Firstly, I am grateful that I am settling into my new job really well. Thank God for really nice people around me. And thank God for blessing me and showing me favour. I don't think in my human capacity would I be able to be doing well in my second month! :)
Anyway, I just celebrated my birthday about a week ago. It was such a bash.
My birthday started with my brother throwing me a birthday celebration at Timbre - good food, good times and good alcohol. Then, my lovely friends at Friends of Children decided to surprise me at our meeting. It was so sweet of them. I shall add these photos soon.
The eve of my birthday was such an exciting one. My colleagues and I went to beerfest. But my beloved girls turned up at beerfest with a cake and a generous present. I was so shocked that it took me moments to realise who they were. After that, we were drinking ourselves silly. It was certainly fun-filled. As always, with them around... It's always fun.
The next day, sweet colleagues celebrated my birthday in the office and EG, Jeff and Jun gave me sweet presents - sweet surprise.
The finale came when I met Baby at Ricciotti and he told me after much suspense, witnessed by brother Ray and Dearie Suz at 1.30pm that he was taking me away - diving on White Manta! How awesome!!!
So, we went home and packed - with most of the things already prepared by him. We then headed to our 3D2N all wreck dive.
Ok, it wasn't really all wreck since the weather was really quite a wreck at Seven Skies Wreck. To begin with, our boat was rocking port-starboard constantly, with plates and cups sliding all around the tables and us, holding on to the sides. After that, the dive guides went down to try to tie ropes for us. But, the ropes snapped twice. After two failed attempts and about 1.5hr wait later, we decided to ditch the dive and moved on to more shelter dive sites - Pulau Darma and Pinnacle. We did three dives here in very calm water (under) including an evening dive. The highlights? VERY VERY VERY beautiful corals - soft, hard, fan... It's like a "stroll in a garden". Lovely!
We set off to Igara Wreck and reached there happy to know we were able to dive the wreck. The only thing was, the under current was pretty strong. It was - especially during our descent via the rope. It was such a tiring descent that I was panting really hard and completely conscious of my air usage. By the time we hit 30mins, baby was signalling to me that he was low on air at 50psi. But I didn't understand him at all. After three attempts, he decided to show me his gauge and insisted on ascension.
So, we did after some miscommunication underwater. And, we missed our safety stop as he was too buoyant. Nevertheless, we did our next dive - thank God we were all right. And the next Igara dive was so much better. It was calmer and we managed to see a lot. The wreck was huge! We swam through cracks, saw huge trevallies and etc. It was amazing.
Overall, I would say that the dive was good though challenging. I would love to dive Igara again! This time, with my own camera.
Some shots for viewing.
