I'm a Resque diver

I’ve finished the course today :)
All in all, it’s a great way to finish the year.

See more progress on: get my Rescue Diver certification

rescue diver test

I took the test yesterday evening and I missed two questions (I did correctly 96% of the test :D)

We still have to go through a practical session this saturday, but that’s … a practical session :)

I allready see myself as a resque diver :D

gggg!

See more progress on: get my Rescue Diver certification

christmas update

It's been some busy days.

Friday evening we decorated the christmas tree.


On saturday, I woke at 6 in the morning to do the first part of the practical of my Resque Diver course. At seven I was red-doing the webbing on my BCD (I changed the air-bladder); At a quarter to eight I was dropped of by the taxi in front of the dive shop, with bruised fingers (damn webbing was hard to put back!); I was an hour early (for sleepyness reasons).

So, what was interesting about the exercises?

First, my regulator was leaking (I left it at the shop for service).

Second, never ever approach a panicked diver at the surface, whatever the manual might say about it; If you wonder why, imagine that he/she is not rational, has enough adrenalin in the system to overpower you even if you are two times bigger, and will try to climb on anything floating, just to stay at the surface; It's logical what they'll do if something floating - namely you - approached them on the surface.

I learned more, but if you want to find out what, better take the resque course yourselves :)


Around lunch I got home, and I spent all afternoon with B and L in the kitchen, working on christmas food; My part was a big bowl of mayonese and eggplant (that is: aubergines) salad.

Here's a the christmas shopping done by B:



On Sunday we all went at D&I's place;

We ate some food, drank some stuff, then ate some more, then we ate some more again, then we had desert, in the true romanian tradition. Everything was (ofcourse) followed by the traditional collective stomach ache.
(I'll get some pictures of the happy event in the following days).


And today we went to Trodos on the rumor that there would be .5 metres of snow; It was true, except the .5 metres were the size of the patch, not it's overall thickness.

It was fun nonetheless.

... and it's corals again

corals again, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

macro: water surface

water surface, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

some corals

corals, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

corals again

corals, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

yellow fellow

yellow fellow, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

trees behind my house

trees behind my house, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

you are what you eat

office food, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

They say you are what you eat; This is the breakfast I had a few days ago, in office.

So, who am I?

corals formation

corals formation, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

corals formation

corals formation, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

giant clam

giant clam, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

and another giant clam

a happy couple

a happy couple, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

yet another picture in my set from Sharm El Sheikh

i'm offset

for some strange reason (aliens with big pink antennas manipulating us all or something even stranger) I'm offset by three days.

what does that mean?

it means that while today is tuesday (check your calendar if you don't belive me), around me today has been friday.

(really!)

i've had this ... idea? thought? ... whatever - that today is friday, and that I'll go home and prepare for christmas.


maybe it's the whole christmas atmosphere ... or the gifts received from the company ... or maybe it's the guys going home and doing christmas shopping ...


whatever it is, happy hanookah
or is it christmas?
happy holydays?
holy happydays?

whatever offsets you by three days i guess!

my thoughts of late

It's saturday evening, and i've had a day of rest again :)

Today I swept the floor in the living room and (as with all kinds of physical activity) it gave me some pause to think;

This post is about what I was thinking of ... well ... it's about what I'm thinking now of what I was thinking of then ... actually it's about what ...

ok, ok!


As of late there are a lot of things I'm much clearer about; mainly, it relates to relationship between feelings, states of mind, states of being, clearing your mind, increased (and decreased) consciousness and my goals.

Yeah ... I know ... not exactly your average, everyday topics ... is it? (no, but lately, they are mine :))

That is one of the things I thought about ... (or one of the things that my mind keeps returning to - if you will). Others things are, for example, looking at how my desires change ...

I also want to change the way I relate to some things ... and to some people ... and then I suddenly shift to moments of 'none of this matters' (I won't go into details here since they are in the habbit of reading my posts methinks).


