love like rockets

[vialactea]

I got certified as a CMAS 1 Star Diver! Yes, I am a certified SCUBA Diver now. I, therefore, command you to refer to me as Camille - Ruler of The Seas! I kid. I had so much fun. Can't you tell? (:



Fave shot ever! It's worth a thousand words. Haha.



It was such a nice place. We didn't have to swim far for it to go deep and to see the corals.



Enzo's gigantic pen. Ever heard of packing light?!
We were signing forms which basically state that no one would be responsible for our deaths/accidents except ourselves.



After the second dive. I'm the one carrying the tank one-handed. hXc! I'm strooong!







After the third and fourth dive.



I gained weight! I haave hips now. D:



Enzo's dream shot. Wetsuit top down. Haha.



Sir Dick's underwater cameras. It's basically just a DSLR with an underwater case which costs like Php 15,000.
Masmahal pa casing than a regular point and shoot digicam. Haha.



Certified divers by now. I fucked up the chronology in this post.



After the first and second dive.



This is Marianne! She's also from Assumption Antipolo, my high school, and she became my dive buddy.



Tapos na? ):



Rinsing our gear.



Trixie! She's class buddy along with Blanch. When we finish doing a skill, we do a happy dance underwater. Haha.



Well-deserved food. Buffet all the time!



Kako, Enzo and Christine. That's Kako's food face, BTW.



That's Donya (Jan Solo) and Leo behind the pitcher.





This is Sir Bert with his son, Matty. He was asking Matty to act like a 5 year old. Matty didn't want to. Haha.



So came the tickle fest. :3 Cuuute!



That's Aida and Olga beside Enzo.



Jan Solo, Ma'am Annie (Wife of Sir Dick), Mark and Jasper. Smoker's table? Haha.



Marianne, me and Trixie. We found camwhoring more fun than swimming. Haha.



See?



Marianne, Aida, Blanch, me, Trixie and Enzo!



The balcony was so pretty after it rained. (:



Why is it so grainy?! D:



Drinking when there's a dive the next day... great idea!



I like the lights on this one. (: That's Yanna, Sir Dick's daughter.



Gaea (pretty name!), Hazel and Aida. (:



Marianne, Leslie and Venice. Kai behind her.



Sir Bert, Ma'am Annie, Sir Norman and Sir Dick.
That's fucking Green Label for ya, bitch!



Blanch all tipsy and me.



Matty who couldn't finish his dinner so he gave it to his dad. Haha.



My malandi photo. Haha. We were moonbathing.



Donya and her entourage.



Vodka for Venice.



Yanna still sleepy! :3



Breakfast on the balcony with Blanch and Jan (Donya)



Donya and Enzo



Nearly headless Cams.



Sir Dick, Kenzo, Ms. Annie and Yanna! DIVER FAMILY!
Crocs family din. Heehee.



Sir Bert and Matty. (:



Christina and her butterfly. Pretty girl!



Hello there, babycake! Eeee! :3







Kim, Paul, Harmond, Gaea, Leslie and Venice. Lunchies!



FIlling out our Dive Logs



Mark won't share his pen so I just took a photo of him.



Pepito, Donya and Peping!



Enzo's Don pic.



Jasper and Kako in SLEX's KFC



This photo is so made of win!



Long table! (:



Before we go home.



This pretty much embodies what those two days were like. I love these guys. (:



Scuba Diving Decompression Batch! I♥U!

It's sembreak! Oh, I told you that already, didn't I? Oh well. Pretty eventful so far but I'm entering the quieter stages. I like that, though. I still embrace the Cancerian homebody in me.

The non-eventful part came as a trip to Anilao, Batangas. This was for my Scuba Certification. Yay! I'm pretty proud, really. It was an amazing experience having seen things which you only knew of before in NatGeo.

The trip consisted of four dives in two days.

1. First dive reached 39 feet. From the shore we swam out a certain distance then went down. It was a messy dive. Everyone was testing out their buoyancy and couldn't quite get it right. Some had trouble adjusting at the depth. This was also the dive in which we had to do skills such as removing the mask underwater and clearing it. Since we had to do it at the bottom (kneeling on the seabed?), sand was everywhere when we got up. Sandstorm, much? The scenery was pretty but we didn't enjoy it much because we were trying to get used to it.



2. Second dive reached 45 feet. This was also a dive from the shore so we had to swim out first then go down. It was pretty much the same area but the dive got better. It wasn't as messy as the first No more skill tests. It was much more enjoyable. Our dive master, Sir Dick Reyes, kept taking photos of us. He did even on the first one but we have learned the art of posing underwater by this time.



