Musings of a barefoot traveller

160 Vexar cages later.... Far from a relaxing pre-mission weekend. We had to cut and build 160 1x1x1ft cages out of 3 rolls of Vexar. Now with hotspots on hands and sore fingers. Not as bad as Steve though. He cut from 11am to 6pm, and might have strained a tendon in his hand. Also had to cut an additional 80 bases, and make 4 2x2x2ft cages. That's probably enough Vexar for the year. Tomorrow, we stage them all at the 2 sites we'll run the growth experiment, and drop other stuff off at the Habitat. On the plus side, there is (part of) a delicious chocolate cake in the fridge, and Chris made a delicious and authentic Italian dinner for us all.

Dives: 90ft 47min, 51ft 55min We're done with training, and on our way to moving from Candidate status to fully fledged Aquanauts (only when we step through the wetporch and start the mission). The last two days have actually been relatively light, compared to the beginning of the week. Yesterday we were briefed on the living and working space within the Habitat, and did an orientation swim to our work sites. Only one mask off exercise while sharing air with our buddies, and not too long! Probably less than 10min. Today the ARB crew carried out an emergency evacuation drill from the Habitat. We sat in the gazebo breathing 'oxygen' while the Habitat was on 'fire', and were all safely escorted to the surface and put on more 'oxygen'. Up next- more mundane stuff. We have 160 Vexar cages to make, laptops to prep, clothing and gear to pack. One more drill on Tuesday, and in we go!

Dive: 42ft 65min I've always considered myself a pretty calm diver. The one time I got entangled in rope underwater I managed to take off my BC, keep the regulator in my mouth, untangle myself and get on with diving. Which is why it was a strange feeling to find myself fighting the impulse to flail in the water all bug-eyed and bolt to the surface today. What happened? Let me explain. Part of saturation diving means we don't ever touch the surface as long as we are saturated. In fact, the shallowest we could go is 40ft. Which means, no matter what happens, or how uncomfortable we feel- lost buddy, overenthusiastic BC inflator, headache, mask kicked off by buddy, etc, we DO NOT surface to reorient and regroup before going down. A new concept. Today we find ourselves facing the one of the worst case scenarios that could happen underwater- my buddy and I have somehow lost both our masks, and also deviated from the excursion line and are lost on the reef. Argh. Instead of surfacing...

What's the point of enduring a 17 hour car ride down to "sunny" Florida to be met with chilly gusts and cold cold nights? Gah! No respite from the colder waters of winter when I'm blasted with frigid winds upon popping my head out of the water. And though I brought my Goretex (thank heavens), I sorely miss my fleece sweater, and maybe even fleece pants and a beanie. No pay-off at the end of two weeks of tolerance too. Back to frosty Wilmington and scraping ice off car windshields in the morning...Pffff... Well, I don't want to complain too much. Though it's gusty out, and there are white caps at Conch Reef, we have been getting our (cold) dives in, and getting work done. The vis at Conch has been pretty too, and I miss having my camera with me. I think I shan't fuss about the heat and humidity once I get to S'pore. Best to soak up all the warmth I can.

I've been on the move a lot the last month or so, and was anticipating a return to the daily grind of graduate life, but an offer came up yesterday that was hard to turn down! And so I decided not to run my PCRs yesterday and go for a field trip to the New River instead, to help a student with coring sediment samples from the seagrass beds and sieving them for molluscs. Turned out to be just what I needed, plus Troy decided that it was a good time to start my boat driving instruction! No, I did not hit anyone or any pilings, and I even backed the van with the boat trailer back into the parking lot. With lots of step by step advice of course, hehe. Got myself immersed in muddy water, was terrorized by a frisky scallop, and it almost felt like a vacation. Next week I try docking a boat in strong currents next to a bridge with pillars. Sounds like fun :P. Okay, back to writing...

