We got our new gear out of the plastic bags today and boy was it fun! The stuff is pretty ligtweight, looks brilliant and seems to work very well in water also. We tried them out in the pool immediately after unwrapping it all, so we have the initial experience already under our weight belts. Mine is all black and red, Eeva’s is blue and black:

Of course we ran out of batteries while taking the photos, but I guess we’ll have a chance to take some more in the near future. I have to exchange my fins to a different model since the ones I got don’t fit properly, but otherwise all seems to be well. More diving to come tomorrow, so we’ll see how they perform in actual open water.

Reports will follow.

Tags: divemaster internship, diving, diving gear

Well aren’t we in a nice flow. Yesterday we completed our rescue diver course and today I mastered my first divemaster exams like an old pro. For the first one, we went out diving, came up and were told that there’s a missing diver. Back in to the water, a few minutes of search patterns and we found our victim. We took her up, brought her to the boat, provided CPR for the whole time and administered 100% oxygen. While it was exhausting and even a bit scary, it was also great fun and we learned heaps of practical skills. Let’s hope we never have to use them.

The exams were about assisting student divers, guiding certified divers and conducting training programs independently as a divemaster. I scored 100 per cent in the first two, but misread a question in the third and got “only” 95% from that. Anyway, a pass is anything over 75%, so no problem there. These were the easy ones, we’ll get down to business when we start studying physics, physiology, decompression theory and so on.

Yesterday we also got our new equipment and it’s waiting for us in the office until it’s paid for. If everything goes well, we’ll get to try it all out today in the pool. Right now I’m waiting for the dive shop to produce a bill for me to pay. Otherwise we’re clear to go, and I’ll snap some photos if we get there today.

Tags: divemaster internship, diving, exams, pool practise, rescue diver course

So, you want to know how life is really like for a diving intern?

First of all, it’s actually quite hard work in relatively rudimentary conditions. We typically get up at 5:30, have breakfast from the fridge (no cooking equipment) and arrive at the dive centre at 6:30 the latest. Then we pack up, help the centre staff haul all the equipment to the van, wait for the guests to arrive and head out for a dive.

The Bedroom in all its glory – a bed, a cupboard, a fridge and a toilet

It takes from forty-five minutes to three hours to get to the dive site, depending on which one we’re going to. Some coastal sites can be reached by car, but most of the time we take a boat directly from Sanur.  Usually we do two or three dives and practise some skills during them, have lunch on board or in a beach restaurant and head back to the dive centre around two o’clock or so. After the return trip we wait for the equipment to arrive, service our own stuff and usually give a hand to the staff with air tanks and such. If we’re not exhausted enough after this, there’s always some studies to do in the afternoon.

Returning to Sanur after dives

Finally, if time allows, we take some time to relax, surf the net and spend time with the dive centre staff.  There’s nothing waiting for us in the Bedroom, so we’re in no hurry to get back there. Usually we grab some dinner around seven, take a quick shower and hit the hay at nine. Rinse and repeat.

This is what we have to put up with day in, day out: fish

And yes, it sounds worse than it actually is. We commute by bike, go diving on a boat, get a lot of sun and fresh air on the way and the general philosophy of the whole industry is to have fun. We’ll also stay pretty fit just by attending the training, there’s a million places to eat in, and we actually get to do something we like. Right now it’s the best job/training/whatever in the world, but I’m sure it will be worse some days.

Still, why didn’t we do this any sooner?

Tags: accommodation, Blue Season Bali, divemaster internship, diving, food, the Bedroom, time, transportation

Yeah, it’s warm and sunny, occasionally rainy. No, our place is nowhere near as flamboyant as the crib in India was, but that’s really beside the point – we’re not here to stay indoors, we’re here to dive.

And that’s pretty much what we’ve been doing. Monday we just settled in and took a look around the town (basically one road with a T cross) and got the necessities. Tuesday we got the orientation going, met pretty much everyone at the dive centre (later on known as BSB for Blue Season Bali), got our luggage which was left behind already in Helsinki (thanks again, Finnair and their outsourced ground staff), and fixed transportation (a scooter of about 100 cubic centimetres) as well as telecommunication. Numbers given on request.

Wednesday, pool day. Talk about starting by jumping into the deep end… literally. Figuratively it was true too. There were some skills we were supposed to demonstrate I had never done before since I did my open water course with another company, not PADI by whose standards we’re now studying. All things considered it wasn’t that bad, but I would’ve wanted to shine, of course…

Thursday, Tulamben. Up at 5.30 am, gear all together at 6.30 at the centre, and then two hours and some change up north with a wheezing minibus. The views were amazing, as was to be expected. Bali is a volcanic island, and there is a functioning volcano. We drove up and around it to get to Tulamben, where off the black beach lies the wreck of USS Liberty. It’s one of the easiest and safest wreck dives in the world, and probably one of the most famous too. We went there to learn new species of fish, and how to identify fish we don’t already know. I did my very first swim-throughs there too, and saw a humongous barracuda slumbering under the hull. (by humongous I mean about 2 m long, looks like a hauki [pardon my Finnish]) And yes, we learned new fish species. Two dives on that day, and back on the bumpy bus.

