@hhChoooo… who sneezed?!?!

Seems like that website has a REALLY slow server. So I’ve posted the dive videos on my multiply site.. you can check it out here

Check out the videos caught of underwater life!

This is one of the Banded Sea Snake. I think its quite a young snake judging by its size.

This is an interesting one, you’ll see some fishes in their natural feeding environment. And their favourite food??
Click here!

And this is of the throngs of glassfish we saw on our cave dives! It was really awesome to see so many tiny glass fish totally shutting out our view of the wall!!

And finally, the Blue Spotted Sting Ray. Really cool!

This is my Video site. Hope to upload more vids in time to come!

Returned from a really great trip. Quite eventful I must say. But I’ll leave that for later.

For now, I’ve uploaded some of the pictures at my photo site and will include more later on this week, am exploring ways to put videos too, coz I managed to catch some vids using my new underwater camera!! (casing rather!)

Yay!

I’m getting increasingly excited about the upcoming dive trip. Going with Seb and Juergen and my dive buddy Aldridge. No doubt this would be one of our more pricey trips, but guess its gonna be well worth it! Its got one of the most interesting itinerary. Wall dives, Cave dive, wreck dive!

Our dive will take us all the way to Phi Phi (which I always wonder if I should pronounce “Ph” as a “F”.. Fi Fi island or Pee Pee island? but since we call Phuket as Poo-cat.. rather than Foo-cat, then I shall pronounce PeePee.) where we will stay for the night and continue our dive the next day.. I’m so very tempted to get myself an underwater camera case, so I can take some pics of those cool stuff we see… ooo…

Well, I’m counting the days…3 days to go… looking forward to some sunshine, massage and compressed air!!!

Just came back a week ago from a dive at Tioman, it was quite a relaxing dive. Slept most of the time, making up lost ground I guess. But that is exactly what I like about diving.

Firstly being cut off from the world. And just for that 2-3 days, I have am Handphone free! Not that I hate having phone calls, but just that I am free from making or taking calls.

There is also the part about sleeping through the day. Sleep is becoming a luxury item nowadays. I rarely get 7 hours of good sleep these days, Some folks I know can live on 5 hrs or 6 hrs of sleep. But I know I need more. Yeah, call me a sleep-head, but I know my limits. And I know the importance of rest. Being able to live on 5-6 hrs of sleep, to me, is nothing to boast or be proud of. Eventually it takes its toll on you. Anyway, back to diving.. being on a dive trip is just eat, sleep and dive… occasionally puking is interjected as part of the package, but heck. Its well worth it. HAHA!

Finally… diving is so peaceful… its quiet and peaceful in the water. You float about. You see God’s beautiful creation swim up to you, gazing curiously at you. You see the slow graceful movements of the soft corals in the currents, the fishes hiding among them. The colours of the underwater world is astounding! And the slow rhythm of the dive, nothing is done in haste, the finning motion is slow, the breathing controlled. And of course the freedom of space. On ground, one is limited to a plane. Underwater, you are never limited. You float over the corals, movement is 3 dimensional. A sense of breaking free from limits and gravity. Just float…. wonderful awesome sensation…

Well, that said, who wants to go divin?

We had a good night’s rest and were ready to go for our last two dives for the trip. How we wished there could be more. We headed back to Igara wreck for the last two dives because the original wreck we were supposed to go had very bad visibility and very strong currents.

The first dive had us going down with together with Vincent. It feels really great to dive with him coz he’s such an experienced diver and he really taught us well. So far I think he is one of the most meticulous and professional instructor I’ve ever met. Anyway, Vincent had to go down to look for the wreck to tie the descend line (rope). We followed behind him and stuck close to him. It was a fascinating experience and different from merely following down a rope to the wreck. This is because as we followed him, we too were searching and looking for the wreck! And when the wreck came into view. It was a thrilling feeling!!!

This is how it looks like following the rope.

A picture of the wreck.

After tying the rope to the wreck, we followed Vincent to the bow of the wreck. Again it was a fascinating view. Looking up from the seabed up the bow was an awesome view! We swam around and came to a crack in the hull of the wreck. We swam through the crack and through the wreck. Below us we could see stairs and beams and the feeling was just great! Coming out of one of hatches of the wreck we were welcomed by one of the most beautiful sight of a whole bed of corals that has made its home on the deck of the wreck! Truly this was the most enjoyable and most memorable dive for the entire trip for me!

Going through the wreck to come out on another part of the wreck.

Our final dive was a short penetration dive. We had a chance to enter the wreck. It would take good buoyancy control for this dive and I think Vincent felt that we were ready for this “rite of passage”! We went in through a small door and inside the wreck was darkness. My imagination ran wild with thoughts from movies, that as I shine my torch at some corner there might lurk some big monster fish or the skeletal remains of one of the crew of IGARA. Heh heh! The passage we went through was narrow and we moved through till we came out at one of the hatch, again to be welcomed by a fascinating sight! Lovely!

Here we are fooling around!!! Haha!

More photos of our dive from VinceQ’s camera can be found here
And photos from my trip are found here

We got back to singapore around 8pm, but Dary, seby and myself felt a craving for Ice Cream, and headed down to Changi airport for Swenson’s! I wonder if Ice cream craving and Unexplained Idiotic Behaviour (UIB) is a symptom of Post Dive Narcosis (if there is ever such a thing). For those who do not know what is narcosis, its kinda like an effect you experience when you dive deep, and the nitrogen in your body causes poor judgement, sleepiness, stupor, slow thinking and etc.

