How do you know

How do you know you are way too crazy abt diving?

Recall the MRT announcement in different languages to call 999 incase of emergency?

"Similan similan similan" = 999 to a normal person

"Similan similan similan" = Great dive site, I want to go dive there, Great dive site to a diving addict.


I seriously hope this will fade away with time (I don't foresee anymore diving). I have not been addicted to something so badly since GTA came out on PS2, since Super Mario, since playing better tennis, since....actually since many more things!

Trends

Try this

Key in things like hmmm....."tammy"????

Advance dive and a little more

Before I go into a picture galore of my advance diving trip. I shall try to educate my dive buddy. In response to Ping's long entry....there is no fish, its a nudibranch! See the red circle in the first picture! And those corals are called tabletop corals.
So I decided to take my advance diving certification along with some leisure dives. That should give me enough diving to last me till end of the year. Diving is darn expensive, but worth a try. This time I took the bus/ferry route. Oh my, 4 hours in a van and 4 hours on a ferry to the island is no joke. It really tested my conviction to continue diving. We even had to give a welcome 'gift' to the Malaysia Policemen who stopped us for no apparent reason. Perhaps there is a rule that a 8 seater van can only have 6 people?

We stepped onto island at 5am, dragged ourselves to the room to get some proper rest. The only good part of it all, the rooms are much better than the Live onboard.

Welcome Pulau Dayang, hello sunshine and sea! We had some time to play beach volleyball. I think it was JC since I last played this game? We could have won the game, but I had a "STAR PLAYER" in my team, who also happens to be my dive buddy.

Here are some pictures of the world underwater. Did not take the pictures, stole them from lyn - First time underwater photographer.

This shell thingy was moving slowly while we were doing our night dive.

See the black fishes....they were TINY!!! Some where even about half a centimeter.
I think that is a goat fish. It sure looks like it has a goatee
This is a nudibranch I see pretty often that it is no longer a novelty. There thosands of different spieces and more are being discovered. Fact:They are carnivorous! Fact:They are often molested by ping.
Lobster....
Clown fish aka Nemo. They are everywhere, but you don't often get two looking straight into the camera. Say CHEESE!!!Here is the best shot taken by a new Underwater photographer. It was during the night dive and clever use of the torch to hightlight the starfish.


Below are underwater photos I took from alvin. He is a serious underwater photographer. He has a big stobe with a very good digital camera. Coupled with lots of diving experience, you can see the difference in picture quality.

Yellow-tailed barracudas. I saw a big school of it went I was doing my safety stop at Rayner's Rock. Pretty surreal!
Flabellina looks a little like dragon. I saw a couple of these during my dives. Lovely!
White-eyed Moray eel. I even got a chanve to take pictures of it, but my instructor has not sent me what I took. The eel I saw was up a huge coral formation. So I had to float in the middle of nowhere to get the pictures. Why was I so stable? Cause Ping was so excited she literally grab me and force me to take pictures of it. Scorpion fish...saw a few of these too. Very well hidden critter!

Nudibranch, the exact same kind that ping tormented during our basic open water course!
This has got to be my favourite finds during this trip. Saw the juvenile yellowbox fish twice durin g the trip. It is abt 2cm only. Scuttering around here and there. It is very hard to get a clear look at it! Everytime I see this photo, I feel like squishing it! haha!
Hermit crab also known at junction 8 as HAHA crabs. They are actually selling hermit crabs for $40. I think I should catch some back and start my own! And the hermit crabs I see in the water a HUGE compared to those at j8!
Barred moray eel. I saw this fellow too. Well hidden under a flat rock with only a small opening. Just so happen I decided to peek into that hole and VIOLA! But it was pretty shy, did not shoot out like the picture below!
Here is the whole group, bunch of leisure divers, open water students, 4 advance students, Dive master trainee and instructors. Very fun group, filled with snacks, drinks, vollyball, chats and jokes.

The guy in white is my instructor. 4 of us took the advance open water course. The jap girl is sleeping I guess. She has this ability to sleep anywhere. She will just plonk herself somewhere and knockout, even better than me! I must say that Jap girl is very interesting. She had already bagpacked central USA, Australia and decided to stay in Singapore after a short trip over here.