I also shift between moments of clearness and moments of ... lots of goals and desires and ... it's difficult to explain - it's not exactly 'confusion', but it is a clouded mind.


I see in a clearer way the relationship between fear and love as sources for Being ... and posting on the forum has been helping a lot in this regard.


I guess the way choice really works for me is becomming clearer also, and that is the reason for these sudden changes (I mean I know that whatever I choose, I could have chosen anything else instead). It kind of puts things into perspective, especially when you see people that are so different than yourself, and realize that those people are - esentially - yourself.


Here is a small mind-stretching exercise:
Imagine that, for the sake of argument, matter, energy and time are one big happy ... blob of inter-related ... something (call it a big soup of quarks for all I care);

Imagine also - again, for the sake of argument - that we have a soul.

Now, this soul is no matter and no energy (let's ignore the '21grams argument' for this one, shall we?). It follows (through basic 11^th grade logic) that your soul is not bound by time, not attracted by the sun, not getting older and so on and so forth ...

Third, imagine - yes, for the sake of argument again - that we re-incarnate. All these suppositions (and exercise in imagination) leads to a staggering conclusion:

There are no past and future lives. (yeah, this would be the point in my post when you stop beliving I'm a gonner, and start knowing it - right?).

But no, think about this: if the soul has no relationship to time, then there is no future life to choose from;. No past life either. Maybe it's ... contemporary life.

Maybe you end this life, and after that (if there is any 'after' involved here) you reincarnate as the guy who's been annoying you since you were six and bullying you in fifth grade;

Maybe there is something more to all that gibberish various 'masters' talked about, saying we are all one.

No, they didn't say it like that exactly ... but, for example Jesus said something to the effect of

In asmuch as you do this to the least of those, you do it to me

and Sri Nisargadatta said that there is nothing except himself; that there is nobody else but him; then, the main character in the thin, red line (don't remember the name) said

Maybe there is only one soul, with a thousand faces

That's it: maybe we're like people jumping in the pool, joining the game, then getting out, staying in the sun, then joining again under a different face.

( except it's not a pool, it's a quark soup :) ).



So, there you go: this is what I've been thinking as of late, and these are the things I'm pondering while sweeping the floors.


ponderingly yours,
utnapistim

Lucky me I don't sweep the floors too often - i'd go mad in a hurry!

life

I
AM
SO
PROUD!

I received a 'thank you' gift from our CEO.

... no, no, no, I'm not that important ... i mean ... it's handsigned and everything ... but it's what everybody else got ...

Now, I have a desk full of gifts on my desk:
I got two shot glasses from Africa (brought from N who just went there)
... and I got a pen holder which is also a gift

... and now this ...


everybody?

i'm starting to feel like 'the godfather' here ...


confusedly yours,
utnapistim

toying with macro: view of my laptop

laptop, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

toying with macro: from under my laptop carying bag

under the bag, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

toying with macro: garlic pealing

garlic pealing, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

I started toying with macro photography this morning; these are some garlic peelings from monday evening: I ate garlic with shark filet (yes, there was more garlic than fish)

shiny and new

I'm all smiles again.

why?

well ... as the mighty Brain once said:

Pinky, never underestimate the power of Free T-Shirts!

(then he tried to take over the world using a fake world made of newspapers and an asteroid ... i think)

I received a free T-Shirt and a mp3/wma player from the company, for christmas. Ofcourse, the t-shirt is a bit ugly and the mp3 player has 256Mb but I'm not perfect to complain here ...

And besides it's a perfect player for my MTB.

10 Reasons Santa Claus Doesn't Dive

10 Reasons Santa Claus Doesn't Dive:

His elf-produced wooden regulator is dangerous at any depth!

found my light

here I am again.

in shape


again :)


I'm listening to shivaree and looking for hiphop.


why? one might ask.
no reason. because i feel like it.


so HERE I AM!


anyway :)

I' half-way through the EFR course and last night I kissed ANNIE. and she didn't do anything!

guess I'm not as homme fatale as i thought i'd be ... i mean ... she didn't react! at all!