3. Third dive reached 84 feet. Read my sidestory. Haha. This was the first dive of the second day of our stay. We hopped aboard a boat and headed for an island called Ligpo. The water was so clear. Sir Dick told us we were going to do a wall dive. The corals and marine life are on the wall. We are going to go around the island, following its wall. The actual depth is 120 feet but we had to stay at 60 feet. Imagine our surprise when we were told we reached 84 feet. Anyway, it was quite a practice of buoyancy because we were used to using the seafloor as our guide. Now, we actually had to monitor our depth. We did a backroll water entry in which you sit at the edge of the boat and let yourself fall backwards. This was my favorite, most tiring and most exciting dive. The first two dives seemed like nothing compared to this. The corals were bigger and more colorful. There was so much more to see. On the wall anyway. If you look towards the opposite direction of the wall, it's just blue and dark.
   
   Because of the depth, we had to do a safety stop. Sir Dick told us beforehand that if our pressure reached 1000 psi, we had to tell him already that we were low on air. As I said, this was my most tiring dive. At one point, I was so tired that I was really taking deep breaths to catch my breath. We did a pressure gauge check underwater and I went from 3000 psi to 1800 psi. Looking back, it was hilarious for us that we thought we were going to use the same tanks for the second dive so we were actually trying to conserve air by not breathing. Ang bobo lang. Haha.
   
   Funny story... The next pressure check, I was shocked that I only had 900 psi. 1000 psi was already considered low on air. I signaled to Sir Dick that I was low on air at 900 psi. To my surprise, he gave me an okay sign. Tangina, what?! Haha. I signaled again and still, he gave me an okay sign. Turns out, we were already doing the 3-minute safety stop before going up to the surface. When we surfaced, we were talking and laughing. Turns out, all of us were low on air already. We were like, how do we go about the second dive if we don't have air anymore? Imagine how stupid we felt when we saw the boatmen change our tanks. |:



4. Fourth dive was a fish feeding dive at 8 feet but we ended up in 72 feet. After Ligpo Island, we went to Dive and Trek via the boat. We were given a 45 minute rest. The others jumped into the water already when we arrived in Dive and Trek but our group, Sir Dick's group who finished the whole circumference of the island, was not up for anything except to sit down and rest. We were given packets of rice. We went down to 8 feet and kneeled. The fish started coming towards us. Sobrang dami! It was so pretty. They were eating the rice on my palm. So cute. I want to hug the fish and take them home. (BTW, send me fish on facebook!)

Sidestory, the night before the third and deepest dive, we were all on the balcony. The dive masters bought vodka and fucking Green Label. Hardcore! Haha. We had no plans of sleeping because all of us were having such a blast. People gathered around and started asking our dive masters questions of their diving experiences. Things such as their favorite dives, scariest dives, hilarious experiences, etc., One of the colleagues of our dive master, Sir Norman, told us a story about an underwater emergency that occurred last summer. They were at 82 feet that time when he saw one girl shoot up to the surface. This, of course, is dangerous. Sir Norman grabbed the girl to prevent her from doing so. The girl signaled she had no air. Sir Norman gave her the spare regulator (all of our equipment had one). The girl still said she had no air and she was in panic. Sir Norman checked her regulator but it was well-functioning. In her panic, the girl kept finning upwards. Sir Norman had to keep her at 10 meters for a decompression dive (staying put at 10m for a few minutes to remove excess Nitrogen from the body). He still had the girl in his grasp. He removed the fins of the girl. He gave her the illusion that they were going up but they were quite still at 10m. How he did it is too complicated for me to explain. Haha. Anyway, the girl's eyes were rolling up and her lips were turning blue. Sir Norman thought the girl was indeed going to pass out or even die. He already planned out the resuscitation and necessary first aid. When it was finally safe to surface, the girl started throwing up. She was safe but Sir Norman and the others were puzzled over what happened. A few days later, the girl had a check-up. Turns out she had pneumonia and didn't know it. It didn't show the normal symptoms ike colds. Her lungs collapsed at 82 feet. Since her lungs were filled with phlegm, she couldn't breathe.

Sir Norman concluded the story by telling us that the girl didn't sleep the night before... It was already 11:30pm. Not only that, we all had a couple of glasses of vodka and sprite mix. At that moment, all of us got up and went to bed. Haha. The next day, I ddn't have a cold but I took a decongestant pill just in case. Haha.

It's sad when you realize you were among great people right at the moment when all of you are about to part ways. (: I love my Scuba-mateys! Arrr!

Pardon the long entry. I can get carried away with the story telling sometimes. d: But it was really more for my sake to remember.

Coheed and Cambria, Angels and Airwaves and Cobra Starship have excellent new albums! I am in loooove. (: