Send me to the Harvard of diving!!!

Greetings faithful fans and followers.

Apologies for my recent lack of posting. The wind up to the end of term was full of reports, coursework marking, meetings, assemblies, more marking, more reports, more marking, planning....the list goes on and on. Anyway, I didn't have time to breathe, let alone xmas shop or sleep. But now it's all over for a few weeks and I'm back for a brief stop back home in Canada to see the family, eat some cheese and prepare for New Years on Koh Tao!!! Yup, couldn't resist my favorite place in Thailand. What is New Years without diving and buckets right?? Me + whaleshark = best new years ever. Me + whaleshark followed by me + buckets = even better!!


Anyway, now that I have a few minutes to breathe I thought I would take a minute to write a bit about this mysterious place called Blue Season Bali (BSB) which is sponsoring the contest that I am fighting so hard to win. Ya, I like them because they have put together this amazing competition but it's not just the free dive internship that has me so stoked, it's the company that's putting it on that's made me dead set on winning. It's the perfect combination of the best programme, the best location and the best diving! HEAVEN!!!


So if you weren't sure why you should be supporting me before, I'm going to show you how freaking awesome this place is so that there is no way you can avoid supporting me.


Being a teacher, my head is never far from the relentless grip of academia so I can find no better way to approach the topic than to compare it to that which invades my subconscious endlessly.

Blue Season Bali - The Harvard of the diving world. A comparative study

 

Ahhh Harvard, the height of the Academic world. The pillar of brainwave activity and the birthplace of greatness. Harvard is the cheese, if you manage to get in there you're set for life. Award winning work, the best professors, the best courses, the best reputation, not to mention the lovely campus set in beautiful surroundings! It's the full package indeed.


Coincidentally, Blue Season Bali shares many of the same qualities!


Award winning work
Last Year Blue Season Bali was given the PADI "Platinum Development Award" for S.E Asia and they have also been awarded the PADI "Green Star Award" for their conservation and eco work around Bali!  


Best professors 
Considering Blue Season Bali's reputation, it's understandable that they only have the best PADI instructors and ECO specialists. BSB has the only full time multiple platinum PADI course director in all of Indonesia, some of the most experienced Tec diving instructors, as well as an in house marine biologist! Additionally, all the DMs and PADI instructors are top notch! I know, I've already dived with them. These guys know their stuff!
They are always ready to guide happy fun divers (such as myself) out to find Mola Mola, Mantas, turtles and all their friends. I've dived with Putu and Wayan during my two times out with BSB and these guys are the BOMB! On both trips I have seen amazing stuff, stuff that some people hope to see their entire lives but never do! Yes, yes I know it's all the luck of the draw and mother nature will put what she wants in front of your mask but having the knowledge of these guys guiding you can't hurt :)  Being local they know these spots like the back of their hand. In Thailand you'd be hard pressed to find a local DM but everywhere I've dived in Indonesia there are plenty of local DMs who seem to know the reef and the wildlife better than anyone else. I'm so excited at the possibility of learning from these guys. I think there are certain things that only a local can teach, especially in a land as complicated and multi-faceted as Bali.

       

 Seriously, who looks like more fun? BSB instructors or Harvard professors?

The best courses 
If you want it Blue Season Bali can teach it! From Discovery Scuba for the freshies to OW and AOW to DM training, IDC, Tec diving and Eco courses they offer it all. They also have an amazing selection of internship programs that can take you from newbie to professional over a span of weeks to 7 months! (here's hoping those 7months are mine!!) Recently they've introduced a super cool Eco internship where you not only improve your diving but you learn all about reef restoration and protection and wildlife conservation. How cool is that! If the gods of SCUBA allow me to win this thing I am going to take advantage of everything this place has to offer. I'm going to be preserving and restoring and diving and Tec'ing - when at the Harvard of the diving world it makes sense to take advantage right?

The best reputation 
When choosing an institution of higher learning you always want to be sure that it can deliver. Blue Season Bali has a 100% pass rate on their ICD PADI instructor courses. That means noone has failed! Compared to other shops they take a bit more time with their courses to ensure that students know exactly what they are doing. If you're going to invest your time and money in a course as intense as the IDC (instructor development course) you want to make sure that you're going to get the best. Clearly BSB delivers.

