iain goes bananas

hi there,

well, you've all noticed that my blog has become ever so slightly less interesting since i got to perhentian and basically started working and studying in paradise. i do apologise for that. the thing is, i do pretty much the same every day:

wake up at 7, smiling because i can see the sea and the sun is already shining. have a (cold) shower and stroll down the beach to the diveshop. open up the diveshop and then have breakfast (fresh mango juice and a banana pancake) while planning the day's dives.

then sit drinking instant coffee with the Spice gang, dive, dive some more, have lunch, dive some more, have a beer on the deck, close up the shop, and that's pretty much the day done and dusted.

the evenings are also fairly uniform: have dinner with the gang, or various subsets thereof, consisting mainly of some combination of vegetables and rice (boring), drinking tiger beer and entering into the umpteenth round of discussion on one of the two only topics we ever discuss: fish that we saw that day [e.g. 'did you see that massive blacktip on temple this morning?' 'nah, went this afternoon - a big school of bumpheads was shitting sand so the viz was crap. saw that emperor angel at three reefs that you guys were talking about yesterday though. awesome!'], and food (or booze) that we can't get on the island ['god, i would kill for a bottle of bombay sapphire instead of sucking down monkey juice every night.' 'no kidding, and why can't you get real cheese anywhere in asia? this processed rubber stuff is driving me insane.']. the other day we tried discussing the state of affairs in the world, but no one knew what they were so that didn't last long.

ad infinitum, ad delirium!

in other words, i'm still having a blast! and tomorrow there's a big beach party for my birthday, so looking forward to that!

it's fairly quiet on the island right now, as the full moon party on koh phangan is coming up in 2 days time, and we've had 4 days of relatively bad weather (torrential downpours all night every night which have cut canyons into the beach from the runoff), which has kept people away, but it's picking up now again as the sun has returned in full force. we'll be back to normal after the weekend.

coming up to the end of my divemaster training now, and am loving it more every day. signed up for the instructor course in july, so am going the whole distance on this one. well, that is, if i pass, of course. 2 weeks of intense bootcamp training followed by a 3 day exam still gives most instructors the chills just thinking about it. sound like fun? hell yeah, bring it on!

patrick is coming over to see me in 3 days, so hat will be really cool. we're meeting in KL (i have some shopping to do) and then spending a week here, diving, drinking and generally kicking ass. dude, remember to bring the bombay!

hang in there, all of you back in the world. thinking of you!
all you travellers, rock on ;-) !
cheers,
i