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i miss living in warzones. i miss the buzzing mortar attacks. i miss the tension of rocket attacks. i miss the rumble of car bombs. i miss the peckings of rounds on an suv. i miss the institutationalism of living a deployment life. i miss MRE’s. i miss the dfac and no sir, you cant have more than 2 starches. i miss the sniper round that destroyed my monitor in the middle of doing a log report. i miss gatorade in the desert. i miss vodka in the desert. i miss insane mail-ordering junk. i miss having the keys to everything. i miss the EOC. i miss…. i miss it. Related posts:So I’m looking on Amazons Health & Wellness page and right in there with the vitamins…. are DVD listings for Michael Jacksons concert DVD’s. Um, yea… the worlds wealthiest freak…. health and wellness… ohhhhkaaaay.  Math Fail I have this Skittles pack that’s supposedly made in the USA, not a local packager. Someone failed at using a calculator. Calories: 13% of 2,000 is not 250… it’s 260. I emailed that to them. And somehow, sugars (carbs) magically don’t have a daily value all of a sudden. Embassies… trouble doing the simplest things. I’m contacting the Embassy about renewing a passport and had a specific question. I did that – asked the question, added some detail, and finished with a single sentence asking the question again. Their reply? They cut-n-pasted the information from the website that had exactly nothing to do with my question other than it has the word ‘passport’ in it. Swine Flu H1n1: Was sick as a dog for a few days and I absolutely never get a illnesses, just a general malaise from professional alcoholism. Anyway, this was intense but the fever was slight so I made plans to hit the hospital the next morning. Tried calling the emergency number – only to get hung-up on twice. Next morning I felt remarkably better only to fall ill again later that night. Think I might go hunt down a testing center sometime today.  Supposed to be a home made neti pot. Looks more like a ghetto water bong. While trying to drown the flu with rum, a stroke of genius hits me: I’ll make a Neti Pot to clean out the sinuses! Just click the link if you don’t know, really works. I used one for years in Iraq. Here I was thinking it was the perfect thing then someone comes over and keeps looking sideways at it … they had thought it was a ghetto water bong. Related posts:Theres been another crash by Zest Air at the Caticlan airport that serves as entrance to Boracay. Although no-one was hurt this time, its a troubeling trend for the airliner. In the January 2009 crash, (truly a crash), they painted over all the Zest Air markings and colors within hours of impact. Seems that almost all their cashes involve landing and I can recall one that slammed the landing on a trip Manila. Having been in 2 minor plane crashes in the past 8 years, I was surprised the Asian Spirit landing gear didnt collapse from our landing.
A few days ago, a dive instructor asked why I’ve only gone diving with Blue Mango during my two years on Boracay: They treat me like a family friend, not like a customer. Simple as that. Went on a excellent dive at Friday’s Rock with a young Australian couple, Dustin, and myself. We back-rolled down the line. Dustin took us around the south face for a nice, relaxed viewing. Found a few large eels and the clown fish, of course, were trying to pick a fight with me. No-one else, just me… there’s bad blood between us, my ancestors used to own theirs. Fish Feeding: Tons of fish and visibility was at least 30 meters. Everyone was playing nice then the sea bass got aggressive and turned red, but they slowed as well. Some fast nips and small fighting – lasted for a while. Out of the blue, a tandem couple of crevalle jacks darted in blazing fast to snatch some smaller fish! They did this over the next 5 minutes and were fairly successful. I would estimate about 100 various mid-sized/smaller fish, a dozen parrot fish, 25 large sea bass (1 meter long), and a few pairs of these crevalle jacks. Moving on, there were the usual suspects of blue/yellow nudis, some more eels, a stonefish the size of a basketball, etc… Trying out the new gear I found the gloves good, the low-cut anklet booties fitting better than any I’ve had before, and the Jet Fins… well, they fit great and certainly have power… but it’s different than using other types of fins. Practice is what I need. They have some extra weight so I might find myself getting a wetsuit for standardized buoyancy. For starters, I can easily drop 2 or 3 kilos of lead. Related posts:
Sometimes, you just get distracted on a familiar dive and end up following the group, not giving a damn whats around you. It’s easy to do when you’re weightless. I remembered this picture and tried thinking of a good caption for it….. yup, that’s my random thoughts. Related posts:Went diving yesterday to Crocodile on the south-east side of Boracay in the morning. It was pretty good but cloudy so the colors weren’t out. Dropped on buoy, went down and out on the wall, wall back, up, and kicked around in the shallows at 10 meters. Next dive was to Camia II in the afternoon with just three of us. I don’t wear a wetsuit so I’m wary of passing thru the doorways of the ship although I still do the cargo holds and engine room. Sure enough, got too close to the exit and had to grab it vs. running a bare arm (tank top) across the hatch. This morning, I had 4 sting injury/infections on 3 fingers. Tomorrow, I get new gloves. Related posts:Ive mentioned that a person can find a counterfeit version of everything here in the Philippines. That includes brand name soap. It will still have detergent properties, but only because of a cheap glycerin mixture. How do you test for fake soap? Depending on how nasty your body is, use a bar of brand name bath soap for a week or two until its worn but still at least half or slightly more. Find some mosquito’s standing on water, as they seem to enjoy. Mix some soapy water and start dripping in there – it should break the surface tension so they cant stand on it anymore. When I was a kid, we had those floating mats of ants in the rainy season. Mix a few drops of dish soap/water in a dixie cup, toss, and watch the carnage. Related posts:The internet connection at