u/Level_Preparation311

Cebu looking at Negros. Me looking at black dog. Black dog looking at fish.

It's all good.

Cebu looking at Negros. This morning's pic and last night's sunset.

They say it only rains when you're sleeping but someone must have been staying up 24/7 for the last 5 days.

Actually want the rain. Cools things down and the rain helps keep the dust down. At least right now we have a good onshore breeze to help with the cooling.

I got so excited I thought I could actually make a Caesar but this was all they had for Mott's.

I know, I can get tomato juice and clam juice and put them together but it's not the same.

I dive weekly, and if you remember my post from last week, my ENT told me to dive more often.

So I just got a new BCD, which is kind of like driving a new car and getting used to the clutch, but this dive was out of the park.

I finally figured out that little hit on the inflator, like a half a shot of air in your BCD that you needed, my nose and sinuses were great because of everything my nose doctor told me to take, figured out my weight cuz it's been awhile because of my nose, my leg injury didn't hurt, the DJI didn't didn't fog up. And what else? Great visibility and a turtle swimming right at me.

Second dive found an octopus out and about and in 2 years of diving here I've only seen one before, lots of small things, dove with really experienced people and our Dive Master asked us how we liked the dive and all we can do is giggle. Heads on a swivel kind of thing, one of those memorable dives that you tell your grandchildren as you're sitting in the rocking chair whittling a whistle.

I mentioned diving with really experienced people because it's been quite a while since I've been giddy like a kid after a dive, and the same with them.

So good!!!

So I've heard this since before I moved here 2 years ago.

"It's raining so I don't have internet"

And of course back before I moved here I didn't know the whole story but I've been here for 2 years and I've never had a problem.

So now my beautiful girlfriend is not sitting at my house, she's back in the province with her family but she still has Wi-Fi and she works remote so she's telling me that because it's raining that it's not working. To be honest real Wi-Fi I think it's that one where you put the quarters in? Forget what you call it. I think they have one of those booths so it should be good right?

But I did the speed test on my phone which is not as fast as my computer and it's still very fast. But it's legitimate Wi-Fi.

But I guess my question is has anyone heard that internet is slow because of the weather cuz I have never experienced that in all of my 50 plus years and even in the last 2 years while I was in the Philippines.

I'm 1,000 km away but we're getting collateral rain. Woke up in the middle of the night to a drenched living room and kitchen because I didn't have the jalousies completely closed.

Super typhoon Inay is on its way to Taiwan and thousands of kilometers away but we always get collateral weather so I can't fulfill my ENT's prescription of diving twice a week. I'm going through my DJI deleting, editing, favoriting or sending to YouTube.

And here's something that I learned from someone on this subreddit. I'm having storage problems, my phone is full, the SD card on the DJI is full I have some room on my external hard drive but just it's clogging up. And they said that they upload their videos to YouTube, essentially using it as free storage and you can set those playlists or videos to private if you want. And then of course there was another commenter saying that they don't take videos anymore because they look at their dive videos about as much as their wedding pictures which I understand now too.

Anyway I like this video it's a keeper.

A brilliant book quote, And if you know it bonus points.

"Are you telling me that even though it's changing every second, the sky is always a perfect sky? Gee, I'm smart. Yes! And the sea is always a perfect sea, and it's always changing, too... Perfect and all the time changing. Yeah, I'll buy that."

If the shoe fits wear it. I never had a Monday night sunset like this anywhere except for the Philippines.

P200. Used to be p180 But then something happened geopolitically.

Tosilog. Comes with coffee too and it used to be in a French press but now it's just the package. Still works for me.

This is my scuba diving breakfast. On the surface interval after the first dive I come and get breakfast. I have the same thing every time, they know not to cut the toast and to cut the top off of the coffee and creamer packages because I can never rip those little packages especially with prune fingers.

There's an ocean in the background as well but I was focusing on the picture to send to my girlfriend as proof that I did eat breakfast cuz she worries about things like that.

Rainy season in the Philippines this morning. Got the surprise at 7:00 a.m.

I thought this video was lost but I was deleting some old videos in WhatsApp and I found it!!

It was rainy season and there's no eavesdropping so there were some big drips coming off of the roof in the carport.

This is in Thailand, he is Thai, and his name means River Dragon and he's not afraid of water anymore.

Okay this is me. Last week I dove but I live where I can go diving everyday. Because of reasons I haven't, it's actually been 2 months.

Here's a little backstory for the story.

I have my own gear so I am familiar.

I'm closer to 2,000 Dives than I am to 1,000 Dives though I don't know the actual number. I was a professional.

I am familiar with the dive sites and dive operator and the dive Masters.

In the last few months I've been having road construction near my house which means lots of dust and it has affected my breathing.