Ypu must be wondering if Ping poked, molested anymore critters this time round. The below picture says it all.
.
.
.
.
.
.
..
.
.
.
..
.
.
.
.
.
.
..
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

Ping is a little more careful now since she got bitten the last time round which led to 50 antibiotics and a jab. Without a pointer and gloves, she resorted to using her Fins to "lightly" touch the creatures (lightly is what she use to justify her actions). During night dives, she will use her torchlight as the pointer. Jabbing anything that interests her. She was so excited when she saw a turtle, she practically almost hung onto its shell! *smacks forehead*

All in all, it was a lovely trip other than getting drifted away from my instructor who was tending to the jap girl. I still don't agree with my instructor's way of handling the situation. But that is another story for another time. (Dammn tired already)

Here is a poem I saw on the forum. Condolences to the family of the guy who passed away while diving a Sipada

Carson Ray (1989)

If I should die beneath the sea

Whatever the circumstance may be

I only ask that you not cry

For such a lucky one was I.

But rather weep for those alive

Who know not what it is to dive

Into the planet's liquid heart

And of God's ocean be a part.

For even Christ must envy all

Who dive along the ocean's wall

Though the wind and sea His will obeys

He only walked along the waves.

And may I ask for one thing more?

A simple cross beside the shore

Below my name inscribe for me

Lost to the earth but found at sea.

Those eyes

Behind those eyes, tongue and hair....she is a devil!

But I wan to be bedtime or grumpy

	Tenderheart Bear You are thinker, organizer, peacekeeper, and leader all in one. You have a power to command attention and people listen to you. However, you are often so concerned about not hurting others' feelings that you don't tell them what they need to hear and this gets you both into trouble. But you always have loyal friends to help you out.
Take the Which Care Bear Are You? Quiz!

Pictures

Sneaky cameraman caught me doing a pole dance! haha! I think I was just dazing in a weird position.

Check out the food that I was raving about. There was more food on the other table and a pot full of curry! Yummy!!! The food was good for every meal, so good that Ping had to gorge 3 prata and curry chicken for breakfast.


Try to read what was written on the right side of the whiteboard...Hell has no fury like a man without his beer!

I look a little dumb when I am with the mask. But Aquaman needs his equipments just like how batman needs his!
Don't really want to open my eyes in the sea. I am pretty anal when it comes to my eyes.


Here is the group with the instructor (in blue, sitting with his legs really wide apart).


I am taking some time to upload the pictures cause it is a pain to wait for it to upload.

bad week

Lunch time.
No lunch for me.
Not in the mood.
Sneaking in some time to vent.

I am having a bad week...

Nitrogen filled body wrecked Monday
Stucked at work killed Tuesday
Problems mess Wednesdays

FUCK

I can't sleep

My name is Ansley Yeo and I am a nitrogen addict....

I want to go dive at
perhentian
redang
aur
similan
manado
wreck dives
and many more.....

I can't stop thinking about it....I am even thinking that tennis is not very fun. Gaming is nothing to me now. I just want to be thrown back to the sea.

Anyone interested in doing Advance Diving soon with me? (Just so I can dive deeper legally)

Long last...

I finally went for my open sea dive. I am a certified aquaman! Now I know why Aqua ASS is so addicted to it. I want to go back to the sea, give me gills so I can stay in the water.

I started my diving experience by being pampared with a Live onboard. Sat on MV Seabourne all the way to Dayang. Lovely experience, no hassle of changing bus and ferry. The food was VERY VERY good. The capt and cook is this guy by the name of Ah Koon (or Ah Goon). He can really whip up really good dishes. Thou he seem to occassionally under cook the chicken. Food, snacks and entertainment was plentiful. (To think I thought diving can help me lose weight, in the end... I gained some weight)

I did not need to dive to see fishes, the water was so clear....I can see the fishes swimming ard when I was on board. Saw a turtle too before I even went down for my first dive. How clear is the water? I spotted a blue spotted sting ray clearly (abt 10m) when I was playing with the snorkle on the water surface.

When you first descend, the feeling of awe just overwhelms you. I feel a certain sense of peace and then suddenly no marine life seems scary. I guess AquaPing took that feeling a little too seriously. She must be lying when she said she is scared of fishes, cause when she was a TERROR. She kept touching everything in her sight. The pool little nudibranch was molested by her REPEATEDLY. The worst is she does not have gloves. She fiddled with the sea cucumber, kept playing with the coral ferns. Basically thought she was invincible. I swear she would have touched the stonefish we saw if it was closer to her. The best part of it all, I showed her the picture of the Crown of Thorns (at Jawa), the joker almost went to touch it before the divemaster smacked her hands away. *roll eyes* Ichthyophobia my foot!!! Don't say I never warn you, Fire corals do pack a mean punch!