Friday (that’s today as I’m drafting this offline, we don’t have the net in the Bedroom which suits us just fine) was a three dive-day. Off the Sanur beach to south-east there are three more islands, one of which is called Nusa Penida. Off Nusa Penida there are lots of reefs and sloping, coral-clad walls with currents blowing past them. When in season, the Mola Molas a.k.a. oceanic sunfish come to Nusa Penida to hang out and reproduce. Now is not the season, but there was plenty to see nonetheless. Scorpionfish (in the picture), frogfish, stonefish, heaps upon heaps of the usual suspects (different angels and butterflies) and a huge napoleon wrasse. We just drifted along the current, letting it do most of the work.

As I’m writing this it’s almost nine pm, and we’re pretty much ready to call it a day. Tomorrow we’re going – surprise surprise – diving again. It takes forever to upload the photos, but eventually they’ll get there – just be patient.

To be continued…

Tags: Bali, diving, practical stuff, time, why I wanted a change

Oh dear.

We’re so bloody busy with the internship program we hardly have the time or energy to write anything. Just for you to know that we’re still alive even if you don’t hear about us every few days.

Tags: Bali, divemaster internship, diving, time, training

We’re here, safe and sound.

As I anticipated in the last post, our luggage isn’t, but it should be on its way already. If we’re lucky, it lands in Bali in a few hours and will be transported to us defore dusk. Until then we’ll just have to cope without a few things.

Speaking of few things,  we couldn’t go diving even if we had the time: I did take our certificates out, but it doesn’t really help as long as our swimming gear and Eve’s contact lenses are somewhere on their way.

Anyway,  here we are. First impressions on food, traffic and the diving centre are all good, the locals are friendly and so on. Our accommodation, the Bedroom, only has a bed, fridge, shower, toilet, fan and (at least) one cockroach, so we won’t be spending a lot of time there.

Now we’re off to find some food, and in the afternoon we’ll start studying first aid and do some shopping.  Seems like there’s a lot to learn, but that’s why we’re here. Let’s get busy!

Tags: accommodation, Blue Season Bali, flying, food, the Bedroom, traffic, travel

Right, day one. We’re currently somewhere over Moscow or so, I’ve had a few glasses of wine and everything is going as planned.

Well, when I say everything, I don’t mean to say that our luggage would be in the plane or anything. When we were boarding the plane, the ground staff told us our bags were not received (whatever that means). All in all, we might have to wait a few days to get our stuff to Bali. Good thing we took our log books with us instead of leaving them to the airline company. I’d hate to miss dives because of such rotten luck.

Oh, the flights? I can tell you, Cathay Pacific is great. The plane is spanking new, with individual seat back monitors, on-demand shows and AC sockets for each seat. Yep, freakin’ AC sockets! I can play Monkey Island while going towards Hong Kong at 900 kilometers an hour!

Tags: flying, games, travel

While we’re in the capital city area, it’s easy to get the visa process done in person. No need to send the passports via post, no need to wait for them to come back. The Indonesian embassy surprised us positively by being so very efficient with the visas. We took our passports there on last Thursday, and on Monday when I called, they were ready.

The amount of paper was not overwhelming, they just needed the digital copies (this is unheard-of sometimes even in Finland, that a digital copy of something would suffice!) of the recommendation letters from Indonesia plus the scan of the identity card of the person who wrote the letters, our tickets there and away from the island, and the receipt that we had paid the visa fees.

But of course, there’s a catch. The visas are only valid for  60 days, and our training takes twice as long. What this means is that we need to renew the visas while there, but the good thing is, we have the dive school people to help us with the process. Having natives to help you is a huge bonus, and I’m pretty sure we’re not the first ones to extend their visas while in the country.

Talking of embassies, the Finnish honorary embassy in Indonesia is in Bali, so in case of emergency there’s help to be had. Not that we plan to have cases of emergencies, we plan not to have any.

Not too long now…

Tags: bureaucracy, diving, practical stuff, surprises, travel

We are safe and sound in Espoo, although there were some minor hazards on the way. We drove a car from Oulu to Kotka yesterday and the weather was as terrible as it can get in here: after two o’clock it was pitch-black outside, there were a lot of people going home after new year’s, and on top of everything else, a huge blizzard struck us after an hour or so. There was about a cubic meter of snow in the air between the windshield and the road on any given moment for 500 kilometers, expect when a truck came the other way (we lost sight of everything for a few seconds when that happened).

Despite the conditions we managed to get here in one piece, but our shining armor took a hit somewhere around Konginkangas. We were overtaking on a widened bit of the road, but we ran out of lane just a bit too early. The road got back to its original width, one of the cars on the other lane was driving close to the centre line, resulting in the side mirrors colliding and breaking into shreds. We had to drive a couple of kilometres before we could stop and examine the damage,which was luckily superficial – besides the mirror, of course. No scratches, no broken glass, and most importantly no personal damage. Just a missing side mirror.

Needless to say, we also changed drivers to give the unlucky one a break.  I took the wheel and we got there safe and sound, but boy was it a stressful one. I’ve been driving on snow for years, but that stil doesn’t make it a walk in the park. I hope I don’t have to drive in a weather like that very often.

All in all, we have 600 kilometers behind us and only about 15000 to go.

Tags: accidents, driving, traffic, travel, weather