Scuba diving certification: Day 1

Gotta get up nice and early this morning because I'm starting my dive training with a video on chapters 1, 2, and 3, which should be a nice refresher before the quizzes on those chapters I'm supposed to take at lunch.  Then after lunch it will be time for my shallow water "practice time", where my instructor, Salim, and I will go out to water 6 meters deep and check my basic skills.  I'm not worried, I think I'll be fine; I'm a great swimmer, the skills are common sense, and I'm a really quick learner.  Oh, yeah, no big deal.  If you ever get interested in diving yourself, find an instructor here.

So the morning passes very uneventfully, it's just me, sitting in a mildewy bedroom in the back of Rubiah Tirta's office, watching a ridiculously boring video made a decade ago about things I've already learned from the book.  Thankfully they never catch me sleeping when they check on me.  The quizzes are a piece of cake; questions about identifying equipment, what to look for when you're purchasing equipment, the effect of increased pressure on the lungs, how to dive with a buddy and respect the environment, planning your dive, how to get into the water, equalizing, etc.  I didn't miss a single question, I'm happy to say.


Salim is a good guy, a tiny man fond of an underwater fist bump and good at making me feel like I don't have any tan whatsoever, although he's not the most demonstrative instructor. He’s a bit, well, hands-off. Most of what I know I learned from the book and the video, with a very little direct instruction coming from Salim himself. He showed me briefly how the equipment worked on dry land, but there wasn’t really a shallow water practice session, we just deflated our BCDs and headed down about 6 meters where he would model a skill then ask me to do it myself. 

What did we do that first session?  Plenty, though I saw the list of skills I was supposed to demonstrate and we definitely didn't do all of them.  Hmm...is this operation a bit shady or should I just be glad we're moving quickly?  Anyway, it all started with a 200m swim and a ten minute float.  I knew that if I was going to freak out about sharks at any point it was going to be now, when I'm swimming in the ocean (okay, not very far out, but whatever) alone.  And, much to my own surprise, I thought about sharks a lot, but I didn't actually feel afraid.  I just went out there, did my swim, did my float--all the while keeping my eyes peeled, of course, I'm not an idiot--and felt totally calm.  I'm taking this as a good sign.  Other skills done in full gear together: snorkeling, switching from snorkel to regulator, descending, underwater swimming, equalizing, regulator recovery, using alternate/buddy air source, buoyancy control using breath, removing and replacing weight belt, treating cramps, towing tired diver, free flow regulator breathing (it's crazy how well you can breathe even when only half the regulator is in your mouth), remove and replace tank and BCD, and ascending.  How we managed to do all of this in an hour is beyond me!  This took almost no time at all!

Oh, man, far and away, no doubt about it, the absolute worst thing I had to do the whole three days was flooding my mask or taking it off and swimming around without it then putting it back on and clearing it of water.  This isn't me in the photo, but it shows you how it's done.  The first time I did a partial flood the problem was my contacts.  The salt water stung horribly after I cleared the mask and opened my eyes again.  Yeah, that took a minute to recover from.  Once I started totally flooding the mask, though, or taking it off, I found it a little tricky not to freak out and take in water through my nose.  I had the regulator in place, but the idea of being 6 meters underwater (and later 18 meters!) without being able to see and scared I might breathe in water and choke.....just made it more likely to happen.  No major disasters ensued, but my heart was racing the entire time and I took in just enough water while clearing my mask to make my sinuses burn.  Also not a good feeling. 

But Salim was really happy with my progress and said that I had done a really good job.  That was nice to hear and every time I checked another skill off the list I knew I was getting closer and closer to my first open water dive!  So tomorrow morning I'm headed down to about 12 meters to see what's down there and do another skills test.  It'll only be a few things, though, because I'm mostly supposed to get used to being down there.  Sounds fine to me!

At dinner I ate with a group of Brits that were colleagues in Indonesia on vacation together.  They're all quite young, my age, and it was really nice to have the company.  A couple of them were divers so they were telling me about their experiences in different parts of the world and quizzing me on my chapter for the next day.  They were going to stay up late to watch the World Cup game, but having never really gone scuba diving before and two trips planned for tomorrow, I'm decided to go read in my hammock until dark and then just go to bed.  And it was a lovely plan...until a gigantic bat about the size of a seagull whizzed past my head squeaking and clicking like crazy.  I may or may not have screamed like a teenage girl at a Jonas Brothers concert and may or may not have fallen out of my hammock.  I plead the 5th.