The Seaweed's Not Always Greener....

Diving and "working" in a dive shop is exhausting!  I've been showing up around 7:30 at the dive shop to help with gear set up, tear down and putting gear away as well as doing 3 dives/day and leaving around 8 or 9pm and it caught up with me today with a vengeance!  I showed up this morning at around 8:30am to do a Nitrox dive at 9am, feeling a little tired but ok.  Last night I was thinking... I would rather sleep in and lay on a beach than go diving today, but instead of listening to that instinct, I just showed up.  I knew I had made the wrong choice when Ari, my mentor, told me that I should get there a little earlier and my eyes immediately welled up with tears :(. I think it's a culmination of two weeks going pretty flat out with a new activity (scuba diving) that my body isn't used to or trained for yet.  Coming from a landlocked province and stress from work then stress from prepping my house for renters, then straight into the Divemaster Training (DMT) with no downtime has proven a bit much for my system.  The solution, a day off... maybe two... and to treat myself while I try to recover.  I think a pedicure, foot massage, and full body massage would be a good treatment program and will likely cost me less than $50. 

I recognize now that I am allowed to and I NEED to give myself some down time too.  Most of us, myself included, come from such a culture of achievement and goals and schedules and deadlines that we don't know how to shut down and power up.  Ha ha, as ironic as this is, I am going to make learning to power down a new goal.  Wish me luck!

On a lighter note, the diving is amazing.  Some of the cool new critters I've seen under the sea this week include:

Juvenile Midnight Snapper (bottom left photo), very cute and dramatically different looking than the adult Midnight Snapper!

Blunt Decorator Crab - saw this guy on a night dive despite his amazing camouflage 

Another master of camouflage, the cockatoo waspfish (bottom right).  This guy was tiny and looked like a dead leaf floating around the sea floor

Reef Stonefish - this is one ugly, grumpy-looking mutha', so grumpy looking you can't help but want to flip him the bird when you see him underwater.  Oh yeah, he also is poisonous and camouflaged so he's hard to see...  a real "A-hole of the sea"

Mount Rinjani on Lombok looked beautiful this morning

Had a nice pizza dinner and a nice evening out with the team from Blue Marlin to celebrate the birthday of one of the instructors, Daniel (in black, longsleeves)

Owen, one of the instructors at Blue Marlin has been calling Chrissie and I team America since we arrived as a joke.  We got our payback today....  HAPPY CANADA DAY!

I Have a Mentor!

I have finally been assigned a mentor for my Divemaster Training.  I feel really lucky to have been assigned Ari (Aristides), the most experienced instructor at Blue Marlin :)

I can't wait to start assisting him with courses and learning from him.

Settling into Life on Gili Trawangan

breakfast self portrait

I started my Divemaster Training (DMT) with Blue Marlin Dive on Gili T. the day after I arrived (on June 18th) so I've been at it for almost a week now.  At first I floated around the dive shop feeling like I was always in the midst of a well-orchestrated chaos of divers, instructors, regulators, BCD's, tanks, fins, masks, and weight belts and I was in the way wherever I went.  I was told to go on fun dives to get familiar with the dive sites and the routine but I still felt like I was being a pest because I didn't know where anything was, if there was room for me on the boat, and I didn't have a feel for the rhythm of the dive operation.  Finally, after 5 days of drifting about aimlessly, and joining dives whenever I could, we had a briefing for the 5 new DMTs and the 2 existing ones.  They outlined some of the expectations and the schedule and I'm starting to get into the routine.  Blue Marlin does boat dives at 9am, 11:30am, and 2:30pm and I can go on any of these dives that I want to if I sign up in advance, there is enough room on the boat, and there is an instructor or guide willing to let me tag along.  I also have reading to do, skills to practice and demonstrate for once I'm cleared to work with an instructor assisting in open water scuba diver courses, classes to observe, as well as classes which I participate in as a student.

a partially loaded boat pre-dive

I am nearly finished my Technical Diving International (TDI) Understanding Nitrox course and I did my first Nitrox dive today to 31.2m for 50 minutes.  The air was enriched from 21% oxygen (like the air we all breath) to 35% oxygen which allows for longer bottom times with reduced risk of nitrogen loading... a good thing because Nitrogen bubbles are what cause the bends and decompression illness!  Very cool, even though there is some math involved to calculate the best blend for different depths.  I hate math, but in this case, it was worth it!

