What a weekend! I’m in the process of completing my open water diving certification under PADI (yay a blog!). I’ve always wanted to launch into the deep, so now that I have the time and a little more savings, I decided to invest slowly in dives. I dragged Juned into taking lessons under Jan Acosta thanks to MJ, a friend I’ve known since college. Here are three reasons why I made the choice to go dive:
Reason 1
Being the geek that I am, I invest in hobbies that are gear oriented. If I could fly out to space, I would. But since these visions of living the Star Trek dream won’t be accomplished anytime soon, it was a choice between going all out for airsoft or exploring new worlds underwater. Thus — scuba diving.
I availed of the promo in Nautilus, Makati — for P4,000 you get a mask, fins, booties and snorkel. I was also able to find a really nice wetsuit, a Henderson Gold Core for only P3,500.00. Forgot to buy gloves.
Reason 2
One of the reasons I went into blogging was to get to expand my network. Anyone who’s known me from college or high school will say that I was introverted. Similar to blogging, the dive community is also interesting — people I would otherwise have never met in my professional life, I meet them during dives.
Reason 3
Well the third reason is really just so that I don’t take myself too seriously. Sometimes when we’re glued on the Internet, we tend to lose a bit of perspective with what really matters in this journey called life. I own an online business. I run the online edition of UNO. I contribute to a few foreign blogs. Really, it’s always good to get away once in a while and experience something truly different. I didn’t bring my MacBook (although damn you, HSPA for providing me with Internet through my phone!!! ).
Even underwater, I still look sleepy
Thus far, I’ve completed four open water dives with a maximum depth of 60 ft. I’ve logged in a total of 2 hours and 48 minutes underwater.
Our instructor, Jan Acosta is a pretty interesting fellow. I guess the best way to describe him is that he’s a “Carlos Celdran of diving,” as he organizes dive tours in the Philippines and around the world. There’s one upcoming tour in Sipadan, Malaysia — a converted oil rig with the reef right below — P35,000.00 for 5 days. He’s also doing one in Palau (!!!) towards the end of the year.
P.S. — super thanks to Jules for the underwater photos!!!! My shots on the other hand were taken using, you guessed it, the Lumix LX3.
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