Yay! I passed...

Sunday we went for another dive. I was down with a sore throat and flu, but I was determined to get the scuba diving open water exam over with. It's hard to equalize the pressure in your ears when diving if you have a blocked nose. So, I armed myself with an arsenal of pharmaceutical weapons:


The first one on the left is Clarinase, for flu, running nose and blocked nose. Second one is bacampicillin 400mg (antibiotics) for my upper respiratory tract infection (flu/ cough/ sore throat). Next is Novomin (dimenhydrinate) for motion sickness; I did get a bit sea sick during the last trip. The small bottle is a nasal spray to open up my nasal passages and the last one is Danzen, an enzyme to reduce the inflammation. I really wanted to dive.

We headed out to sea a bit late this time, because the boat was back late from another fishing trip. This time the visibility was great! It was much better than the week before. Even from the boat, you could see all the way down to the sea bed, which was around 9m deep! To me this is already amazing, since I haven't seen the other marvelous sites like Sipadan.

Anyway, my nose was pretty congested with greenish-yellow, gluey, gunk so I didn't make it on my first attempt. No matter how I blowed or swallowed, I couldn't unblock my right ear and had to go back up. So, I took more medication and sprayed more nasal spray, desperately, like a druggie...


By the afternoon, after lunch, my right ear was clearing up a bit. I told the instructor I wanted to try again and fortunately, I was able to equalize and go all the way down. This time, he told me to try removing my mask again and we did some sight-seeing. Before surfacing, I did the, "aaaah" trick. We have to surface while shouting, "aaaah", which is what you have to do if you run out of oxygen. This is necessary to remove excess air from the lungs so that you won't injure your lungs due to trapped air in your lungs expanding because of pressure difference. That make sense? Nevermind.

The important thing is; I passed!! Mua hahaha... Now I can get my PADI licence and go diving with hubby at Manado, Indonesia next month!! Hoorray!! I'm just a bit worried about leaving the kids for so long (7 nights)!


Anyway, we had a great trip on Sunday. We had fresh lobster sashimi on board and later had fresh steamed fish for dinner. Bro-in-law no.2 and 3 have also passed.

Sis no.2 and 3... to be continued...