31 December 2006.

Hello people.

Selamat Hari Raya and Happy New Year.

In Koh Lanta right now persuing my certification. Starting my course this Tuesday. It gonna take 2 days to complete the AIDA*. I would like to share this expiriance with you guys so i will give a day to day up date.

Wireless service is expensive here,2O Bath per minit. Tada flat rate or free wireless...somebody have to open a starbuck here.

Hopefully can get pictures or video of this expiriance but that depends on how far my budget stretch.

So happy New Year again and wish me good luck...wish now..wish now..I need all the luck i can get...cuak sial!!!

Target to be achive:

3X 1 minit 15 sec static apnea

25 meters dynamic apnea with fins

10 meters constant weight

Mephisto, good luck bro. The closest thing I do to freediving is having sleep apnea.

good luck in the course mephisto..pls2 share the experience..will appreciate it very much..

good luck bro, i know u can do it!

bro, kalau gua dengar cikgu kate mati or ear drum pecah, gua siap packing ambik first flight out of that place.....  : ngeri.... anyway all the best for tmrw.... jgn lupe update!! haha ;D

Mephisto:
Glad to know that you are safe and sound. And lagi glad to know that you've got incentive(s) there during your course. heh heh.

BTW, cakap sama Geraldine, sign up lah for MUW membership.. heh heh..

Yyoo.. My swimming buddy..

I'm soooooo glad you are having such a freakin great time over there. And I wish you all the luck in the world bro. You take care of yourself now. Don't get too distracted by the 'French Chick'. You go go go.. bro .

Have fun friend.. have fun. See ya back here in one piece. Gosh.. I'm gonna miss you at the pool this weekend.

Cheers!

good luck mephisto

3 January 2007.
Destination Koh Haa.
Cantik gila island ni.. it is a cluster of 5 rock island. so you dive around the island..marine live bagoss..cuaca cantik and visibility tak ingat..

Today on the boat we were educated on the history, disiplin and equipment.
The boat is one of the best diving boat i have been on in thailand. but the food so so aje.

After that biasa laa..yOga and streching.

For the excercise we use a rubber dinghie muat 5 orang with two lines, one kat depan, one kat tepi. the line infront ade install satu sled.

First kita orang buat free imersion then no limits with the sled.

Shit man..it is not easy as i thought..selama ni training was kat pool diving 5 meter kat cheras or shah alam so depth and pressure was not an issue sangat. today i was a REALLY big issue.

Our line was tight to a weight at 14 meters for free imersion.
free imersion is where you use only your hands to pull down and up on the line. but for safeTy reasons/budak baru belajar we were ask to put on our fins as backup.

I had 2 problem. the first is air for equalization.
At around 10m i cannot equalize anymore cause i have no air in my mouth left and my lungs dah collapse because of the pressure. so i went up. cikgu tanya ape hal....aku jawap takde angin dah nak equalize...dia cakap that my lungs still got air...it is how to channel the remaining air back to the mouth for equalization. so kita naik atas boat and he tought me a technique call reverse carpa/packing.

Carpa/paking is a technique where you assist your lung pakai mulut as a pump. so carpa/packing is using the mouth to pump more air into the lungs and reverse carpa is the opposite. so we use reverse carpa/packing to pump the remaining air yang degil dalam lungs to the mouth to be use for equalization. try this..exhale completely and shut your mouth tight. no air in your lungs anymore? wrong! Expend your cheeks and the expension of the mouth cavity will create a vacumm to pull the air from the lungs.
So i solve the first problem.

Second problem is could not equalize at 12 meters even thought mulut ade angin for equalize. cikgu was assisting me on the dive and he ask whats the problem. aku cakap cannot equalize.....then he said that he saw my chhecks full of air..i said yes but still cannot equalize. then he said that my eustacian tube was block...may be because aku tak relax or head position salah or simply tak sedar what i am doing...so he ask me to relax first and focus....with that advise the next dive i went to 13meters and the dive after that went to 14 meters and touch the weights at the end of the line. settel...at the surface cikgu cakap jangan risau..this things need practice...dont expect to be terrer in one day.

then we did the no limits/sled dive. i did 3 runs.

First run abourted at 3 meters cause i did not expect the accelartion to be so fast and and ter let go the sled..hampaeh!!!

second run was perfect. turun bawah sampai i gave the signal stop and we inflate the lift bag attach to the sled...we rocketed to the surface in a cloud of bubbles tak ingat punya....best macam roller coster ride..the last time i felt teruja like this was on a jet ski on full power. with this type of ascent rate scuba divers boleh meletup punya ni..scary.. 17 meters no limits.

third run aku push to hard.. went around 17/18/19 meters and i cannot equalize fast enough.....telinga kanan macam nak pecah so i let go the sled and finned to the surface...run was considered aborted... cikgu cakap aku push to hard and panic..true...

then that was it....the rest of the day we spend free diving at the reefs and the caves in Koh Haa.....i saw a group of divers passing by and cikgu went down with his carbon fibre fins doing a dolphin and went deeper than them and lepak lepak...he blew their mind... then the students went down...not deep..but also blew thair mind...heh..langsi jangan tak langsi...heh

On the way back on the boat cikgu give me a nose clip and ask me to practice reverse carpa/packing and equalization..practice for 15 minits and demo kat dia balik..ok he said..i got it right..but i must practice practice practice..i said i go to the pool and he ask me to do this exercise at the bottom of the 5 meter poll until it becomes second nature.

Thats it.

I am a certified AIDA Free Diver 1 *...yey!!!

Am i going to do the 2*? No. I have decided that i am not ready for it yet..

This is because the learning curve is very steep....not in the knowledge and theories...but phsycology and phisiology curve...

My mental is still not strong enough..tengok the big blue kat bawah takut jugak laa..and as usual i did not push where i should push..to tell the thruth...all the dives hari ni is without any lung contactions going down...i can still push at least to the first lung contraction. i am not proud of this..need to work on it more.

The body still not use to it..i am not as relax as i should be and that brings in all the other problems. cikgu cakap ...can you see the improvements you have achive today? with training and more practice dia budget aku boleh buat free immersion 20 meter..heh..with practice and a revise mental..that is what i have to work for..

So hope fully after this i can reduce futher/ stop smoking, yoga lagi.swim lagi. run lagi,.practice lagi and be more religious..then i hopefully i can achive that 20 meter free immersion or more.

Thank you all for the support..as Lara would say..you are a doll!

perghhh.. enjoyable reading i must say.
eh... you missed out the French chick! What happened?

Wah myself salute u after wat u went thru. Btw congrats on ur certification

Congrats man on ur certificate..!! Bravo everybody..

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perghhh.. enjoyable reading i must say.
eh... you missed out the French chick! What happened?

laaa.... geraldine tu si french chick la....   kite tunggu esok pulak.... leisure dive... hehe

Yeah you are right, Mocha.
Not sure why i missed out reading that paragraph... Thanks for pointing it out, it took me some time to figure out what you were trying to say.. hahaha

well done well done my pren...... next time when u go freediving in local waters, we shall follow u. But wont do freediving laaa. We shall wait for u at the bottom. Kalu tak cukup air in yr lungs, we can provide with air.... hehehe

ah cool write up bro...will await the report and pics especially in Geraldine.kekeke...Anyway yeah shall enlighten more about freediving.  Don know whether we have what it got to take for the freediving(turbo lung) but its good to broaden our knwoledge.  Ive seen a lot of skindivers in Thailand hanging around with me at 20-25m, while im at that depth with breathing apparatus amazed with them hehee....I guess they were like.... har look at those divers!! while we were like, look at those snorkellers...haha