Its got to be Narcosis… then again, could just be Daryl’s bad influence on the rest of us!!

We awoke to our first dive of the whole trip, morning was overcast, mostly cloudy day with little sun. But man! were we ever ready to get into the water!!

Our first dive was pretty technical, coz we were taking our advanced divers course. We didn’t see much since we were doing stuff on improving our bouyancy as well as underwater navigation. All this done on the deck of a sunken BULK CARRIER SHIP!

The Wreck is an italian ship which sunk in indonesian waters in 1973. It was called IGARA. Apparently it struck some rocks on its maiden voyage (and got quite a lot of insurance from it!) and travelled a little further till it arrived and sunk at errr.. that location.. (No GPS, sorry)

Here is a drawing done by DrMike on the IGARA. He was also on the boat with us and he used a rebreather gear on the dive. Pretty cool stuff as he could stay at the bottom for 3-4 hours! (you can see more images of the IGARA wreck from DrMike’s website here)

The ship was at that time carrying iron ore, and part of the ship was salvaged. The salvage people blasted off part of the ship with the engine and propellor, then towed it back for salvage. The rest of the Ship lies today there. Good thing for us is that this wreck lies about on the seabed of about 42 metres, so its quite assessible to divers. Another good thing is that not many dive groups can go to this site to dive (due to some marine legal mumbo jumbo, only our White Manta boat could get there without incuring trouble), means its marine life is still relatively nice and untouched.

On our second dive on the wreck, we went to the stern of the ship, and there were plenty of fishes there. A whole school of Barracudas swam past us, and not only that, they circled around us for quite awhile. A School of Trevally also joined in… It was truly a surreal experience!! Too bad, none of us had any cameras… Hai, but its gonna stay here in my 486 memory chip!

Coming up from the 2nd dive, many of us blessed the fishes with our breakfast, all chewed and semi-digested. Including yours truly! haha!, but it really felt much better after hurling my breakfast! hahah! The water was just too choppy!

We did drift diving for our 3rd dive, and currents were really strong. This was the boulder that stuck out of the sea, and had lots of gulls and swallows flying around! (really quite an interesting sight) We did our drift dive here!! We saw lots of fan corals, some really big ones.

Of course we did a lot of relaxing and fun on board the White Manta, here are some shots of us (daryl) fooling around!

Us on the makan area just chatting

Us on Sundeck of boat

Here’s a cool shot of PKK, taken using a special camera filter to capture the sun. (Filter name: Okly510 filter, commonly known as Oakley Shades!! Heh heh!)

Sexy legs and choppy waves

We ended the day with our Night dive. Saw a sea turtle asleep under some corals! Really cool. Vince Q took a nice shot of it, Will share some of it here once he’s uploaded it! Also got to see cute little shrimp and a pair of Scorpionfish.

More shots will be uploaded at my multiply site

We’ve been planning this trip for some time, and I’d say Kudos to Mr Ku and Mr Lam for organizing the trip. It sure took lots of emails and smses to get everyone coordinated, and finally, we met at the Tanah Merah Jetty to set off to Batam to the Nongsa Puri Marina, where the White Manta awaits.

Joining us on the trip, we had CheeXiong (seen here eating Roti John), my dive buddy on the last dive trip in Aur. He’s our super last minute inclusion for this dive trip!!!

Also there’s Ah Fook, ready to tuck into his Ba Chor Mee!!

The Regular folks, Seby, Daryl were there too, and we had two more mature gentlemen with us! (Vince Q and PKK). There was also Chelsia (somehow I think I got the spelling wrong), the only lady who joined us in our group!

We got there and took a minibus to the boat, check out Daryl’s ever so “glam” supermodel smile!

Here’s a picture of the dive boat, in the night, It was the only boat lit up in the marina. A super cool boat!!
My apologies if the pictures seem blurry here, coz the platform was really rocking up and down from the waves!

This is one shot of us in our aircon cabin. WHoo Hooo!

Just before settling into bed… supper was served!!! Seby loves food!!

And finally…. sleep… however “supermodel” we may look….

Sorry folks, this is an insider joke that only divers would understand, nonetheless, some parts are still funny. For you divers… heh heh, better check if your buddy shows signs of these… Number 4 is hilarious!!

10) You have to lend him weight so he can get under.

9) He keeps calling his scuba cylinder an “oxygen tank”.

8) When he asks you to share air, he uses your snorkel.

7) He fills out a dive log entry for every pool session.

6) He plays victim in your rescue course, but he isn’t playing.

5) He says, “Just yawn to decompress, like on an airplane”.

4) He takes out his knife when you give the sign that you are out of air.

3) He suggests doing your last check-out dive right away — since your flight doesn’t leave for another 2 hours.

2) His new dive computer is a Palm Pilot.

1) You ask him what he thinks about nitrox and he says, “Aaah, all that wrestling crap is fake”!

I just got my DIVE GEAR yesterday!!!!

WHOO HOO!!!!

Feel like a kid again… Does it happen to you when as a kid you get a new toy and you just can’t wait to try it out!! Well… haha! The little boy inside got the better of me… so here’s me testing out my new gear! HAHAHA!! ….At home…

My New Mask and Snorkels!!!

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Putting it through the rigours of testing!!!!!

Looks like it works just fine!!!

Haha!! I’m BORED! Gotta go dive!…… SOON!!!!

I always wondered why I didn’t see much in the last dive trip!

THIS is the reason why!!
(Right-click and “save as”)