home has been sketchy for a few weeks. Seems be a guaranteed outage if it rains or the wind blows or, like today, no reason whatsoever. We’ve been having sporadic brownouts and rain every day for a few weeks now. Don’t know if thats causing it – my bet is the rooftop antenna needs realigning, tightening, and waterproofing. Update: The internet eventually went out completely but still connected a few short minutes every hour, enough for Outlook to DL a few items; meaning the account is still active, just not making a good connection like everyone else around here. So I went next door and bought some time from Peter of Island Jewel. Even though I have mid-to-low signal strength from him, its still faster than my own connection was…. I forsee this being the better course of action in the near future. His service is dedicated and extremely stable whereas my resorts internet had slowly been degrading in quality over the past two months. Related posts:The single most annoying part of diving has got to be the buddy system. How can you enjoy diving if you’re constantly checking on your buddy and staying close, never stopping when you want or having to stop when they do? Really, I dislike it. I want to go look over there, or around here, or whatever. Whats the purpose of diving if you cant explore? Whats under this ledge? I don’t know and neither will you. I understand the local operators obviously know the highlights of each dive site— or do they? Every really interesting thing I’ve seen was found by me, not something pointed out. I found a blue ringed octopus once and the nesting spot of a baby scorpion fish that was always eating (a sight to see). I found a colony of super tiny black spotted clown fish that never grew and were in a coral on the aft of the ship where no-one ever went. How did I find those? By mucking around exploring on my own; only in the general area of the group, sometimes not even that. I know its a strong safety issue, c’mon, lets be realistic about this…no two people have the same underwater interests. Related posts:Went diving yesterday after a few months off – and now, I hurt. Thankfully the water was nice and cool with overhead cloudiness. I really do know better, but of course failed to use sunblock. It was a double dive with Blue Mango’s new instructor, Tom (UK). He’s spent the last 8 months with the Shangri La dive shop and decided for a change. He’s a different sort that says divers shouldn’t have to carry their own gear once they get to Advanced Open Water. Says they’ve paid their dues and the dive shop should be doing that because they’re being paid after all. Ya know something? He’s right. Five (5) divers: Instructor, a former DM, cute girl from Amsterdam, myself, and a guy from Alaska who parties like a rock-star. We took spare tanks (nitrox for me), water, some mango’s and headed off. Balinghai turned out to be a frisky drift, which was a first for me. Visibility was decent at about 15 meters but with a steady flow to the north, I really had no idea where I was. For me, it was a little boring as we drifted along the base of a slope w/o seeing much, certainly not the pots. The Alaska guy was all over the place, looking like MC Hammer with the arm waving which was amusing. Took our time getting to the Camia II sunken ship while re-hydrating and the others ate some mango’s. Just needed time to out gas. Here, I realized my other nitrox tank hadn’t been loaded and used a spare air instead. Once in, there was still a little current but very slight and came down directly over the ship. Alaska dude hopped in early and promptly puked up his mango… to the right, to the left, and once directly up. Camia is my favorite dive site here. Generally, we drop from the south, encircle the bottom to the left around the prop to the front, then moving up the sides and dropping thru the compartments and engine room, finishing with a general survey of the deck/railing for the colonies of sea life and around the helm area as part of the ascent. This was a little different, but still interesting. On the trip home, the sun had come out and I was developing a cloudy-day-sunburn. Sure enough, a few hours later at Cocolocos, I was beet red with redneck T-shirt lines on the arms. But that day I did something I’d never done before, or even seen. As the boat started to return from the Camia II site, I still had weights and BCD (unbuckled), mask backwards on forehead. – - – - tank slipped off the side railing – - – - I went over the side, backwards into the drink. Amazingly, the mask stayed on and my contacts stayed in although I opened eyes underwater. Too much sun and physical exertion at once; yea, now my body hurts. Its a pleasing and healthy kind of hurt, but nonetheless painful. Related posts:Yesterday was my first time eating crab and I definitely don’t like it. Apparently everyone else likes it for the same reason I don’t, that fatty tissue that makes up 90% of its meat. Don’t get me wrong, the cooks at Cocolocos are some of the best around so I have no doubt it was cooked perfectly, but its just not my thing apparently. The dish was 2 thickset palm-sized steamed crabs and a plate of rice with soya dipping sauce. Inside the carapace is a yellow gelatinous mass akin to the heads of crayfish and prawns. Tone of friends say that ’sucking the head’ is the best part and sometimes even refer to it as the ‘butter’. I’m like, that’s nice dear but it still tastes nasty as hell. One crab was filled with that loose yellow-gray stuff, the other one was filled with that and an orange solid that looked like dense salmon roe, and tasted even worse. There’s small cartilage flakes all throughout. Getting the small slivers of regular meat from the legs is a pain in the ass and time consuming. I have to ask, why do people even bother eating these and furthermore, why are they so expensive? Its a lot of labor for extremely little meat. The waitress apparently likes it and asked why I left all the meat in there…I was like, you eat that stuff? She replies its the best part but unhealthy because of the fat and cholesterol. Cholesterol in seafood? I never knew that. I just ate the rice and ordered some calamari – they make excellent calamari. Related posts: nuf' said |
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