So, first day of diving in the Bahamas. We didn't even reach Freeport yet when I realised I had left something pretty important behind. To Mumsy's credit I didn't flip out and have a total meltdown in the galley, not even a slight foaming at the mouth. Huh. Who knew I could be this calm about my f***-ups. Anyway, things to solve the problem are in progress, and I await the resolution to the whole matter in the meantime. Woke up to good weather, and splashed in around 2pm, back to the old place we got to know so well at 4am last year. Supposed to catch a whole bunch of fish to run tank feeding assays with, but I must say the overall haul of the day was pretty abysmal. As for me, I caught 1 fish in 2 dives. Ah, how I have fallen from the goby catching days of yore. Nothing to do but console ourselves that the fish were satiated by late afternoon and not interested in the food bait. Will try again tomorrow first thing in the morning. This is why I kinda like working on sessile...

Back to texting with one hand, dammit! Re-injured my left thumb two weeks ago by jamming it against Sensei Keith's fist twice in aikido class, and my first thought was "Oh %#@%, I gotta dive next week..." Somehow managed to scrape through mountain biking shifting with the fleshy part of my palm and playing volleyball mostly with my right arm, and was just wondering to myself when it would stop hurting when I landed a hammer on my left thumbnail today. Hard. Resulted in 5min of tearing underwater, gripping my left hand between my knees and swearing silently but profusely. And did it again 10min later. Hurts like hell. Going to bed now so I don't hit anymore sensitive body parts with hard and heavy objects...

...life throws another curve ball at you, and then sticks a rusty knife in your ribs while you lie winded on the ground. I love being Malaysian and all, but this passport and visa business is making me sooooooo.....frustrated. Some might remember the big hoo-ha last year, and the hoops I had to jump through to get a visa to enter Panama to take the Smithsonian sponge course. Next year, I vowed to myself then, next year would be different. Fast forward to this year, with me feeling pretty confident, having submitted my visa application in February, giving the consulate 3 months to approve my visa this time. Was overjoyed to see my return envelope sitting in my mailbox yesterday, and gleefully ripped it open, extracted my passport and flipped to the visa page. Was thoroughly deflated to find that my approval dates run from April 9th to July 9th! WTF! It's already April 18th, and besides the point, my fieldtrip is in August. To add insult to injury, my gender is listed as 'M'...

I was enjoying the Key Largo weather last week, it was sunny and the water was a manageable 26degC. Suddenly this week evening temperatures dipped such that people around here started wearing their fleeces, and the water temp is now a frikking 24degC. Have resorted to wearing 2 wetsuits to keep warm underwater, but the wind on the surface is...brrrr..... The whole dive rack area smells strongly of pee and I've started bringing a towel on board as a wrap between dives. Hopefully would be able to keep my immune system up and stave off an impending chill as we finish up our last 2 days here!

Today we had our first break day for this mission, after 5 straight days of diving. For a putative (my new word of the week...) break day, we sure did a lot. Woke up at 5.30am to accompany Wai as she sent Joe to the Miami airport, then went around Miami Beach a little. Came back feeling a little hammered, since I spent 3 hours the night before plugging away for my Stats final, and had a beer at Sharkey's to unwind afterwards. The rest wanted to go to Key West so grabbed my camera and headed out again, except for Tim who wanted to stay back and write. Felt a smidgen of guilt thinking about my climate change paper...but hey, it's Key West. So it's 10.35pm, and I feel like going to bed already. So much for a productive Sunday. It's going to be a big day tomorrow! Pulling in my Mycale fragments to see if any of them have been eaten. Fed a persistent Grey Angelfish some cut Mycale during the last dive so feeling vaguely optimistic about things. Rather miraculously, with th...

Looks like I'm spending the weekend in Wilmington after all! Short of a miracle happening in the next two hours...but...nah, I don't think so...I have a better chance of striking 4-D with the licence plate number of the driver who struck my car and then refused to pay for the damages. So much for my visa being approved this week...I found out yesterday that visas have to be approved by the Security Council in Panama, and they only meet once a week. If my application wasn't considered this week, it's shifted to the next. Why only tell me now? Why can't they just tell me when the meeting date was? I was expecting my visa to maybe come in today, and paid %#$%#$@^ $280 to change my flight to tomorrow. And I have to change it again? How much more must I pour down this black hole? Plus I don't even know if and when my ^$#^$%^#@$%^$ visa will be approved. Felt like smashing a multitude of breakable crockery last night, I'm so frustrated! Looks like I'm just not...

