New Year’s Resolutions Progress Report

I have a bazillion little resolutions that I haven’t started on, but as far as those resolutions that I wrote on this blog are concerned, I have, at the very least, taken initial (baby) steps toward fulfilling them. There were three major (major to me, that is) things I wanted to accomplish this year, and two of them were related to diving. As I wrote in an earlier entry, before the year ends, I hope to be both a technical diver and a dive instructor.

Before my non-diver friends get bored, a little explanation may be in order. A technical diver is one who is able to go deeper and stay underwater longer than recreational divers. A dive instructor (though you can probably figure this out for yourself) is a dive professional who teaches people to become licensed scuba divers.

Earlier this month, I finally started to take lessons to become a dive master (DM). The DM course is the first stage in becoming a dive professional. A DM can lead recreational dives and assist instructors in teaching courses. This course is rather rigorous, and includes written exams, practical training, and swim tests. Among all the requirements that I need to fulfill, the one that I am worried about most is the swim tests. I have to swim 400 meters in eight minutes, and in my current fitness state, that is just plain impossible to do. I will have to train and become more fit to be able to pass this phase of the training without passing out. At the rate I’m going, it will still take a few months to check off everything on the list of requirements before I become a licensed dive pro. But it’s still early in the year so I am hopeful.

As far as technical diving is concerned, the biggest barrier to learning how to do it is the cost While saving up enough money to enroll for the course, I took another class that is a prerequisite for the tech diving course, which is diving with enriched air or nitrox (a mix of nitrogen and oxygen). Diving with nitrox allows you to have less nitrogen in your body after a dive, so you feel less tired. It also allows you to stay longer underwater without getting sick from having nitrogen in your body.

So, despite my failure to start on a fitness program, lose any weight, be a better person, chuva chuva chuva, I am happy to report that I’ve started to work on two of my other resolutions for this year. Wish me luck on passing the swim test and saving up for the tech course (At this point both seem equally difficult).

Life in the Third World

The main reason why I chose to live in the shoebox despite its too-small living space, traffic noise, the masses of people lining up outside for a game show, proximity to a cult, etc.- is that it is very close to the TV station where I work. Because gas prices zoomed up while I was away, I didn't want to have to shell out a lot of money just to gas up to go to work (I don't mind it as much if I have to pay for gas for out-of-town trips). Because I live so close by, I just walk to the office and hardly need to use my car (which I call Zak).

However, this morning I discovered YET another reason to be stressed about my living arrangements. When I was about to leave my building for work, the guard approached me and tried to tell me something in a very soft voice. "Blah blah blah blah blah blah", is pretty much what registered, since he was speaking in unusually hushed tones. I asked him to speak up, since I was already late for a meeting. He spoke a bit louder, and he said "Ma'am, nawala po ang sideview mirrors niyo." (Ma'am, your sideview mirrors have been stolen.) No wonder he was speaking so softly! It was his job to guard the (very small) parking lot in front of our building!

I rushed to Zak, and saw for myself that yet another car of mine was stripped of its sideview mirrors. This is the third time this has happened to me. My two previous cars had been victimized in the same manner. As in the past two incidents, I just felt helpless and frustrated. There was no way I was going to get those mirrors back. I just have to suck it up, go to Banawe to buy cheap and probably stolen replacements. As the joke goes, I might just be buying my own mirrors back.

These are the moments when I really hate living in Manila. When your car is violated right outside your home, and when you realize there's pretty much NOTHING you can do about it.