I think it’s again time for a photo update. I got some really good ones today, plus there’s a host of stuff to publish from last week or so. Here goes:

Melon butterflyfishes are plentiful all around

Starfishes can also be found every here and there

Small shrimps live in anemones, seeking shelter from predators

Triggerfishes eat coral and sometimes attack your fins

How do you say “oriental sweetlips” in plural?

More manta rays starting from this photo

Nudibranches come in all colours…

…like this…

…and this…

…and like this. Besides these, there’s about a million more.

All this and much more can be found from Indonesia alone. Just imagine how much stuff there is to see arond the world.

Tags: divemaster internship, diving, photos, why I wanted a change

Oh yes, the honeymoon trip. Komandoo was a beautiful, beautiful place with the best diving sites I’ve seen so far, good food and friendly people. In other words, it was almost the total opposite of India – or was it?

As the whole island is built around tourism, it felt… artificial. Like a facade. Not only the 100% imported food and sterile environment (the staff cleans fallen leaves from the pathways in the morning), but also the staff itself. Although everyone kept up a friendly face and asked if there was something they could do for us, I could still sense a big difference between them and, say, their Filipino counterparts on Malapascua. If you ask me, it’s all about what motivates people.

You see, when I’m dealing with Filipinos, I get the feeling that they genuinely want to help me out when something is wrong, whereas Indians are only willing to do something if they get money out of it. Sad to say, but for me the Maldivians were closer to Indians than I expected. The atmosphere wasn’t exactly hostile, but there were constant signals from the staff that they are only in it for the money. I guess I’m even more sensitive to that kind of thing after being exposed to its extreme forms here in India.

Or maybe Filipinos have better acting skills, who knows.

Anyway, the trip itself. I’ll let the photos do most of the talking, so here we go:

The villas were built over water and there was a constant selection of fishes swimming around them. The house reef of the island stretched all the way around the construction and you could spot dozens of species just by sitting on the porch.

On a lucky day you could spot a small (around half a metre wide) stingrays near the beach. This one was no more than three meters from the shoreline, digging for food in the sand.

As Maldives is very close to the equator, sunsets were spectacularly quick. From the position above it took less than ten minutes until the whole star was behind horizon. The main thing for us was of course diving, and boy did we see everything imaginable:

I’ve never seen corals like this before, but that’s not all. How about this:

Or this:

And how would you feel about having one of these on your plate?

What’s more, we found some turtles on our explorations:

This was only a small sample of what we saw, the rest can be found behind the small thumbnails and this link.

Tags: diving, holiday, it's good to be me, luxuries, maldives, money, natural beauty, photos, service, travel, ways of working, what is different

I just spent the best 800 rupees anyone can ever spend in a gravestone shop. It took some time, but I would say it was worth it:

Tags: it's good to be me, photos

Today I took a day off from the office, went almost out of town (55 minutes by car) to pay some custom fees and did a million small things to make this place more me. My furniture from Finland arrived today and I’ve been busy arranging things and setting up the equipment. I’m already writing this on my desktop PC, but there’s still work to do with my home cinema and Xbox setup. More on those tomorrow.

As I didn’t send my office chair here from Finland, I had to get a new one:

One of the buttons has come off already, but I don’t think I want to go through the trouble of hauling the chair back to the shop for that. See, I’m getting more Indian every day?

For the guests I got something in the upstairs:

And of course there has to be a bar with such setup:

The glasses are still missing, but that only gives me one more chance to post a pic of this awesome piece of handicraft. I just think it kicks ass.

And finally it feels like I live here!

Tags: accommodation, it's good to be me, luxuries, moving, my pimped-up interior design, photos, shopping

I just got the last Abu out of the house after a full day of cleaning, packing, installation of aircons and organising schedules of ten or so people. The gentlemen from the removal company came to pack up and take away all the stuff that didn’t belong to the House (or me), and at the same time a couple of guys came to install air conditioning to the two remaining bedrooms. On top of that I received the first lot of my rental furniture, but more on those in a moment.

At first I have to say how positively surprised I was with the guys who worked here with us today. They arrived on time, listened to our instructions and did their job with astonishing quality. They even suggested calling a real electrician to check out the wirings before connecting any of the equipment, which was something really unexpected. Of course that’s the safe way of doing things, but I never expected to see that in here. Still, two thumbs up and mad props to the guys for these:

The official ladder is actually next to the guy on the right, just against the wall.

Would you climb up there on a ledge less than half a meter wide?

I also got quite a bunch of furniture today, so let there be more photographs:

Some nice paintings in there…

…some missing bottles in here…

…and a missing queen witch here. If this one doesn’t tell who’s the fairest of them all, it can’t be done.

This one is placed in the master bedroom right now, but I’ll have to see if there’s more use for it in some other place. Who knows, maybe I’ll run out of storage space (not).

And there’s more to come, but  not yet – first I need a good night’s sleep on my new king-size bed.

Tags: moving, my pimped-up interior design, people in india, photos, time, ways of working

As I previously wrote, my holiday in Malapascua could have been even more of a success. The cold I caught on the way there got worse on my way back, thanks to the overenthusiastic air conditioning of Dragonair planes – the reason I got ill in the first place. Next time won’t be operated by Dragonair, thank you very much.

It’s really hard to find positive things to say, so I’ll let the photos speak for me. This was my first time with a waterproof casing on my Ixus 80, but I still managed to catch some nice ones:

Yes, it is exactly as much of a paradise island as it looks like.