Regarding future plans ... this weekend i'm in for some study: I have to fill the EFR exam papers by monday afternoon (I get the manual this evening) and I allready got the resque diver manual yesterday.

the perspective of resque has been scary for a while but looking through the manual it starts to make sense (big pictures that even I can understand, you know?)

I also hope to make it out of the house for a few hours (maybe sunday), because

all fun and no play makes jack a dull boy.

that's it for now: It's back to work, since I should have gotten the *NIX permissions for installing the latest build by now.

oh joy!

HERE I AM,
utnapistim on the net

computer pictures

Someone sent me this link today.

Looks funny :)

shards of chaos

shards of chaos

all happy

here i am all happy, sitting in front of my computers (and there are two of them: one for when I work, one for when I don't, but I'm using only one of them ;)).

so why am I happy?

no reason


maybe it's just my crazy idea that everything's fine; maybe I'm just on a coffee high; or just one of my normal morning moods.



anyway, I got to go: saint nicholaus brought me some sweets (and I didn't even write him a postcard :D).

quote

Your wise quote is: "The best antiques are old
friends" by Unknown...
Your buds is the source of your happiness
(maybe not all but still). Even if it's just
one, a couple or a whole group they are the
ones you can't wait to see. It does not matter
if you're shy with everyone else or not, with
them you let your true spirit shine and can be
as loud as you want. They accept you, and you
love them for that.


What wise quote fits you? [pics]
brought to you by Quizilla

white river dive

saturday me and S dived the White River site in Akamas, past Paphos. It was an easy dive, but we had a few problems with the weighting (that means that we got much less weights than needed, and the dive guide had to get back to the car for some more weights).

It was the first time I put a large rock in my BCD pocket to be able to stay down. Other than that, it was a smooth ride (well ... dive).

Also, half way through the dive (as my tank was half empty) I had to get some extra-weights (again) because I was starting to float.

Enough with the boring stuff, here are some pictures:

white river dive-site, before water entrance, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

me and S, fully geared, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

underwater sky, originally uploaded by utnapistim. This was taken aproximately 10 minutes into the dive (~6m depth); The surface was very very calm and the clouds are perfectly visible :D

jellyfish in the sky, originally uploaded by utnapistim. This was a bit of an experiment on my part: I went under it and shot it against the sky; it turned out looking good

Dive technical data:
time in:14:39
time out: 15:33
(dive time: 54 minutes)
water temperature: 20.4 deg. Celsius
max depth: 12.8m

fire coral

fire coral, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

blue fishes

blue, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

corals

corals, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

yet some more corals

yet some more corals, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

corals

corals, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

gold fish

gold fish, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

things are moving again

I spoke to P today; tomorrow afternoon I'm starting the emergency first response course.

Also, saturday me and S. will be going to Paphos for a dive. I haven't called the guys there yet, so it's still 'in planning phase' so to speak.

wish me luck with the course :)

I'm going back to eating olives with my chopsticks.
se'ya!

the tyranny of email

quote taken from the main page of W-UH.com (emphasis is mine):

As an example, I received an email from a company called BSIL, and this was on their home page:

   'We are a global, end-to-end IT solutions provider with a global delivery footprint. With over 20 years of experience, we understand our customers’ needs better and provide a portfolio of services, using robust processes, which enable them to leverage their IT investments.'

   Do you have any idea what these people do? Nor do I. (Apparently they 'provide solutions' :)

this website is preety insightfull.

i'm cold; maybe it's just too much coffee

ever get that feeling ...

it's monday morning ... (i know, i know! just thinking about it puts a bad spin on your mood).