I had a opportunity to do a night dive at Sebukong, which was an eye opener. The world down there has a totally different feel when it is night. Somehow the sea urchins are out in full force at that time. Reef crab, pufferfish, sea slug, big nudibranch, sleeping fishes...and plenty more which I can only describe as fishes, big fish, ehh...coloured fish?

I missed out a lot of things too, the leisure divers got attacked by triggers, saw the coneshell, crabs and even shrimps. My instructor saw the shape of a nurse shark when we were at pulau yu (Yu in malay means shark). I want to do a leisure dive, just so I can take my time to check out the little things I missed.

Jet rock and Pulau Yu was the leisure dive we did before we left for Spore. The currents were pretty strong and the visibility was probably abt 4-5m. A totally different experience with such conditons. Really had to play with the bouyancy just to get real close to the reefs without stiring anymore sediments. Just my luck as the divemaster told me that the 2 sites actually have really good visibility if the conditions were right. If you are at Jet Rock, do not touch anything which looks foreign, they use that place for live firing! hahaha!

The journey back was filled with naps, movies, beer, wine and chips. That is life....

I have a nitrogen hangover!!! I need more!!!

(I will upload the pictures when I feel less lazy)

Did you know?

Over a dinner conversation I found out that you can SMS your home phone and receive the SMS as electronic voice mail.

Go try it. Use variations of hahahaha, ha ha ha and etc. See what the computer will generate!

You can see I have very boliao friends.

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go....

Under the sea.........

Mac religion

A crack in their faith?

I think not, just want to gain more market shares.

I feel the most important question is .... Can we use the MAC to play PC GAMES?!?!?

Aquaman: Nemesis (edited)

Just so I know how they look like ......

Crown of Thorns

Stone Fish

Trigger Fish

Edited:
aquashorty: tts those tt u find in aquarium, tame like a dog....

Here is the crazy one...Titan Trigger

Prof ASS (Aqua shorty stud) gave me an additional beware.

Cone shells looks pretty, but can be deadly.


Don't need to see how the shark looks like, I know - thanks to hollywood!

Auqaman's side kick aka Aquaping is Ichthyophobia (Fear of Fish).

Balls to tennis...

Tennis is not on my mind this week.

I can't wait for Friday....

Arghh.... FRIDAY FRIDAY FRIDAY!!!!!

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday Gab!

Aquaman: Fears

Every superhero has their innermost fears. Something which they hide even deeper than their secret identity. And aquaman's fear is....Dying in the sea (why the hell did I choose to be aquaman). I just feel so unready, don't know why this uneasiness. This went a notch up after a chat with aqua'shorty' (from now on, known as ASS).

ASS: If you see sharks, must tell me. Take photos.
me: Siao...see sharks I will swim away real fast. Probably leave my dive bud as the bait (kidding there ping)
ASS: Just be careful of trigger fish. Got one bit my dive friend before. They are notorious for being aggressive.
me: *jaws drop* (I did a search and you judge for yourself)
ASS: Careful of Crown of thorns starfish....60 secs and bye bye
me: I thought starfish is like spongebob's friend...so friendly (click here)
ASS: I went for a dive, people tell me the site very good....but when I was there, there was stonefish everywhere. I had the worst dive in my life
me: ......

(the above conversation is not quoted word for word)

My instructor said he met a White tip before and he took photos of it. Being a newbie aquaman, I thought he meant some fish....yeah, "some" fish he meant. (Click here)

Plus all the other things you need to remember to do if not some form of injury may happen to you. I mean, getting injured on land is one thing, getting injured underwater, 15m deep is another.

You can only feel my apprehension when you do the course. You will feel inadequtely trained. BUT....I am as excited as hell!

