Marc's Public Blog - Diving

Better late than never as they say, but since I'm a guy behind on technology, I used film for my under water pictures, and had to get them developed, and put on CD ($40+ for 3 rolls, what a rip-off).

game: find where the fish is :)





The rest of them are here

I used the first two days to do 5 dives, 2 on monday (got there a bit too late for a boat trip that had already left) and 3 on tuesday (two on a boat trip, and one later at shore).
The interesting thing is that I forgot about how far the no flying after diving rule extended. According to the recommended rules, you have to wait 24H for flying after multiple dives. In real life, it's more complicated, as it depends what altitude the plane is pressurized for (usually 8000ft for commercial planes, 2/3rd of the pressure at ground level for standard temperatures), and it also depends how deep you went diving for how long, which means how much nitrogen you ended up with, in your blood. It was however recommended that I don't try diving this morning, even if I had 12H after the dive (in theory enough for a single dive, and ok if you stay at shallower depths), so I'm going to visit the Island and go Mountain Biking.

I did however take a lot of pictures, and am very happy with the underwater housing I bought for my camera. It is so much better to be able to see your pictures underwater while you are taking them, not be shy about how many you are taking, and be able to get them right afterwards. I can't believe I ever dealt with the crappy underwater film cameras.

In addition to some of the pictures below, I also got some short films, like:

• Fish french kissing
  
• Giant sea bass going right in front of my face while I wasn't watching :)
  
• Giant sea bass playing movie stars with Dr Bill
  
• Manta Ray
  
• Friendly and curious fish
  
• Flying Fish (watch upper right corner around the end)
  
• Flying Fish that went right in front of me
  

Pictures of Santa Catalina and Diving are here

would you like a few more pillows? :)




those two fish were fighting, you could see them in action here




you can't see me


why don't you stick your finger in here?


Those giant sea bass can be more than 50 years old






Underwater commemorative plate

25H of travelling is probably a personal record. I'm currently in my second plane, from Hong Kong to Malaysia, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to get some connectivity there since I just realized while dozing off that I entirelyforgot to make my mandatory estimated tax payment (some big sum of money) to both CA and the feds. It is going to be fun to arrange remotely, without my
files and my papers access codes and so forth (I was able to find a lot of information I needed in my local mail spool, and I'm looking in my browser history for .gov URLs right now to see if I have the CA web site for online payments). Doh, doh, doh!
Anyway, Hong Kong was a nice a clean airport, as expected. I didn't get to see a whole lot since I landed at 05:35 local time, but it was still nice to have gone through it. In the funny notes, it was cool to see that there were no less than 8 GSM networks my phone could chose from, and that I was able to use my nokia communicator to send Email ssh to my machine and look at my new messages with mutt while I was in line. That said, I was able to get a good WIFI connection some time later while waiting for my second flight, and I used the time appropriately (although I wish I had realized that little banking problem before then since I could have solved it from the airport and now it's going to be much harder)
The first flight on Cathay Pacific was so-so: I tried fruitlessly to upgrade to business, but I found out that on their planes the business section is much smaller than United's so it was overbooked. The other fun part is that a cash upgrade was $1200 one way, for just 1 out of the 3 planes. The full business fare return for just the first plane was $8000!!! In the meantime, their seating in coach sucked ass, and even my butt hurts from the bad seats. Oh well, bigger problems in life I guess...
Two quick notes after landing in Malaysia and waiting for my 3rd flight: I hadn't done homework and realized that Malaysia was actually a Muslim country, which kind of explained the Jelabas (sp?) I saw as soon as I got off the plane, and the muslim prayer room inside the airport, and the crescent on the national flag :) In other news, they have an interesting way to deal with with whatever is defined as illegal drugs here: trafficking is simply punishable by death.
Apart from that, weather looks lovely, and I have already picked up a bunch of pamphlets about all the great diving spots they have. I can't wait :)
Oh, and the international airport had what looked like a voluntary immigration counter (i.e. you walked by it, but didn't have to go through it physically). That looked weird... :)
In the end, I did arrive to the Island of Sabah at the Sandakan airport (that was kind of funny, the 737 landed on the runway, went to the end, and then turned around on the same runway to reach the terminal since there was no taxiway. I guess that explains why there weren't any international flights going there directly :) )
It's pretty to have houses on the water like this, but I guess you don't wonder why there are so many problems when a tsumani shows up, or even global warming over the next 50-100 years :-/

You can find more pictures from the air here , and pictures from my trip as they get posted and I get the chance to upload them (satellite connection on a pretty island in the middle of nowhere right now), there .
Oh did I just mention that the Island I'm on when sending this is so big that it takes 7 minutes to jog around it? :) and just because I'm lucky they got their satellite internet connection yesterday :)