... but!

do you ever get that feeling that everything is right in the world? of ... perfection?

well ... I knew you didn't, but i do.

i mean ... yeah, it's monday morning ... but it's still perfect; and you might still want to be in bed (and that's ok ... it's perfect too) ...


but i don't want to be in bed and the fact that i don't want to is just fine.


i know i'm not making that much sense right now (infact, when do i ever?!) but ... things are just the way they should be; (if you don't see that, take my word for it)


you're where you chose to be (no, that might not be where you wanted to be, but you're definitely where you chose to be); and the fact that you might want to change things does not dimnish the perfection - it never did!



so, sit down in silence for a few moments (even if there are sounds around, make enough silence within that you can hear your breath for some time), then look at the world and tell me:

do you ever get that feeling that everything's right as it should be?
that everything is perfect?


... just wonderings of a monday morning ...
utnapistim

in the zone

i am in the zone;

i posted something online this morning (on freindsofcwg), then i offered a massage to a friend after lunch; at times i switched to rei-ki.

it was a fun way to move the energy around (and i'll have to play with it some more).


at the moment i'm trying to make a project work and have many many many things to get done till the evening.

so it's back to work :)

yeah, and I set this as my background just because it reminds me of the dives in sharm more than the actual uw. pictures.

waiting, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

my business plan

so, this is how it's going to work:

first, you send me your phone number;

then, you look at this for like ... 15 minutes or so;

then i call you and tell you the account number where you will send all your money.

it really works

yet another fish

yet another fish, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

random impressions

it seems as of late i've taken to only post on mondays ...
well ... almost.

i spent yet another weekend at home, closed in my room with lots of sleeping and reading; for whatever reason i slept very sporradically friday and saturday night, and was tired for the whole weekend.

what else?

friday, around 5 PM the winter arrived in limassol: we had a major storm with ice falling; when it started I was in the bathroom, with a window opened and it was preety exciting (darkness outside, charged air and thunder and lightning everywhere).

i bought a small blue booklet about zen; i hoped it will help me understand what exactly zen IS.

no such luck: i still have no idea what zen is, but apparently that's ok - when you find out, you are lost;

then, i started practicing the art of being utnapistim in the spirit of zen (in layman terms, i cleaned my room a bit).

random joke

It's been said that once the Dalai Lama went to a New York hot dog stand and told the guy:

Make me one with everything

rAndom updAte

it's monday evening and i'm waiting to go home.

methinks it's nothing unusual: i did it last monday also.

so, let's see:
friday evening we went bowling with the whole team; the bowling games were ok, the pizza and garlic bread we had there were more than ok, and we had reason to leave office early on firday afternoon (and that was perfect).

two hours or so later (around 2000), we (that is me, M, I and VP) gathered in Woodsman's Pub and played bridge;

around 2330, (after two beers) i went brain-dead and we had to stop ( sory guys :) ). it was a fine evening, and not as adventurous as last time.


saturday i did some shopping (so my fridge is full again), and i made a vegetable soup (which was quite good if i do say so myself).

it took me all of three hours to eat it all (yeah, i'm a monster!).

anyway, saturday evening i went to Woodsman again for S's birthday party (happy birthday S!), and I tasted Strongbow beer (or is it cider?) for the first time.

that was cool.


and sunday ... well ... i watched a movie on B's computer on sunday. it's called mindhunters and while interesting, it was one of those everybody-dies-before-the-last-two-minutes movies.

it was interesting in a way (and gruesome, and thrilling and ... hell, i don't know!); i wouldn't watch it again though (too violent for me).


so, that was that, this is now,
ba-da-bim
ba-da-bam
ba-da-boom!

this was utnapistim on the net,
signing off...

white coral

white coral, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

blue fishes

blue fishes, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

I found this while browsing my pictures from Sharm.

