Everyone needs a place they feel comfortable in, some place to call home.

For John Goh Shuwei, that place is now the new scuba diving forum on the Malaysian online portal, Cari.com.my. It’s a forum he started with the approval of the moderators of Cari.com.my’s Chinese section in August this year, after much pestering from him. “They just didn’t see the need for it,” says John.

But Goh didn’t agree. “People were posting trip reports, upcoming trips, sharing photos all over. In the Adventurers forum and other places.” There was clearly interest in scuba diving in the Chinese-speaking community, but they needed to organise and pool their postings into one place so they could ask questions, share, find new information and search for scuba buddies.

It’s something the members of Chinese.cari.com.my can’t do on other scuba diving forums. Simply because they’re not comfortable in any other language but Chinese. Chinese.cari.com.my is the most popular Chinese-language site in Malaysia, catering to over 200,000 members. They’re mostly Chinese-educated and prefer to converse in one of the Chinese dialects. For the ones who are certified as scuba divers, their courses were taken in Chinese by Chinese instructors. This has created numerous problems for them, says Goh.

They can’t find references in Chinese to feed their interest in scuba diving. All the marine life references are written in English. As are most of the world’s websites on scuba diving. And because they had problems finding other divers (until now) to discuss their hobby, they tended to be more reclusive.

This reclusiveness only compounded another existing problem. With few opportunities to share information on diving, Goh found that Chinese scuba divers seem to be adopting misconceptions and poor attitudes toward safety and the environment.

Now, Goh is making full use of the large member base on Chinese.cari.com.my to drive membership for the new forum so he can share more information on safety and environmental awareness. There are currently 20 active members on the forum, but over 100 who have already identified themselves as scuba divers.

And with Goh’s help, there will be more “wo shi qian shui yuan” who can enjoy scuba diving to the fullest.

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Posted on March 24th, 2008.