This photo is taken from the Tapilon wreck, a cargo ship that was sunk by a torpedo during World War II.The wreck is badly damaged and in several pieces, but some of the cargo and even a couple of arm bones are still recognisable in the bottom.

Lionfish are abundant in Malapascua, but still a bit difficult to spot from time to time. Better be careful since they are poisonous.

Malapascua is known to have a lot of nudibranchs of different colors.

Starfish are also plentiful, but these red ones are a little less common. I remember seeing maybe two or three among the dozens I spotted in total.

Boxer shrimps are a pain to photograph because they are small but with a lot of long extending parts. It took me tens of  photos to get a decent one among them.

White tip sharks are one of the best attractions in Malapascua: fascinating, relatively easy to find and sleeping in the daytime. I wonder if they ever wake up when people flash lights at them?

The last full day started with a thresher shark dive at five o’clock in the morning. Unfortunately the sharks weren’t informed and only one dared to show up in the distance.

And just for the record, being here alone, homeless and ill creates a huge vacuum around gluteal muscle area. I miss my wife like hell.

Edit: this is just a small sample of the pics. A larger sample can be found here and I hope to upload even more (but not so good) photos in the near future.

Tags: flu, holiday, natural beauty, oh bugger, photos, travel

Malapascua was just fantastic, but unfortunately my health wasn’t. During the first flight I caught a cold of some sort and spent the rest of the trip more or less moving by ibuprofen ja adrenaline. I couldn’t just let the opportunity pass and skip the diving while there, so I chose medical CPR instead and did 17 dives during the past seven days.

I’m writing this in one of the pay lounges of Hong Kong international airport since our trip arrangements are a bit less than efficient: the flight from Philippines landed at 15:10, while the connecting flight leaves around 22:20 – more than seven hours later. Not having to spend all that time on the benches near gates was well worth that 500 Hong Kong dollars (around 40 euros). Nice armchairs, electricity outlets, free internet access, drinks, food, showers and massages should make the wait much less painful.

I’ll post some photos later, but here’s a teaser:

I think it’s a sweetlips, but I may be completely wrong. Please let me know if you can identify the species

Edit: my second guess would be striped dogface pufferfish, but still not sure. I’m not exactly brilliant in biology, so help me out.

Tags: diving, flu, holiday, let me know, natural beauty, oh bugger, photos, travel, waiting

As I told earlier, I am currently living in my future home while the present occupants are on holiday. Let’s cut straight to the case, the photos (more here):

Here’s the house from the roadside. It has three floors, four bedrooms (each with separate bathroom & shower), three balconies, two guards (one of them right there) and a roof terrace. I would estimate it has somewhere around 300-350 square meters, but I don’t have any hard data on my hands. In any case it should be enough for two plus two.

The amount of trees still amazes me, as well as the East German (lookalike) cars people still drive around here.

Okay, back to the house… this is the main hall from the front door direction. There’s another entrance on the left because the logical one faces the wrong direction for some god(desse)s to be favorable on the house. And that’s not the most wasteful effort put into this house in the name of some imaginary being…

…but before that, here’s something I didn’t expect to see: it’s an alcove for washing your hands. It’s conveniently placed right next to the dining space (and with a mirror I noticed too late).

Undoubtedly this is the most decorated and well-made part of the house, but sadly it isn’t anything of significance for me: there’s a small room about the size (and feel) of a two-person outhouse behind them, purpose-built for worshipping hindu gods.  I could respect the culture and blahblahblah, but not in my home, thank you. So from my point of view it’s complete waste of time and effort.

The living room in the second floor (first floor is on ground level) will easily accommodate my desk, couch and movie screen when they arrive. Quite frankly, I’m not a huge fan of the current interior, especially when there’s no room to land your laptop anywhere without first lifting that beer can out of the way.

The library is right next to the living area, complete with exotic laminate floors and a writing desk with an antique feeling to it. Sadly I’ll never have enough books to fill up the shelves before I move on.

The second floor balcony is decorated for hanging around with friends, although again with no tables to rest your drinks on. Of course I will see that there’s plenty of tables here when I’m in command, but not just yet.

The bigger third floor balcony accommodates a couple of grills, along with a slight sense of privacy since the closest neighbours are lower down (the tall building on the right is a hotel, windows not facing this way). I am yet to find something good to grill, but one of these days…

This photo was taken from the top point of the house, even above the roof terrace. If only I could have a swimming pool here!

I realise I’m being quite negative on certain aspects of the place, but most of it is only temporary: in a month or so I’ll be able to customise the whole place as I please,  because it will be ALL MINE! No, wait…

Tags: accommodation, luxuries, oh bugger, photos, religion, what is different

My flee from Red Carpet was quick enough to prevent me from taking photos before leaving, but I took two that should tell it all:

Toothbrush mug

Yes, that’s the mug you’re supposed to put your toothbrush in.

And this is the key to the closest equivalent of a safe in the room.

So I’m writing this in a new place called The Residences, almost next door from RC. The place is bigger, cleaner, more stylish and with water mixers in the bathroom – a treat you don’t get here that often. The photos should tell the rest:

And it gets even better: there’s a buffet breakfast, meaning that I don’t have to decide what to eat before waking up and walking to the outdoor restaurant on the roof. I’ll get back to the breakfast if it’s exceptional in any way, but right now I’m quite convinced it will be good.

The exchange booth in the airport had apparently run out of 1000 rupee notes, so I should be listening to Abba instead of Edguy here:
…in a rich man’s world…

Oh, and by the way: the chicken haystack salad in Hard Rock Cafe was excellent <3

Tags: accommodation, food, money, moving, photos, the red carpet, The Residences