My typical routine is to sign up for a dive or two (or even 3) the night before, show up around 7:30-8am, have my coffee and breakfast while checking email and who's on Skype, head into the shop to help set up gear, see who needs help, get my own gear ready for the 9am dive, GO ON AN AWESOME DIVE!, get back and help rinse, sort and put away gear and get next set of gear set up for the 11:30 dive, DO ANOTHER AWESOME DIVE!, help rinse, sort and put away gear and get next set of gear set up for 2:30pm dive, grab lunch, DO 3RD AWESOME DIVE!, get back and help put everything away, have a rinse in the swimming pool, maybe a beer and check email, then dinner, then bed... perhaps with a few more beers or some reading before bed.

Here are some photos I took on a dive...

That's a moray (sing to tune of "that's amore")

Hey ray!

Pretty little fern corals

Quit clowning around (clownfish AKA Nemo

Titan Triggerfish, known to be territorial and "bitey" during nesting

Somebody took a bite out of this poor turtle :(

Top 5 Highlights so far:

Honorable mention: . BBQ corn at the night market - they cook corn over hot coals then brush it with garlic butter, then with a spicy chili sauce... Super delicious.  DO Try this at home.

#5. Nitrox course and dive - very cool.  I also got an intro to what a closed circuit rebreather looks like and how it works from a very knowledgeable tech diver and instructor ( Aristides or "Ari").  He said I could try the rebreather out in the pool sometime to see how it feels.

#4. Finding a lovely quiet beach with sunbathing cushions to read the 6th chapter of my Divemaster manual one morning while I had my coffee.

#3. A conservation talk about the artificial reef in front of the dive shop.  The dives site is called Biorocks and it is made up of a cathode made of a steel rebar frame and a sacrificial titanium anode.  Electrical current is run to both the cathode and anode to increase calcium carbonate precipitation on the rebar structure resulting in the growth of an artificial reef.  We did some maintenance by using plastic zip ties to attach coral fragments onto the structure where they will cement and grow at a high rate, we also used wire brushes to remove algae to encourage calcium carbonate precipitation.  Very cool and awesome to be involved in some real marine conservation work!

#2. Seeing a Banana Nudibranch, the largest nudibranch (a type of sea slug with fancy exposed gills) that I have ever seen.  It was bright yellow with black stripes and dots and was about 4" long

#1. Watching 3 cuttlefish in the process of laying eggs and mating... cuttlefish porn is fascinating.

the road to my secluded coffee/reading spot

That shit is bananas!

Cuttlefish porn!

Wait - I almost forgot the coolest thing I have experienced so far... AN EARTHQUAKE!  I have never felt one before and a 5.2 magnitude one shook us on June 22nd at around 1:30pm.  I was surprised that I heard it before I felt it and also that I instinctively knew within a couple seconds what was happening despite never having felt a quake before.  It was just an awesome moment for a Geologist :)

Bottom 5 Lowlights so far:

#5.  One of the other DMT's is a real know-it-all... Their "anything you can do, I can do better" attitude is very off-putting

#4. The first dive I did, the current was so strong that by the time we descended we had been swept past the reef.  I was thinking "well, this is lame... not much to see here" but I didn't even know we had missed the reef.

#3. Watching a cat pee on the sand floor of the restaurant I was eating in, in a spot where I had just walked barefoot (ewwwwwww).

#2. Cleaning cat poop off our balcony where one of the nasty little buggers had left us a homecoming gift (noticing a trend here)

#1. Getting a really raw blister from my flip flop strap he very first day here and having to be barefoot since then while it heals.

Chrissy holding up one of the culprits.  These kitties are everywhere, they are cute but do some really disgusting things.

another offender

I'm settling in and loving the island so far.  I feel like I have tons to learn and will be kept quite busy here until I leave, and I may even need to do a Visa run, some off island touring, and then come back to finish learning and enjoying Gili T.

night market shots

On an unrelated note, I have seen photos of the recent flooding in Calgary and can't believe what home looks like now!  Be safe Calgarians and everyone affected.  My thoughts are with you and I hope none of you were impacted too negatively by the floods.

