Professional Association of Diving Instructors
They prepare you with the written stuff. They take you to the pool, introduce you to all the equipments you will be using and teach you how to use them. They’ve told you repeatedly the dangers you might be facing and what you need to do to avoid them.
And then, you’re standing at the edge of the boat, with a 10kg air cylinder on your back and added weights around your waist, and they tell you take a big step with your clown fins feet and jump into the water. “I’m going to sink down to the bottom!”
You muster the courage, take the step and then you inhale your first breath under water, and you hear your breath through the mouth piece. It works. And slowly you emerge back to the surface and you’re floating – positive buoyancy.
And slowly, you release the air from your buoyancy control device, and you start to go down and you find yourself under water. All you hear is your breath and as you exhale the bubbles coming out of your mouth. And you get your first sight of this amazing world underneath which was totally unknown to you before. Everything happens in slow motion, you’re surprised at how well you can see. The plants, the fish, the corals, the sand, you find yourself within a huge natural aquarium.
Some fish come to inspect you. And as I would find out in my last dive, some fish are not happy that you’re here. But mostly, they all go about ignoring you. The octopus moves with grace, the morays have faces like turtles and like to hide beneath corals, and the sting ray is a privilege sighting. The scorpion fish are extremely dangerous and very common here, but they don’t harm you if you don’t harm them. The trigger fish, on the other hand, is not happy about us invading its space, particularly when it is nesting. I was attacked by a big bright yellow and blue trigger fish. It came for my fins; my instructor came in front of me and started pushing it away with his fins. It followed us for 5 minutes and bit the fins of my instructor. All I did was hide behind him until we swam across the danger area!
As we dove, I had to complete various skills tests to finish my course. And as I completed my last skill set, my instructor kneeled on the sand at the bottom of the sea, marked a spot in front of him and called me. And as kneeled in front of him, he drew his hand out and shook my hand. At that spot, at the bottom of the Andaman Sea, 18 meters below sea level, near Racha Yai Island, I successfully completed my PADI open waters diver certificate.
“Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster. The ego-climber is like an instrument that’s out of adjustment. He puts his foot down an instant too soon or too late. He’s likely to miss a beautiful passage of sunlight through the trees. He goes on when the sloppiness of his step shows he’s tired. He rests at odd times. He looks up the trail trying to see what’s ahead even when he knows what’s ahead because he just looked a second before. He goes too fast or too slow for the conditions and when he talks, his talk is forever about somewhere else, something else. He’s here but he’s not here. He rejects the here, is unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then it will be “here”. What he’s looking for, what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn’t want that because it is all around him. Every step’s an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goal to be external and distant.” – Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance).
And then, you’re standing at the edge of the boat, with a 10kg air cylinder on your back and added weights around your waist, and they tell you take a big step with your clown fins feet and jump into the water. “I’m going to sink down to the bottom!”
You muster the courage, take the step and then you inhale your first breath under water, and you hear your breath through the mouth piece. It works. And slowly you emerge back to the surface and you’re floating – positive buoyancy.
And slowly, you release the air from your buoyancy control device, and you start to go down and you find yourself under water. All you hear is your breath and as you exhale the bubbles coming out of your mouth. And you get your first sight of this amazing world underneath which was totally unknown to you before. Everything happens in slow motion, you’re surprised at how well you can see. The plants, the fish, the corals, the sand, you find yourself within a huge natural aquarium.
Some fish come to inspect you. And as I would find out in my last dive, some fish are not happy that you’re here. But mostly, they all go about ignoring you. The octopus moves with grace, the morays have faces like turtles and like to hide beneath corals, and the sting ray is a privilege sighting. The scorpion fish are extremely dangerous and very common here, but they don’t harm you if you don’t harm them. The trigger fish, on the other hand, is not happy about us invading its space, particularly when it is nesting. I was attacked by a big bright yellow and blue trigger fish. It came for my fins; my instructor came in front of me and started pushing it away with his fins. It followed us for 5 minutes and bit the fins of my instructor. All I did was hide behind him until we swam across the danger area!
As we dove, I had to complete various skills tests to finish my course. And as I completed my last skill set, my instructor kneeled on the sand at the bottom of the sea, marked a spot in front of him and called me. And as kneeled in front of him, he drew his hand out and shook my hand. At that spot, at the bottom of the Andaman Sea, 18 meters below sea level, near Racha Yai Island, I successfully completed my PADI open waters diver certificate.
“Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster. The ego-climber is like an instrument that’s out of adjustment. He puts his foot down an instant too soon or too late. He’s likely to miss a beautiful passage of sunlight through the trees. He goes on when the sloppiness of his step shows he’s tired. He rests at odd times. He looks up the trail trying to see what’s ahead even when he knows what’s ahead because he just looked a second before. He goes too fast or too slow for the conditions and when he talks, his talk is forever about somewhere else, something else. He’s here but he’s not here. He rejects the here, is unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then it will be “here”. What he’s looking for, what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn’t want that because it is all around him. Every step’s an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goal to be external and distant.” – Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance).
posted by manu at 5:22 PM
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