K dragging P

K dragging P, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

K dragging P through the water.

in technical terms, it's called a DPV: Diver Propulsion System (and it usually involves a propeller with batteries :))

sitting down

sitting down, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

K sitting in the sunlight (taken on our first dive on saturday)

reason for diving

reason for diving, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

just so you know: this is what I dive for :D

wreck

wreck, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

same wreck, different view

some creature

some creature, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

anyone knows what this ... thing is called?

it was doing a small left-right dance with the uw current ... strange :)

at work

IMG_8652, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

this is on a wreck found just outside our working-place

who would have thought?

setting up

IMG_8591, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

picture taken on saturday: P setting up the his equipment (and me behind the camera :) )

clouds in the evening

clouds, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

am i lazy or not interested?

this post is about diving



i haven't blogged in a while ...

it seems at some point i either lost interest or i lost interest ...
or i lost interest ...

or something like that :)


so!


after comming from egypt and resting for a whole weekend, i did something new:

i went diving :D
(you weren't expecting that, were you?!)


that is, i went diving on my own, along with P and K (friends at the company). we rented the equipment and did four dives:

two on saturday and two on sunday :D

so, what can i say?

it's quite different; i mean, with an operator, you get the 'ok, we're doing this dive, this is the place/depth/yada-yada-yada'.

here, we had to decide where we'd go, max depths, bottom times, what to do for currents and all the jazz.



and.it.was.FUN.
it rocks!

on the second dive on saturday we missed our objective completely (not cool :D);
and on sunday we reached our objective (a very nice ship-wreck), by keeping compass direction for about 200 metres in poor visibility;
we changed a dive plan underwater due to the presence of jellyfish at water entrance, and we ended up doing an L-shape following compass W for 30bar, then S for 20 bar then back, and exitted around the same point;

so, i god to play a lot with a compass (i've got to get me one of those! :D)

i hope i get to do it again


smilingly,
utnapistim

LD

it happened around a week ago;

and i was sleeping (well ... duh!).

what am I talking about?
LD of course.

i was in sharm ... and all i remember now is that i decided that if i was dreaming, i might as well dream of flying.

it was great. really really cool!


and i found out that it's not so much a matter of what you do before going to bed (as i seemed to grasp from all those technique things i read about), but how you sleep.

it's in how deep you sleep and getting an impulse of looking at what you're up to ... while sleeping.


it looks like a good start ... to nothing in particular.

see you arround people :)

a little lesson on trip planning

ok, so we had the tickets; and the luggages; and good will; and we were in the airport;

you'd say that would be enough;

but it was a bumpy ride to there:

first, we were told that getting here is a definite "maybe" (so to speak). we arrived at the airport and were told off, because we had israel visas on the passport; we had to wait for some egyptian man to come (45 minutes later) and approve our visas so we could get on the plane.

fourty five minutes, a caramel chreme and two sandwitches later, we got our boarding approved and were on the way to the plane.
that's one, solved.

second, we were late. we had to switch planes in cairo, which turned to be a new experience:
our plane was late ten minutes;
then we had to choose between two queues to get into cairo with a visa and a queue to an empty desk for transits. since we were in a hurry, we chose one queue (at least something was happening there), and got sent to the transfer (still empty) desk. then we waited for someone to get there, then after he did, he sent us to get visas and go by one of the queues back.
we finally passed the visa checking, went to get our luggage (the only one left on the band) and, with 15 minutes 'till the second plane was due to leave started searching for the new terminal.

turns out the new terminal was like 300 metres down the street. running with 20kgs in scuba gear and two backpacks down the street is no fun.

we finally got past the security checks and here we were, waiting for the bus to pick us up. if we only knew, we'd have gone at a pace.

well ... after that it was smooth sailing (errr ... plane riding ... flying! whatever it was).

so kids, when doing transfers between two planes, make sure you have at least one hour between them; if you're flying through cairo, that means two or three hours between flights.

this concludes our lesson for today!
(no homework assigned)

IMG_8252, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

blue coral

blue coral, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

IMG_8329, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

balloon fish

balloon fish, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

a school of tuna

a school of tuna, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

coral wall

coral wall, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

giant clam

giant clam, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

school of yellow fish

school of yellow fish, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

IMG_8116, originally uploaded by utnapistim.