The Price of Rice in Indonesia

Rice is inexpensive ;) 

Meals are from $2.50 to $6.00 CAD at most places we have eaten so far.  Coffee is $1.  A large beer is $3.50 and a small beer is $2.50.  A 2L bottle of water is 50 cents. A 19L bottle of water is $7 and to refill it is $2.  A used bike is $40-70 (Chrissie and I each bought a bike today to get around... saves us the $2.50  daily rental fee abd we can sell the bikes for the same amount when we leave).  We are sharing a lovely room with a fan, bathroom, coldwater shower, deck, king bed for $200/month.  To be honest, we aren't sure what the uptick will be for double occupancy.  Nobody actually collects payment for anything ahead if time.  Chrissie has been here nearly 3 weeks and hasn't paid a cent for our room yet.

view from balcony if our room

There are no cars on the island and tge only transportation is pony-drawn cart, foot or bicycle

View SE to Lombok from Gili Trawangan

one of the over 100 accommodations for rent on Gili Trawangan

Another of the typical homes/rentals on the island

The streets are dirt or cobblestone and are carefully swept with straw brooms each morning

$3.50 Large beer

Chrissie on her $40 bike

Chrissie with her $3 meal and my $5 neal from the night market - SUPER DELICIOUS!

out for a walk with the mission to buy bicycles

our lovely abode

home is tge top floor nearest to us, view of the garden

our patio

A Cautionary Tale

The process of packing, moving things to storage, selling unused items, emptying my house, repairing all the neglected little things around the house, and cleaning the house and garage in order to rent it out during my planned one year absence was... in a word, awful.  I vastly underestimated the length of time and the emotional toll this preparation would take.  This is my cautionary tale.

I allowed myself just over 1 full week from my last day of work, June 6th to my flight date, June 15th.  During this time I was completely miserable.  I enlisted the help of a good friend, Don, and my boyfriend, Trevor and worked them both, and myself, like rented mules.  Most days began at 8am and ended after 11pm, meals were typically fast food grabbed on the way to a hardware store for something that was forgotten.  In this time we achieved so much, so much that I should have done earlier to avoid the last minute stress.  We repaired the front steps outside the house (Doug was a HUGE help with this too), patched and touch-up-painted the walls, sanded, painted, and hung closet doors (mostly Don), replaced window screens, moved everything into storage, loaned it, donated it, gave it away, recycled, or threw it out, removed a non-functioning water feature from the backyard and filled in the hole, pruned and fertilized trees, and mowed the lawn.  The night before my departure, I went to bed at 2am because it took right up until then to finish everything.  For those of you who I wasn't able to schedule that last goodbye hug with, this is my excuse, and my apology.  Thank you so much Jenny and Chris for planning and hosting my goodbye/birthday party which was such an amazing way to fit in a lot of goodbyes in a condensed timeframe!  Thanks also Tyler and Edlyn for the use of your truck and trailer - what a timesaver!

Trevor and his masterpiece, the repaired front steps

The other thing I failed to fully appreciate was the emotional aspect.  I went from gainfully employed with a cuddly cat and a comfortable bed and home to an unemployed, cat less, squatter sleeping on the floor (be it exhausted and fitfully on a very comfortable foam mattress) in a house which was in total disarray.  The whole process was extremely overwhelming and left me emotionally raw and prone to crying jags at any time (not a totally new phenomena - right mom, Trev, Jenny?). This first really hit me when I delivered my cat to Doug to look after her for the year.  This cat has loved me, kept me company while I wrote my Masters Thesis, watched TV with me, licked all my apple cores clean (hey, it's just her thing), made an appearance during every skype call with my parents, sister and niece, and slept with me almost every night for the past 10 years.  When I dropped her off I felt my heart break.  I know she's in excellent hands and will be well cared for and loved but I was surprised by how much it all hit me at that moment.  

Life as a squatter

I miss this kitty!

Throughout all of this, Trevor has been my heart and my rock.  He made my problems his problems, found solutions, held me together when I was falling apart, and was there every step of the way.  He is a very hardworker, calm, a perfectionist when it comes to household repairs and cleaning, a skilled drywall repairman, and was always ready with a hug and encouraging words when it felt impossible to finish everything... oh yeah, and he drives a big truck, has lots of tools, has a saw, and is an amazing handyman!  He's the whole package and I love him with all my heart.  He did all this knowing that I was leaving.  He assures me I will see him again in a few (FEW) months when he joins me in the fall or winter but seeing the house empty, my departure feels very "permanent" even though I know I will be back.  It was a very tearful goodbye at the airport.

Miss you!

My mom told me a quote (which, of course, triggered a crying jag) which I paraphrase;

"I travel to look for what I need, I return home to find what I love"

Heavy bags, heavier heart

The day has finally arrived.  I am at the airport waiting to board my first flight.  In the past weeks I've fallen in love with the beauty of Calgary all over again and have been reminded of the warmth and generosity of all my wonderful friends (sniff).  It is really hard to leave all this behind.  I will miss everyone so much, so please please please stay in touch!