The song by Dio keeps playing in my head on repeat, as we’re closing to our instructor examinations. The next two days are about our mock examinations, then we have a day off and then it’s the real thing. The point of no return, so to speak – we’re about to become certified as instructors. Time flies.

I keep on thinking back to home, and the more I dive here, the more I want to dive back in Finland too. Yeah, sure it’s cold water and the visibility is anything you can put your hand through, but nonetheless. I want to take those tanks to our summer cottage, grab a row boat and go dive our fishing sites. I want to go find Oulu 2, the tugboat that sunk over 60 years ago. I want to teach everyone I know to dive (okay, exaggerating but anyhoo). I want to, because now I know for a fact that I can.

One of the things that kept me from diving back home was the fact that I wasn’t comfortable with my skill level in doing so. Sure, there were friends and probably people from the dive club or centre who would’ve helped, but now I know I have what it takes and that I can handle it for sure. Conditions are different, but these months have given me skills to adapt.

So, tomorrow it’s the mock exam open and confined (read: pool) water parts, where we get to demonstrate our abilities in teaching, problem solving and evaluating whether or not the students can master the skills they need to. Lots of fun, and some not so fun. I have one of the trickier ones to conduct, but preparing carefully should do the trick.

Chances are that next time I write, I’ll have a new certification to my name. Wish us luck!

Tags: diving, exams, instructor internship, PADI IDC, practical stuff, time

Things are rolling smoothly most of the time, we’re pretty busy but able to squeeze in all the necessary functions to stay well fed, sleep enough and have a bit of fun on the side. In general,our weekly schedule looks like this:

Monday and Tuesday: Diving in the sea, possibly doing speciality courses

Wednesday: Skill demonstration practise in the pool

Thursday: Theory exams, studying

Friday and Saturday: Diving with or without guests, practising guiding or other divemaster stuff in real-life situations

Sunday: A day off, but we can go diving if we want to

…and I’m guessing we’ll be following this guideline for quite a while now.

Since I had some neck and shoulder tension from yesterday, I decided to stay at the dive centre today (instead of several hours in the bus, probably making the tension worse).  I think I made a good decision, since I got to teach my first skin diver course as part of the student’s pool session. Since I am not certified to do that yet, we had to have an instructor looking after us all the time, but I was the one doing the actual explaining and demonstrations.

Which was nice.

Tags: divemaster internship, diving, schedules, teaching, time

I can’t believe it’s been two weeks already. Days go by so fast it’s not real. Usually it’s get up, get to the centre, go dive, go eat, sleep, repeat. We haven’t had too much time to explore the island, but Sanur is pretty easy town. You can find pretty much anything you’d want, and life is very easy when it’s simple. Relaxing not to have to want all sorts of stuff for a while.

So what’s up? There’s the sun tanning us up, and the rain cooling us down every once in a while. The art shop outside our homestay (a.k.a. Enny’s) has live music every night except Sunday, so we fall asleep to covers of Sting, Bob Marley and lots of others. There’s a coconut palm growing behind our bathroom window, which only has a grille, so we can look at trees while washing. There are too many gekkos to count, but only one of them is pink. (really cute and quick too, so no pictures, sorry).

Our daily commute is 5 minutes on a scooter and then depending on where we dive either 10-60 mins on a boat or 3 hours on in a wheezing minivan (to Tulamben). We get to dive almost every day, and when we don’t dive there’s the centre’s swimming pool to satisfy the need to get wet. All in all, life’s pretty sweet.

Today (that would be Saturday as I’m writing this) on the second dive of the day we saw two turtles swimming off on the reef. Apparently they’re pretty rare hereabouts, judging from the enthusiastic comments later back on board. We rode some pretty strong currents today, and I can feel the effort it took in my muscles.

Also we’ve been taking good care of the random Finns who come to Blue Season to dive. Of course we’re talking with the other customers too, but somehow it’s nice to talk in your mother tongue with people. And I suppose it can’t really hurt the business either…

Long days mean short nights and I have to take what sleep I can. Diving again tomorrow.

edit on Sunday:

We just came back from the boat, this time we’ve been thoroughly bumped on the way back. Saw some manta rays (pictures to follow, keep checking the gallery) and some turtles and I managed to drop my brand new mask into the current. My language was very foul for a while. Will try and replace it as soon as possible. Otherwise things are just peachy. I’ll also try and get some rest, this stuff takes its toll too.

Tags: it's good to be me, natural beauty, oh bugger, time, transportation

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

I have been very quiet for some time (again), because I really feel like I’ve taken one too many hits from the stress on this whole assignment. Although my anxiety as such does not feel so overwhelming anymore, the somatic symptoms prevail. Muscle ache, sleepiness (10 hours a night isn’t enough), sweating of palms and feet, being out of breath and gastrointestinal disorders could result from a number of things, but my best guess is a sort of anxiety disorder. I hope to know more on coming Friday after consulting a doctor.

In actual news, there has been some progress in the repatriation negotiations. I would love to give out more details, but there are so many company confidential ones I don’t want to take my chances. I hope it suffices to say that Corporation payroll will be missing one specialist by the end of this year.

I’d be jumping up and down from pure excitement if I was feeling well.

Tags: oh bugger, planning, sleep, stress, time, travel, why I wanted a change, work

There is a new countdown timer on the sidebar. Right now it says we’re two weeks and two days from Oulu, after which we can shake India off our feet for good. Never say never, but the odds aren’t good for our return.

I also realised I have only 11 working days left after today. Oh, joy.

Tags: moving, time, work

They usually say that no news is good news, but right now I’d like to have some. Almost anything would do, but one thing is hanging above everything else: I would very much like to have a schedule and know the terms for our move.

What I know right now is not much: we will have our honeymoon in Maldives, come back to Bangalore, repatriate to Oulu and then get going to Bali for our IDC (SCUBA instructor) internships. I will have some severance pay from the Corporation, but we still need to gather some more cash for the whole trip to be feasible. If we are going to stay in Finland for more than a few weeks, we also need a place to stay, and that will complicate things even further. Our furniture won’t reach Finland before end of this year, and getting an apartment for one or two months would anyway be far from practical.

It would be easy to fill the gap by selling some of the furniture we have, but by the time we’re supposed to head southeast, our cargo will be evading pirates somewhere in the Somalian seas. We could of course sell them in advance, but the last expat to leave Bangalore had a nasty surprise in the box when they opened it – the whole crate was sprayed with bug spray that destroyed every single piece of cargo and they had to discard it all. Claiming the insurance money after something like that would be the quick and dirty way to liquidate our assets, with significantly better prices and all, but still…

A lot of questions are still open and a lot of loose ends need to be caught, but I think we’re on top of it again. Most likely I forgot to mention hundreds of things, but if something bugs you, please leave a comment.

Tags: holiday, money, moving, planning, practical stuff, time, travel