Started my advanced open water dive today... Saved due to Naqiyah... Have not dived more then a year and a half. Had essentially forgotten most of the stuff. When my dive center suggested direct deep dive 30 meters as the first dive I'd rejected as I was scared that I did not have enough experiance.
However when I reached Dive center today with Naqiyah, Christy and Parveen in tow they insisted I do deep dive first and then come back and we all go for shallower dive while these girls do snorkling... Their idea was that since wreck dive is also a deep dive and deep dive needs to be first dive of the day, there was no other option if I was to do multiple dives in one day. Fujera being quite far I would also liked to finish multiple dives.. But after considering that Naqiyah was quite quite excited about snorkling, I canxed deep dive and told Rosy ( the cute phillipino dive center gal, who manages to sell me expensive equipment and courses at supposedly discounted pricing) that I'd prefer to do shallow peak performance boyancy dive first, so that Naqiyah could snorkle at the same time. First time I also took anti nausea medicines ( helped... non of us felt even a hint of nausea, this was good.. both Pam and Lee Peng had fallen extermely sick on the boat ride to the island)...
Anyway I dived as expected ( Huge butterflies in stomach before doing back role with cylinder off the boat into the sea.. hight daunting and weight even more so) ... went down to 10 meters.. got huge pain in ears.. kept trying to equalise using rapid swallowing actions and trying to pop the ears.. but wasnt working.. so tried to carry on without equalisation.. Equalisation is process of making pressure in ears equal to pressure outside the ear otherwise ears hurt.. remember the fast elavator rides or plane takeoffs, and landings.. however since water has huge pressure difference every meter, equalisation is more urgently required every few meters and extremely neccesary...
Anyway i continued with the pain, and after about 20 mins realised / remembered that i was to hold my nostrils shut and breath into them to equalise... Which I promptly did and was fine...
But remember this was 10 meter dive.. if I'd done a deep dive 30 meters.. this same would have ended extremely differently.. My friend hashim on his first open water dive in jumera beach had equalisation problem in 10 meters, and tore his ear drum.. no diving for him henceforth... ! 10 meters is different from 30 meters.. I don't know what could have gone wrong if Naqiyah was not there.. just glad she was.. :)
Unfortunately my mask new one with custom made lens for my power of spectacle has a leak... Kept flooding .. however being able to see the fishes clearly was an absolutte treate... have to solve mask problem though.. removing water from flooded mask is not a pleasent task.. flooded mask itself makes u feel as if u r drowning even if u r breathing through the mouth...
Nyway seems i'm back to diving after a long interval.. hoping to finish advanced open water and Nitrox dives quickly ( I decided to go enriched oxygen route even though considrably more expensive, for deep dives.. pressure sickness and narcosis is not something i'm willing to even give a go at .. call me pansy if you wish)... then to my real interest.. in August wanna do free diving.. go deeper then deep without anything.. no oxygen no tanks no bcd no nothing.. just me , my body and the deeps... thats more like my kind of thing i've decided.. there's a girl called sara lise who's supposed to do this course in dubai in August.. only one around who does it.. me so so looking forward to it :)
However when I reached Dive center today with Naqiyah, Christy and Parveen in tow they insisted I do deep dive first and then come back and we all go for shallower dive while these girls do snorkling... Their idea was that since wreck dive is also a deep dive and deep dive needs to be first dive of the day, there was no other option if I was to do multiple dives in one day. Fujera being quite far I would also liked to finish multiple dives.. But after considering that Naqiyah was quite quite excited about snorkling, I canxed deep dive and told Rosy ( the cute phillipino dive center gal, who manages to sell me expensive equipment and courses at supposedly discounted pricing) that I'd prefer to do shallow peak performance boyancy dive first, so that Naqiyah could snorkle at the same time. First time I also took anti nausea medicines ( helped... non of us felt even a hint of nausea, this was good.. both Pam and Lee Peng had fallen extermely sick on the boat ride to the island)...
Anyway I dived as expected ( Huge butterflies in stomach before doing back role with cylinder off the boat into the sea.. hight daunting and weight even more so) ... went down to 10 meters.. got huge pain in ears.. kept trying to equalise using rapid swallowing actions and trying to pop the ears.. but wasnt working.. so tried to carry on without equalisation.. Equalisation is process of making pressure in ears equal to pressure outside the ear otherwise ears hurt.. remember the fast elavator rides or plane takeoffs, and landings.. however since water has huge pressure difference every meter, equalisation is more urgently required every few meters and extremely neccesary...
Anyway i continued with the pain, and after about 20 mins realised / remembered that i was to hold my nostrils shut and breath into them to equalise... Which I promptly did and was fine...
But remember this was 10 meter dive.. if I'd done a deep dive 30 meters.. this same would have ended extremely differently.. My friend hashim on his first open water dive in jumera beach had equalisation problem in 10 meters, and tore his ear drum.. no diving for him henceforth... ! 10 meters is different from 30 meters.. I don't know what could have gone wrong if Naqiyah was not there.. just glad she was.. :)
Unfortunately my mask new one with custom made lens for my power of spectacle has a leak... Kept flooding .. however being able to see the fishes clearly was an absolutte treate... have to solve mask problem though.. removing water from flooded mask is not a pleasent task.. flooded mask itself makes u feel as if u r drowning even if u r breathing through the mouth...
Nyway seems i'm back to diving after a long interval.. hoping to finish advanced open water and Nitrox dives quickly ( I decided to go enriched oxygen route even though considrably more expensive, for deep dives.. pressure sickness and narcosis is not something i'm willing to even give a go at .. call me pansy if you wish)... then to my real interest.. in August wanna do free diving.. go deeper then deep without anything.. no oxygen no tanks no bcd no nothing.. just me , my body and the deeps... thats more like my kind of thing i've decided.. there's a girl called sara lise who's supposed to do this course in dubai in August.. only one around who does it.. me so so looking forward to it :)
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