Crazy things I do, part 1

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Sometimes it pays to give in to compulsion. Because I didn't think too much about my choices, now I'm a certified open water diver.

It started with talk of going skydiving. But after a number of dead-end queries, we put that one off. The next accessible option was to go scuba diving. And for that Em found a lot of resources.

After looking over the choices of dive instructors online, he picked a dude named Tomas Morato, who runs a dive shop called Diver's Network at--and this is uncanny--Tomas Morato Ave. in QC. The shop is just 15mins away from the office, so we decided to drop a visit one lunchtime. Tom wasn't there, and instead we met another instructor, Luis Nazareno, who answered all our queries like a seasoned interviewee.

Once we had the information we needed--basically the costs (PhP11.5K each for our group of three, plus the resort fee of PhP3.9K each for a weekend) and the schedule (5-6hrs of classroom session and one weekend of confined and open water dives)--there was only one decision left to make: to dive or not to dive.

So over lunch at Brothers Burger across Diver's Network, Em, Eleanor and I mulled it over. I had known all along I wanted to do it. I've been birdwatching for 6yrs now and many of the birding sites I visit are also dive sites, or have dive sites nearby. In fact, there have always been more divers than birders around, and it was a pity that for all the resources I spent to get to those places, I could do only one thing.

I also realized that in the delicate web of life, avian biodiversity is somehow connected to marine biodiversity. And if birds have managed to awe me, I expect marine wildlife to be amazing as well. I've seen enough David Attenborough documentaries to doubt that.

So the decision was made for me. And I didn't even stop to consider my budget, or my schedule, or my physical fitness, or the fact that I was about to make a salon appointment for my hair treatment. I just gave a yes. As did Em and Eleanor, thankfully.

The next thing we had to decide on was when we wanted to do it. It was tricky because classroom sessions all had to be done on weekdays because the instructors were all diving on weekends. Luis did say we could arrange for an after-hours schedule or do the classroom part in one go. But at that time we had to consider the schedule of Ryan, supposedly the 4th group member, who had to come from Makati. But in the end Ryan had to skip, so only the three of us had to sync our schedules.

For me, that meant coming to work at least an hour earlier so we can go early and be at Diver's Network by 5:30pm. That would give us until 8:30pm or 9pm. And we planned to distribute the classroom sessions over 2 consecutive days. We picked August 25 and 26, Wednesday and Thursday. And for our weekend dive, we picked September 4 and 5, the weekend of the next payday, and also the only weekend in September that Luis was free.

And so everything was set. All we had to do was show up for our lessons. I will write about that in my next entry.

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