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For whom the eye rolls |
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Part 3: The divers Our group of travelers came together from all over the globe which is a common feature of a Marsden Brothers adventure. The 11 divers managed to represent at least six nationalities, but we all got along well. Ai Lin commented afterwards she felt the dynamics between some of the group were fascinating. She described some of the conversations between Jase and me or Franck and Mark as scintillating. I was thinking juvenile or sophomoric would be a more accurate term. We did generally keep the conversation entertaining by accusing the others of cheating or pointing out their obvious ineptitude at simple card games. We did make the mistake once of allowing Shirley to keep score. Somehow, as unbelievable as it sounds, Franck won the game. Needless to say, Shirley was never allowed to keep score again and her company has been notified about possible problems with her math skills. Franck did have a redeeming quality which overcame his obsession with the massage ladies and inability to accurately bid a hand of Whist. He has excellent taste in cigars and is willing to share. Cheers Franck! Our group had people representing expertise in many fields. Jase of course was the master of diving skills... a little lacking in chivalry, but I will cover that later. Huey Bing was our resident fish psychologist. She had a way with our finned friends... which would explain the near-amputation of her finger while she was attempting to psychoanalyze a clown fish. Neither the fish nor Huey Bing will ever be the same. Mark and Claire quickly became our food experts with Mark specializing in chillies. When not diving, it seemed all they did was to eat huge meals and retire to their room. What could the young couple be doing? We stopped wondering about that after Claire emerged one morning with a nasty black eye. What could they be doing indeed! Simon and Sarah were the other couple on our trip. They each had their own unique skills to share with the group. Sarah epitomized the English lady... err, or was that Scottish... maybe Welsh. Who knows? Her accent and dialect changed about every five minutes and sometimes mid-sentence. She did have all the grace and charm of a lady though. Okay, well maybe not the grace, but I don't see how we can crucify her over the one incident while disembarking from the boat. Simon was quite the accomplished self-taught underwater photographer. It was obvious he had worked hard developing each skill required to take great photographs. He had mastered composition. His use of lighting and choice of subjects was above reproach. When he learns that final concept called focusing, he will be an outstanding photographer. Not to worry though, he kept good mental track of his photos. On our final night in Bali when we were all gathered around Mary's laptop looking at the photos, Simon was right there telling us what we would be seeing if the image was in focus. Mary was somewhat of our equipment expert. She had triple redundancy on most of her dive equipment. She had the laptop to view and download photographs and she seemed to be the most practised at using all the functions of the cameras underwater. There is one camera function she needs a bit more practice on though... file management. On this trip we saw many sharks. However, most of these sightings were a bit fleeting so it was a goal of the photographers to capture one. On one dive, Mary got and took advantage of an opportunity to get a great photo of a black-tipped reef shark. It swam by slowly and fairly close. Mary steadied her camera and got an excellent shot. Unfortunately though, for some unknown reason, Mary decided that mid-dive, swimming along at about 12m, is the best time to go through all your photos and delete the ones you don't want. I'll let all of you guess what happened to the shark picture. Shirley and Ai Lin were our adventurous pair. They generally dove deeper and went to more challenging places than the rest of us. Don't worry though. There weren't any serious negative effects aside from Ai Lin not being able to remember anyone's name and Shirley's aforementioned score-keeping problems. Ai Lin was very confident and always inspired the rest of the group... such as when she told us not to worry about the trigger fish because they weren't in season. And our Shirley had no fear. She was undaunted by triggerfish attacks or two-metre sea snakes swimming between her legs. I guess I shouldn't go any further without mentioning my own contributions to the group. Otherwise, someone else may mention them and get it all wrong. First, aside from being the most charming gentleman on the trip, my Whist skills were unsurpassed. I was also quite the cigar and pina colada connoisseur. I am also quite meticulous about my dive profile which seemed to humor some other members of the group. I'll give you an example and let you judge. For a typical 60-minute dive, my ordinary profile would go something like this: plummet down to a maximum depth of six metres for 20 minutes, ascend to five metres for 20 minutes and do a very conservative safety stop at four metres for 20 minutes. I know the safety stop is a bit long, but you just can't be too safe [It was like diving with an helium-filled buddy on a string - Mary]. |
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