Archive for the ‘Diving’ Category

Books I’m reading at the moment… December 2018

Sunday, December 2nd, 2018

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant part IV by Stephen R. Donaldson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Thomas_Covenant)

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant part V by Stephen R. Donaldson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Thomas_Covenant)

星空を願った狼の by Shiina Takasato (https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%AB%98%E9%87%8C%E6%A4%8E%E5%A5%88)
http://iss.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000002-I026521234-00
I was reading this previously but lost interest throughout (when I bought it, I was told “it’s funny”… maybe it is not in a terry-prattchet-funny-way). Maybe I’ll make it to the end this time

Desperation by Stephen King
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desperation_(novel))

红豚 by a friend of a co-worker… correct name to follow 🙂

American Gods by Neil Gaiman
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Gods)
I picked this up in used books shop. I “know” Neil Gaiman from his collaboration on Good Omens (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Omens) with the late Terry Pratchett. It’s good to hold a physical book in the hand while reading because I mostly read e-books on my tablet, but it’s just not the same.

PADI Tec Deep Diver Manual
Not sure if I will ever do this… but it’s interesting to read about it, at least at the moment.

潜水士試験:合格

Thursday, October 11th, 2018

What a mess that was… everything completely in Japanese and out of more than 300 testees, I was the only non-Asian person. Well, I passed and that’s what counts.

Above: I was testee #0047

Looking at the list, most people passed but there were some who failed. Anyway, most people used more or less the same textbooks, I will post mine here later. There does not seem to be so much variety of textbooks on this subject.

Next step: Find employment as part-time scuba diving instructor?

Anyway, time for a celebratory beer…

 

My first self-created course on memrise.com

Friday, September 28th, 2018

I’ve been posting about memrise on a couple of occasions. This time rather than bragging how many words I’ve learned and how many points I made, I created my own course:

https://www.memrise.com/course/2053021/qian-shui-shi-shi-yan-nodan-yu/

It’s a Japanese -> English course supposed to help you with vocabulary required to help passing the Japanese dive theory test called 潜水士試験

(I have no idea why the URL uses the Mandarin pinyin pronounciation for the test… I’ve inputted Japanese kanji – I also opened a help call with memrise but no reaction so far)

Creating the course was not difficult but you need to prepare the list(s) ahead and put the colums in the right order if you want to mass-import the lists.

Good luck, give it a try yourself (the course as well as creating your own course ^^)

From OWSI to SI…

Wednesday, November 15th, 2017

… whereas SI means specialty instructor and I’ve made that up, I don’t think it’s an official acronym.

However, it’s only a small step and does not take much time or effort. Plus I think teaching specialties is more intriguing than the mainstream courses.

The next step is actually teaching and certifying but given my work life and the changes coming up, I don’t think I will have much time to teach people scuba diving. More’s the pity!

IE over… I’ve done it!

Tuesday, October 17th, 2017

You wouldn’t believe it…. I certainly don’t.

https://www.facebook.com/PADIProsEurope/photos/a.360815577333483.83186.343247612423613/1494163877331975/?type=3&theater

Actually, it wasn’t too hard. We didn’t do anything we hadn’t practiced before. But still…. a test is a test is a test and therefor you can fail.

Colour me relieved.

OWSI course completed… IE next

Wednesday, September 20th, 2017

Hard on the heels of the Divemaster and the Assistant Instructor program, I completed the OWSI course last weekend.

All in all quite demanding but also fun and you can learn tons of good things.

Sad note: The IE that was scheduled for this weekend was cancelled because there are not enough candidates. The next date is mid-October so somehow I have to make sure I don’t forget anything until then.

Keep your fingers crossed for me.

PADI Assistant Instructor – done and dusted

Wednesday, August 2nd, 2017

While still doing the PADI Divemaster internship, I started and recently finished the PADI Assistant Instructor course. The certification card should be on its way.

Whereas the Divemaster has a lot of practical aspects, the next step in the PADI career focuses on teaching, teaching techniques, structuring lessons and applied lessons in confined water and open water.

First time supervising an open water lesson was pretty stressful. All of a sudden you have to deal with things such as bottom topography and current, which you don’t really have to take into consideration in a pool.

One of the most painful lessons I learned was the aspect of control – even if you have an assistant, you need to constantly monitor everyone around you, even the assistant – unless you know him/her pretty well and you make a good team.

I have to say, I really enjoyed the first dive *after* the course because after weeks and weeks of tasks, homework, assignments and such I finally got the chance to enjoy a quiet, no-pressure dive again. Felt good…

(Edit on 2017/08/25: corrected three typos)

Summer Problems…

Wednesday, August 2nd, 2017

Guess what kind of shoes I’ve been wearing this summer so far…

And don’t look at my weirdly shaped little toes… which you probably can’t unsee now.

 

PADI Divemaster – did it

Tuesday, July 18th, 2017

What can I say… this year seems to progress as planned…. I finished the divemaster course yesterday and signed the necessary documents which means I’m am a PADI Divemaster. Apparently there is no mandatory PADI Divemaster tattoo.

To think that I only started diving less than two years ago… it’s been a busy and interesting time. Next step: Assistant Instructor.

PADI Briefing template

Monday, July 10th, 2017

If you ever have to do a dive briefing, feel free to use the below template.

In some spots, you will need to fill in the details of the dive location e.g. phone number of the local hospital whereas in other spots you can delete whatever is not necessary (you do obviously not enter a dive spot from a boat AND walking from the beach).

When you have adapted the template to your diving spot, you will have covered all the major points of a dive briefing.

If you use the template for several dive spots, it will give your briefings a consistent look-and-feel (listen-and-feel, if you prefer) which makes it easier on the divers regularly attending your dives.

Feel free to add contents or delete what is not necessary. Use a map if you have one. Make one if you don’t. Remember to keep briefings short and to the point. Make it interesting but keep it relevant.

Briefing_Template

Update: Fixed a typo