Someone was feeding the fishes.
The next 2 dives were the most awesome ones. We finned along corals and rocks, up and down, through schools of colorful fishes and I cursed myself for not taking the camera. By around 5, we were all tired and we back on boat and set our journey back to the main island.

Tioman Island, Malaysia

The beautiful Sunset from the dock. We all became friends by evening and we were happily chattering about all that we have seen on our first day. Before we got to our resort, we stopped at a nearby shop to eat and they made tasty food.
After that the leisure divers who were going for the night dive, left and me and my other open water diver friends left to our cabins and took a bath. Then we came down for the barbeque dinner. By that time the leisure divers were back.

We came down to the beach by 9pm and got ourselves a couple of beers and some snacks and talked for around 2 hours about the first day. The seasoned divers shared their experiences.

The first thing I did next day was to clean up my camera properly with the help of Monica and made sure I am not going to miss anything this time I dive. Thanks to Johnny for taking this shot.

That’s Monica, our instructor. I wonder how she manages to control her buoyancy that well.

That’s a Bridled monocle bream. I had to chase this guy for a bit to get this shot.

I spend some time studying the fish charts after my first 2 dives as I didn’t know any of them. With the help of Monica, I managed to remember the most common fishes. Still I have not find out the names of couple of them.

That’s Raline – my buddy. She was funny, all the time making funny faces when I tried clicking a snap. She was trying to smile or show me something when I was clicking this snap. According to Monica, we both made a good buddy pair. Since I was consuming air fast, she had to check my air regularly.
This little guy was furious at me when I was trying to take this snap as I was interfering with his home. I got lots of shots of clown fish; even one brave clown fish came out of his anemone and danced in front of my camera. When I change the camera direction, he stayed in front of the camera without allowing me to focus on him. I guess he wanted me out of his domain.

A pack of sea urchins. The first day, I didn’t notice the blue color inside the spikes, which looks like their eyes.
A large table coral. According to Monica, this is around 70-100 years old. So we were very careful not to go near them, we didn’t want to destroy them as our buoyancy control was not that good.

That’s an eight banded butterfly fish. I saw all sorts of butterfly fish there.

We finned through rocks and narrow paths

Even through schools of fishes

That’s Astri, I guess she spotted something in the coral. She was also helping me with the photos, whenever she saw something interesting, she called me.

That’s Morgan and Laetitia from France

That’s Raline again, trying to hug a coral.

And that’s me again, thank you Johnny…

Check this out, a car wreck in one of the dive sites. It was a change; you expect some ship wrecks and see a car wreck instead.

That’s Johnny, our dive master and he was the one who kept track of me when I was wandering off to take pictures of everything I saw. Also he helped in controlling my air consumption.

Time to come up!

Took a snap of the dive comp when I was doing my safety stop.

Up up, there you go!

Our boat coming to pick us out!

The diving team! Uh! I miss them already.

That’s Vijay with his summersault from the upper deck to water. We all jumped in to the sea when we were waiting for our air to be refilled. We had all the fun in the water.

We even took some photos under water. That’s Monica and Raline, I am not sure whether they are trying to smile or scream or threaten me there, ha ha.

Finally, after our five dives, we had to pack up and get ready to come back to Singapore.
I don’t know about others, but my mind was stuck in there with the island of Tioman and the underwater world. It was more like a dream, swimming with the fishes and touching the corals with my own hands. (I am pretty sure it’s the same way everyone else felt). Anyway, by 2:00pm, we started our journey back to mainland of Malaysia. During our journey, we filled out our dive log books and I spend some time matching the unknown fishes in my camera with the ones in the books. Then I went out and simply sat on the side of the boat, with my legs touching the waves and enjoying the moments. After we reached Mersing, we took our bus back to Singapore and we reached back around 8pm.
There are still a lot of things for me to learn and practice especially buoyancy control, breath control, proper equalization etc. It was an incredible experience and something that I can cherish for a long long time. I am looking forward for my dive trip for PADI Advanced Diver course soon. Thanks to all my friends for giving me such a good time. Hope we can all dive together soon.

I flied!

“Einstein was right. Time is relative to the observer. When you're looking down the barrel of a gun, time slows down, your whole life flashes by, heartbreak and scars. Stay with it, and you could live a lifetime in that split second.” - Max Payne

It was then I understood what Max Payne meant when he said the above sentence. It was 1 am, and I was staring at the grass. It seemed like the time was standing still, just like we see in movies. I could hear my heart beating. Thud, thud, thud… I looked to my sides. I saw my friends talking and screaming. But I couldn’t place anything they say. Our pilot was asking me to take a look at the view. I tried, but all I could think of was the green lawn. I felt like its staring at me. Things flashed in front of my eyes. But all I remember now is the sound of my heart beating. It was fast and heavy. I felt its going to explode. I wish for it to be a dream. After all, I was hanging upside down at around the height of a 4 storied building, from a pod with 3 of my other friends. There was a seat in which I was sitting at the beginning, but when we reached the top, the only thing which was holding us were the seat belts. Since we were hanging down, all we could see when we looked straight was the lawn, long down.

We were in the Giant Swing in River Side, Clarke Quay, Singapore. It was the birthday treat of one of my friends and the program was spontaneous. We had a great dinner and some cocktails and were relaxing at the River Side steps. That’s when the idea came to our mind, let’s do something crazy. There was a Reverse Bungee and Giant Swing. Since the bungee tend to turn around a lot and a lot speedier and we had a nice dinner, we settled for the Giant Swing since none of were in a mood to puke on such a nice day. I really regret not having my camera that day. Still I managed to get some images from net which I have posted at the end of this post. It is a pod attached to a swing where 5 people can sit, the only thing is that, its huge, ‘cos when you are held just b4 its released (at the highest point), it’s around the height of a 4-5 storied building.

Suddenly I heard someone screaming my name. “Are you there?” I looked to the side. It was my friend who was piloting the pod. When we reach the highest point, we could stay there for anytime we want and the ‘pilot’ had to press a button under the seat to release the swing. “Shall we press the button?” she was asking. I wanted to get this over with somehow. We all screamed “yeah!”

She pressed the button. The world stood still for a moment. Then it turned to move fast, way too faster than anything I have felt before. I felt the weightlessness of a freely falling body. For a split second, I thought I was going to ‘touch down’ soon. I tightened my grip on the frame of the pod. I didn’t want to close my eyes. But I did it for a moment just before reaching the lowest point. I closed my eyes.

When I opened it, I was flying. Flying very fast towards the sky. I started liking it. I wanted to move faster. But the speed reduced and reduced and we reached the topmost point when the pod stood still again for a moment. I could see the whole Singapore in night lights from that point. It was beautiful.

I realized I was silent till then. The only one thing the person who fastened out seat belts told us was we were allowed to scream. But I had forgotten that. Then again the pod started its journey back. We all screamed at the top of our sound. “We are flyyyyyiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing, woooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooowwwwwwww!!!!”

We were swinging back and forth. It continued for some more time. But it was the starting swing which took our breath away. What else can I say, by the time we had to get out from it, I was in love ‘adventure’. All of us wanted to get more of it. But then again, we were not rich enough, at least at this point in life. The feeling was awesome. Wind gushing to your face and you moving so fast without any obstructions. I had heard that the original bungee jumping is really an experience and New Zealand is famous for that. If I decided anything when I was flying, it was this. Some day, I will go to New Zealand and do the original bungee where you jump from top of a bridge between 2 mountains to a river. Hope that day will come soon. Till then, I think I have to settle down for the adventures in Singapore.

Reverse Bungee - The towers near it is the giant swing

Another view