I forgot to shave the night before like I always do, it's actually a trim with the Wahl, but without a guard my mask doesn't leak, So I did it in a hurry in the morning.

I now live in the Philippines.

Onto the story. I set up my equipment like usual, checked everything anal retentively three times before it left the shop, And I didn't forget any gear. So far so good.

It's been 2 months since I have dove so once we get to the site that I've been to many times I did a weight check. It seemed about right. Maybe one more pound, but usually I don't use a lot of air so it should be okay.

So I equalize fine, I never had problem with equalization, even with all the dust in the air I can still breathe through my nose and I can equalize both above and below water.

Mask started leaking right away. Now I also have a whole bunch of dives and there are ways to evacuate that water without blowing through your air tank and so basically I just breathe in through my mouth and breathe out through my nose. It is what it is.

I just wasn't in sync with my buoyancy, I know that new divers tend to try not to use that inflator or dump valves because they don't want to use air, but I'm not afraid to and that's a false economy anyways. Use your inflator. The problem I had was I wasn't doing that half click of air anymore, it was a full click so I used a bit more than I normally do. This is dive rust pure and simple.

So we normally dive walls which are great for people who use air, generally I don't have problems, half a tank at 30 minutes is par for the course. The whole group is, I think in the same boat. I'm fine, even with the mask and the BCD I'm not really worried about air consumption, maybe a little bit faster than usual. Then we go up. Our Max depth at this point is 18 m.

There was current on both Dives as well so it was difficult for me to deal with when I wanted to look at the macro, and you might be able to see that in the video.

Right around 10 m, even though I have no problem equalizing my ears it feels like I have a reverse block in my sinuses. Nothing hurts, don't get me wrong, It's like post nasal drip, and yeah I'm squeamish about things like that. I'm not going to go into it but it's not a really nice thing to have to taste at 10 m underwater when your mask is already leaking. Actually that could be part of it, just like you have all of those saline contraptions that clears that system out, saltwater did the same for me.

Oh yeah, and the weight that I thought was good at the start, now that my air was low, it was not so good. I ended up adding 2 lb because now I'm a right chunk of roast beef. With a really big Yorkie and lots of gravy.

So when we got to the top of the reef I asked where the boat was and my DM pointed me in the direction because of course he's done this thousands of times, and the dive that we/he planned ended up at the boat. I told him to take me to the anchor line. I would do my safety stop and then go up and he could continue the Dives with the other diver. That's what we did. There's no way I could get lost. He swam around with the other clients until they felt like coming up.

I don't need judgment, I don't need empathy or sympathy I'm just telling you what happened. This is a learning lesson for everyone, new and old. And me.

So all of the newbies that are all worried about air consumption and mask flooding and underwater problems this can happen to anyone. Don't feel guilty about being the person that is the fastest user of air.

Don't feel bad about calling a dive if you aren't comfortable.

I know it's so cliche to say plan to dive and dive the plan, but it works. And sometimes you can bullshit about things, like instead of saying that you get low on air fast, just say that you get cold. And then plan to leave your dive early as long as you have the anchor line and everything is spoken about on the surface. I'm not saying lie about your air consumption. I'm saying on your surface interval on the boat, Just tell your diving cohorts that you got cold. As a pro in my dive briefing on the second dive I would say there are a bunch of reasons for us to finish the dive, 45 minutes, the computer said so, or I got cold.

I told my dive Master three parameters of what I may or may not feel before we jumped in the water. We worked out a plan B for that. And then? It wasn't a surprise when it happened.

Sometimes what I'm talking about can happen, sometimes it doesn't, every dive is different but it's all about communication.

I know I'm going to catch shit because I haven't explained things well but absolutely everything that happened to me underwater was previously communicated on the surface to my dive Master so there were no surprises and there were no hand signals that we didn't understand. And like I said I'm a local, and this is my shop so the Divemasters know of my experience level.

And on the second dive, of course my sinuses were cleared out and I was more comfortable in the water and it was a crazy memorable dive. The dives in Moalboal are awesome, but the best part is the safety stops. Three new nudies, the Sea moth and a bunch of crabs hiding in anemones that I've never seen before.

Two years diving here and four or five new species on dive 2.

So don't worry about being that guy. Or that girl. Plan for it.

Plan the dive and dive the plan. And include plan B.

Sorry about the video but I bet a current, a bit of DJI and a lot of operator. But I've never seen that crap before so I'm happy.

These guys are brothers, same litter so twins but more like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito kinds of twins.

The golden is definitely a retriever and his brother is a fisherman. There's damsel fish and all sorts of other fish in the water so that's what he's looking at when the water is this calm.

Philippines.

If I say do you want to go swimming in a normal voice he doesn't always click in but when you say, 'Dooooo,' He knows exactly where we're going.