 

100% pass rate! Can't beat that!

Lovely setting in beautiful surroundings 
Blue Season has not one but three different dive shops on the island of Bali. One in Sanur, one in Pura Jati (othewise known as PJ) and one near Menjangan Island. If I win I'll be spending most of my time at their shop in Sanur and living near there as well. The Sanur shop is where they do all their PADI development traning and their closest shop to Nusa Penida. The two times that I've dived with BSB I've left from here. It's a nice little centre snuggled off the main road in what I imagine used to be an old Balinese house. They've put in a nice deep dive training pool and have set up a really relaxed and friendly atmosphere for the people who are working, learning and diving there. I imagine that doing your PADI DM and diving instructor course can get stressful at times, lucky for those at BSB the shop is chill and there are tons of people around always (to help with those difficult assignments!) It's the type of place where you can feel comfy having beer when not diving, hunkering down in their classroom and getting things done or meeting the customers who come from all over the world to dive with Bali's Mantas, Mola Mola and other fishies inhabitants.
As for the lovely surroundings...well it's freaking BALI! Things don't get much more picturesque than that. Palms, temples, beaches, volcanoes, mountains covered in lush terraced rice paddies, islands, arid plains... it's amazing. You can't walk down the street in Bali without hearing the distant sound of the gamelan and smelling the insense rising from the hundreds of offerings that can be found on every street corner and shop front. Bali is a truly amazing place both above and below the waves!



 



I could post a million more photos here of how beautiful Bali is but I'm getting depressed looking at them as I sit here in the frosty, drizzly Vancouver winter so I'm going to stop...

So my faithful fans and friends, if you weren't sure why you should support me before, I hope this has enlightened you a little. Help me win! Send me to the Harvard of the diving world and help me live my dream!!

If you want to learn more about Blue Season Bali click HERE to check out all their programmes and courses. Check them out, get excited for me and help me win!!

To help me out here's what you need to do
1) join my fan page on FB HERE
2) visit my application page on the Best Dive Job blog HERE and leave a comment of support by scrolling waaaaay down to the bottom and telling BSB why I deserve to spend some quality time with them!

Keep checking back to the blog for other info and quality tidbits!

Cheers from the battlefield!
J

A sign of things to come??....I sure hope so!

A few weeks ago I posted about one of the mini-contests Blue Season Bali is running as part of their Best Dive Job in the world contest. This one was to win a free Suunto ZOOP dive computer. I figured that I couldn't run about talking about how great the mini-contests are without entering myself so, I submitted an entry myself. Guess what?? I WON!!! I am now the proud owner of a brand new dive computer!! Here's hoping this is a sign of things to come (and not a consolation prize because I'm not going to win the big prize I so desperately want!!)

All I had to do was write them about my PADI OW instructor and why he/she was so wonderful. Lucky for me I had 2 instructors who were very noteworthy! I've pasted my submission below. Hooray for me! I'm on a roll!!!

Simon leading us into the deep blue (we were following a 4 meter whale shark on our OW dive #3!!)

Two years ago I let my friends convince me to get my PADI Open Water ticket during a week long holiday on the sandy shores of Koh Tao, Thailand’s diving mecca. I must admit that it took some serious convincing as I wasn’t sure that I wanted to spend my holiday doing something that if done incorrectly would…well, kill me.  Putting your life in the hands of someone you’ve never met is an interesting prospect and one that I was not too terribly comfortable with.  Understandably, as I walked into the small OW classroom to start my course, it was the one thing I couldn’t get out of my head. To my disappointment we did not get to meet our instructor on that first night. Instead we spent the first evening of our course embarking on an instructorless thrill ride through a catalogue of PADI videos on the mysterious world of dive signals and “washing all your equipment in fresh water.”  Much to my relief, I managed to make it through day one of my OW experience without drowning…or even getting wet for that matter. Clearly satisfied by the fact that I was still holding my life in my own hands, I ticked off day one -so far, so good. 