Aquaman: The Beginning

Every superhero needs to start somewhere (My main alterego is still this), even aquaman. I took my baby steps to have 'gills' built in me. Here are some of the significant points in the prologue

I choked the first time I wore the mask. The rubber blocked the passage of my nose, I forgot aquaman breaths only thru his mouth. I choked the time I forgot to clear the water first when I took off the regulator. Can you imagine this in the headlines..."Aquaman dies after choking on mouthful of water"

I have clumsy flipper feet. Kept kicking myself when I swim. I can't walk properly in the swimming pool in them, but then again they are not for walking. Damn those duck feet! And I come to love them after I tried moving in the water without them. I have never realise how painful it was to be a snail.

I stared blankly at the final exam paper, especially when they ask me to use some weird charts to calculate the amount of nitrogen left in my body. What the hell, just give me the 100% oxygen. I want to be high. (maybe I should try faking Decompression sickness when I come up from the dive)

I realise I can never understand what the instructor is trying to handsign to me, but I always seem to understand what he is trying to handsign to some other fellow sea-men. Eg, instructor pointed to low pressure inflator after pointing for a 5 point ascent. I just pumped in the air and floated up, WHEEEeeee. (For your info, you can die if you do that) Actually the instructor wanted to tell us not to use the inflator.

I pee-ed in my wetsuit, keeps me warm! HAHA

I still feel I am not prepared for the sea. Aquaman can't even crawl properly, he is going to walk next week

Of toilet seats

Why do is it that the toilet seat cover must be placed down? Who says it it should be? Why can't it be left up and when you need it, then you place it down. I have a good reason why people should follow my way of toilet etiquette. Follow me on this...

Let me debunk this mystery for all - Guys can't aim properly into the toilet seat during the first few seconds when they pee. That fact is true probably abt 50% of the time. Why? Imagine u take a hose and just turn the tap on. The water just spurts out. The mechanism is not as accurate as the hands, you can't fine tune it so much so that you always have a nice trajactory. There are some other finer details why the exit stream do not always follow the nice path into the toilet bowl, but that is for you to find out.

Secondly, when u pee into the toilet bowl, it is inadvertable that some water get splash out. Not my fault, blame it on the gravitational force.

Why do I grapple on the fact that toilet seats should be left up? This is especially so in the guy's toilet. When the seat is up, we don't have to bother....just unzip and do the deed. Splash away if u can't control your tool too well. When you need to do a biggie, just plonk the seat cover and WOAH....it is cleaner than usual.

Ok, I am just pissed at the guy's toilet over at my IA company...DISGUSTING!!!

Gills!!!

I decided that walking on land is just too simple for me. After watching 'The Entourage', I come to realise that I am destined to be AQUA MAN! Or as Dav puts it "Sea-man' (for the humourless people - note the pun).

Actually I am no water baby, I am not big into swimming. But I finally signed up to learn diving. This was after the numerous false alarm by Ping. Starting on diving is not an easy task. First, you got to decide which Dive Center you want. There are like TONS of dive centers around. Some sounded dodgy, others don't have a good reputation. So how do you decide? Go ask around for referals I guess?! A big thanks to the man with the connections, he really gave us the final push we needed to go ahead and a good price (Location not too good though).

I am currently in the midst of pool sessions. We had a theory lessons with some physics and maths. p1v1=p2v2 (LOVELY!!!) You got to learn some mind boggling stuff about pressure, density nitrogen level etc etc. It is actually not that difficult, but the lesson was held really late and I was pretty tired.

They say "Careful with .... if not your lung will explode." "You may get decompression sickness leading to a dangerous senario" .....

I am half wandering why the heck I signed on to put myself in such dangers. As my friend puts it, the first time diving, you usually don't see much. You spend more time trying to stay alive.

And the best part of it all....ping aka dive buddy said "Eh, will the fish bite? I am scared of fishes leh, if they come near me I will freak out!" *DEADPANNS* My dear life is in danger.

Breathing constantly thru your mouth is not natural. Takes a while to get used to it. The equipments are darn heavy. Enough of complaining...I will reserve my final reviews after my open sea dive.

Signing off....a worried sea-man

The onslaught continues

Everyone in their life hopes to own a car. A vehicle to drive along the expressways and hear the tires rumble. It is pretty thereputic.

I guess she really believes what I said.


Happy Birthday Anastacia. You are a proud owner of a pink car when you are only 1 year old. (mind you, it is battery powered, not flint stone's method of using the legs)

Ahhh, she also received what every baby needs - a pair of shoes that squeaks. (pink colour too)

By the way, my neice can walk now. I admit it is not the model like walk, but it is fine for now.