How Time Flies

Wow! I must say, time really flies!

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.

Greetings from Sabah!!!

My gosh. How time flies! I am now sitting at the business centre of the oil rig resort called Seaventures typing this blog. And in about 30mins, we are setting off to go to Tawau to head back to KK. And very soon, the trip will end - my vacation will end. Kinda' can't bear for it to finish so soon! I am having so much fun scuba diving.

We started off this whole Sabah trip with a climb up Mt Kinabalu. It was a torturous journey - freaking scary too when descending and really killed my two legs despite my high level of fitness. It took me a week to recover! So, you could imagine how much help I needed when I was donning my scuba gears.

It was perfectly ok in the water. But on land, my legs hurt like crazy and I had no strength to support myself with all the dive gears on me. We went for massage twice just to get rid of the uric acid, which of course, did not help.

Anyway, I am glad to be well now. And the pains did not hinder my dives at all. We had a wonderful time scuba diving Sipadan, Mabul and Kapalai, and not to mention the house reef at seaventures. We even organised our own little "shoot out" one day. We were so beat everyday because we woke up at 5am and by dinner time, we were all really tired. It was nevertheless really fun on this trip with Suz, Ray (had a lot of hilarious underwater miscommunications. I guess it was a Ray + Sotong problem.), Alex and Yvonne (really cute with her around - she attracted Giant Grouper at least).

Sipadan did not disappoint but it was really sad to see many dead corals. The fishes teeming the reefs also became lesser. I hope divers could be more responsible and cautious with the way they dive.

Lastly, I really need to quickly end this blog post so I could go and finish up the last bit of packing and then we have to hop on the boat to leave Seaventures.

I will upload photos when I get back to Singapore because we will be having a busy day rafting tomorrow!

Here's a photo of the rig just for your information. And yes, we stayed (are staying till 10am) here.

Semporna (8-12 July, 2007)

Semporna is the town where I took my diving license with Scuba Junkie. This small town is some drive away from Tawau Airport in East Malaysia, Sabah. We took boat rides out to the different dive sites daily from this town.

An inn built on stilts.
View from a cafe we hanged out every day after diving.


THE Iced Mango Sago we loved so much.
It was deliciously cooling and refreshing!


The small town of Semporna is lined with rows of shophouses.


Children, who we suspected were going to do some "serious business" on the rocks. They went down with plastic bags, which we thought would be used to contain pebbles. But when they started stripping their pants, we wondered about the real intention.

A child on the street.


A fishmonger and his stall.

*More updates to come*

Diving @ Sipadan (8-12 July, 2007)

Sipadan is one of the top dive sites in the world. Second to the Great Barrier Reef, it is located at Borneo and reputable for the BIG (macro) stuffs - sharks, huge fishies, turtles and etc. I saw for myself why divers go back to this dive site over and over again.

The dive site charms divers with not only its collection of colourful tropical fishes, corals and other lives under water, but also the talcum white sand and the azure clear water. The water is clear right up to the shore, with finds of big fishes just metres away from the beach! Wade in and duck your head in the cool water, and you will surprise yourself with beautiful fishes right before your eyes such as Garoupa, Nurse Shark and even turtles.

As a matter of fact, I became a PADI certified diver on this very island. People said it would set a very high standard for me. Oh boy! How true it was. No where else that I have been to so far could be compared to this very much raved about dive site. It indeed stays true to its reputation.

Please allow me to clarify too that this site is only one of the two sites I dived at in Borneo. The whole dive trip left me a deep impression of the wonders of diving at Borneo, and definitely memorable.

Once, is not enough.

Friendly Green Sea Turtles were everywhere!

Not shy to strangers and cameras, they swam up close to us

and peered at our cameras, curiously.

Tornado of Jacks.

Nothing beats swimming amongst them

and being circled by them.

Diving with a school of Moorish Idols.

A school of Moorish Idols.

The renowned wall of Barracudas at the Barracuda point.

It was amazing holding on to a rock, fighting the current and

watching them slowly moved past us from 30m away.

A white tip shark. Not a rare sight at all!

And... Fear not. They do not eat human beings.

A Shrimp.

Difficult to spot as Shrimps often hide among the corals.

On top of that, they are actually many times smaller

than what you are looking at now.

Puffy a.k.a. Puffer Fish.

A Hermit Crab in hand. Such a puny creature!

Diving = my second nature