Archive for the ‘Diving’ Category

Still in Covid days – turmoil all around

….So we are still stuck with the COVID-19 virus, Yay :-( !!
And to add insult to injury the kids have started the school summer break, Are you effing kidding me ? the school year was barely a 4 month of school and now they need 2 more month of not doing anything, that is just brilliant way to help this generation advancing their study.

 

Things are not changing much in my space, again a job change, this one of my design, I really liked the position and the impact I was having on the company, but there were 2 factors that “drove” me out:

  1. The company decided to move to a full work at the office ( 5 days a week), which for me was a big NO.
  2. The person I worked under was a micromanager, and was poor in listening – I tried to ask him for some training and push my ideas in our 1-on-1 meetings and for 4 month got no where. On month 9 of my work there I had a talk with HR and raised that issue, and all of a sudden he is willing to let me speak in meetings.

So after the 1st item came up I reached the conclusion that it is time to go,they hired another person and I went to work for a consulting company. They seem to like my services but they are doing thing in a very badly managed way.
Training is going slow – the heat is not conductive to training and the time in the morning is divided between kids and the new K9 – Shugi

He is a wonderful dog and very friendly.

The last thing that threw me to a spin was that my old company ( pre-Covid) started hiring for my old position, obviously I want back but now need to see how this will pan out.

Oh, and I started my PADI IDC course training ….

 

Giving back

As you guys know I am a member of a dive club where is live , and as such we (i.e the club) are always working with in the community to encourage people to try diving and also help out to those less fortunate .

Last weekend several members of the club ( me included) hosted a group from Dacorum Mencap in the pool for some exposure to Scuba.
This was not your normal scuba class or session but it was much more satisfying.

Awarded for mistakes

The Dive club I am part of had the “end of season” party where we acknowledge all the newly certified members and review the past year.

I got my “club” Diploma for the Dive Master certification and we had some laughs about how they can use my particular skills in the club dives (drop me to the bottom with 2 cylinders and spare the time of looking where to anchor the ascend line).
At the end of the evening we have an “Award ceremony” for various things that transpired though out the year , One of them is the “Spanner of the Year” (as you can imagine this is given to the guys that managed to mess up on the most spectacular level).

The nominations were all the heavy hitting blunders : 2 DM in training losing their “rescue” diver and actually rescuing someone else (not even from our club), A diver taking a stride entry off the boat with out the regulator in his mouth and mask on forehead.
And the winner by a long shot , is the man that (and I quote) “Used his Ninja skills to help his CPR patient by removing it’s head”, Yes as you’ve guessed I managed to win this plaque for Killing Annie By mistake.

And I thought they’d forget about that one.

Slow swimmer

Last night I was lazy ( and late) coming to the weekly training session in the pool of the dive club , and was hoping to stay dry .

The Club Director and My course Instructor had other plans to me , and told me to get in the side pool to do my 400m swim , the prospect of it didn’t stress me too much until we had a miscommunication , my doing or his , who knows ?

The problem was that I asked how many Laps I need to do , he thought for a couple of secs and then said “25” , I was a bit startled but a test is just that , A test to push you see how you cope. At the side of the pool were two ladies observing their children in the pool with one of the DM ( Dive master) scuba giving the lesson , and my instructor told them to count my swim for him as he was needed also in the other pool , Unknown to me was that he told them that I need to do “25 Lengths” of the pool .

I started swimming and after a while lost count on my Laps ( I thought I was at 7 or 8 ) and paused to ask the ladies how much I had done , the answer was “17” which wasn’t what I was expecting , I went on to complete the rest but the Instructor said I stopped and hence failed … I don’t care cause now I know it is not 25 Laps but 25 lengths , which is a lot easier.

My arms did hurt by the end of it as i think this is the longest distance I swam with out fins since I stopped swimming in the Tel aviv Uni , in the Pre-Wife Age , that can tell you Folks how long ago that was.

I should go back to swimming , at least once a week , maybe?

wet / dry – which is easier

On Sunday I did some of my mandatory training dives for my PADI dive Master course , if you ever had your face covered in mud or had been sprayed from a passing car/bus/truck you’d know the feeling of how bad the visibility was in the place I dove .

The place is called Wraysbury , which is a lake outside Heathrow airport , so the planes are going over head constantly (imagine giving a briefing in that environment) , the bottom of the lake (max depth 10m ) is sleet and sand and it is used for training , so all the divers are mucking the water with in the first 10 minutes of the first diver in.

After doing the 4 mandatory “puddling” , I had to do the “open water skills” swim 800 m with mask and fins and two a diver for 100 m , all went fine but the visibility was getting worse every minute (almost hit the pillars of the deck one time cause could not see them) .

Last night I had my Theoretical test for the course , 120 questions involving diver theory about displacement , gasses , dive planing and not to mentions diver safety , it turns out that 2 questions i accidentally marked the wrong answer then what I wanted and that piled up the number of wrong answers I gave , one member of the group did fail the test , Gladly it was not me , I passed the test and now I am one more step closer to completing the course successfully .