We met our instructor on day two of our course – Simon Garrity…the man, the myth, the legend of Koh Tao diving. Although we didn’t know it at the time, we were lucky enough to score one of the most qualified instructors at the resort, arguably on the island, and as I would soon find out, I had no reason to worry about tossing him my life wrapped up in a regulator. Even better, we ended up with not one but two instructors! Being a group of 6, the course was a little packed so Ms. Jodie Roberts, a second instructor, came along to even things out. As we soon found out, doubling your instructors definitely doubles you fun.

Simon - PADI instructor extraordinaire

Jodie demonstrating that losing your mask will not make you drown

Before my first descent I made it clear to Simon and Jodie that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to breathe, that my mask would flood, that I wouldn’t be able to equalize, that my air would suddenly turn off, that I’d get lost never to be found again or that I would be eaten by a shark.  Although it sounds ridiculous now, to the virgin diver, these scenarios are not just possibilities, they are inevitable truths! Truths that needed to be brought to the attention of these dive instructors who clearly didn’t understand the life threatening situation they were about to throw me into! Luckily for me, Simon and Jodie were not only pros underwater, they were pros above water too. It takes a certain talent to calm someone out of their irrational fears; you can’t just tell them they are wrong, you need to convince them that they will be ok. I’m sure my slight panic was more of an annoyance than anything for Simon and Jodie but they never let on. They sat me down and went step by step through all the reasons why none of the above was likely to happen. They then went through how they would fix each of these problems (including me being eaten by a shark) if they were to arise. They didn’t laugh at my insecurities or make me feel stupid for being afraid. Instead, they made me feel as though I was going through something that every diver has experienced at some point or another and that it was totally normal. Confidence renewed, I took the plunge.

The next 3 days were spent going through the motions of a PADI open water course. Our days were filled with what I can only assume were the usual problems and panics of any OW course, all of which Simon and Jodie handled with sensitivity and professionalism. I can remember one particular moment where we were asked to remove and replace our regulators. One member of our group took a small bit of water in when replacing hers and began to cough as she took her first breath. Terrified, she tried to bolt to the surface. Simon gently took hold of her BDC and placed one hand on her regulator to keep it in her mouth while Jodie came over and made a slow “in and out” motion with both her hands to calm the girl’s breathing down. They both looked her clearly in the eyes and although they were in complete silence, you could tell that they were telling her she was going to be fine. If it wasn’t for Simon and Jodie’s quick but calm reaction, I am pretty sure that the student would have quit the second she hit the surface.  Luckily, she quickly relaxed and we continued on with the skill sets.  Similar scenarios played themselves over the next few days. Regulators where kicked out by accident, Trigger fish were approached unknowingly, masks leaked and fins fell off but through all of it, Simon and Jodie remained calm and supportive both above and below the water. None of us, no matter how silly our mistakes, were ever made to feel stupid or unable. Yes, we had a few beer fines here and there (of  which I was usually on the distributing end rather than the receiving) but they made sure it was always in good fun and never discouraging.

I entered my PADI OW course apprehensive to say the least. I did not feel even remotely confident living like a fish and was sure it would end tragically. Yes, Simon and Jodie taught me all the skills I needed to be safe underwater but it wasn’t the skills that kept me in one piece down there, it was the confidence that they instilled in me both on the surface and under the waves. I never felt as if I was in trouble because I had seen firsthand how Simon and Jodie could remove the panic from even the most frenzied diver with simple hand gestures and a reassuring touch. The day we finished out OW we all decided that we would head straight into our advanced…as long and Simon and Jodie remained our instructors. We have remained friends ever since. Some instructors might lay on the charm and the friendliness to get the extra students or the tip at the end of the course but for Simon and Jodie, their friendship is as genuine as their care for their students and that’s what makes them both amazing PADI OW instructors.

Simon and Jodie (3^rd and 4^th from the right) enjoying their beer fines with another successful group of  PADI Open Water divers J

Cheers from the winner's circle (the mini one that is)

J