After a morning of extreme confusion (and trauma...for I was thoroughly roasted for my oral exam), finally worked out a possible avenue for the whole Panama visa issue. Called the consulate in Washington, and it turns out that I'm not supposed to be able to enter Panama without a visa. So much for the 'leave the visa at the Panama airport' idea. The moderately better news is, that my visa is supposed to be approved by the end of this week, latest latest. So say I get the approval on Friday, if I can persuade the consulate to return my passport through express delivery, I'll get it on Saturday, be able to fly on Sunday, and catch the early morning internal flight to Bocas on Monday, thus only effectively missing 2 days of the course. Phew. Now if only things were a little more confirmed...for e.g., at least tell me what date you can give the approval! Each ticket change with Delta would cost me at least $200, sigh....

Tim and I and the only ones left in the 100% club, so termed because we are the last two standing who have gone for every single pre-dawn dive to measure the photosynthetic efficiency of corals in response to sponge extracts. Today marks the 5th time this cruise that I've woken up at 4am (for the first week 4x in a row), and I've not been blogging much as all this lack of sleep have left me pretty much *$^%#^#* tired. Today the sting is felt hardest of all, as the rest of the cruise participants are going for a wonderful dive at the Pinnacles, while Tim and I have to sit out to avoid reverse profiling....SOBS.....no point hovering at 60ft either, cos thats where the Pinnacles actually start...Ahs, the sacrifices one makes in for the sake of science. Well, to console myself, the dive this morning was actually rather nice. The water was warm and clear, the corals were pretty, fishes darted about, and we finished the dive witthout Tim stabbing me in the forehead with a pair of sc...

Well, we've packed stuff away in totes (we call them tubs :)) and loaded the trailer today, and planned the meeting times and places for tomorrow. So crossing our fingers for good weather, and speedy work processes, and not to forget anything too important. Looking forward to the diving :) ...

I'm pretty upbeat today, despite the fact that my thesis project is going down the toilet. Why, you ask? Well, although, I've already scrapped Plans A and B, and have to come up with Cs and Ds as we go along, at least I know what's not working out, and can do something about it. Definitely better than plotting and planning all semester, and pinning all my hopes on a piece of paper. As those in the know would realise, you have to be a little insane to do research on ecology. Sure, there are perks, such as the very obvious one of diving for work (no-one tells you of the seasickness and the long long hours), and getting paid (albeit peanuts) to dive on coral reefs in exotic locations (sometimes). For me, one of the major thrills is the challenge of unravelling the mysteries behind each organism that make up an ecosystem. Each time I dive, I'm just amused and amazed at the wonderful complexity that can arise from a driver as simple as natural selection, something akin to fr...

After four looong looong days of waiting, we finally got to dive today! Even then, things looked a little uncertain in the morning- waves were 5-7ft high, with the occasional 8 footer rolling in. But the dive boats were going out, and as Steve said, we would be wussies if we didn't! Things seemed steady at first, but as we left the shelter of the shallows, I could begin to see why small craft advisories were in place for the past week. Stomachs churned as we rocked and bobbed on the roiling sea towards Conch Reef. As we geared up and strapped our BCs on, I finally threw in the towel, and decided that donating my breakfast to the sea was preferable to holding it in and spewing cereal on my labbies in the boat. It was definitely preferable to stay deep down underwater then bucking about on the surface, so we decided on super-short intervals, changed tanks quickly, and jumped right back in. Coming back wasn't too easy too. Slammed myself against the boat while hanging on the ladde...

What's blowing in the wind, you ask? My Masters thesis, that's what. Endured a 14 hour drive from Wilmington down to Key Largo yesterday, only to find out that because of gusty winds and rough seas, we might be grounded till Sunday...So everything's been pushed back almost a week, and we can't stay on longer than 5th June, so it'll be a mad scramble next week to get everything in before we have to return. On the plus side, I guess I have not slept so well as I did last night for weeks, and I took a very nice healthful walk during sunset today. Tim, Steve, and the NURC guys hooked up my pneumatic drill today, and we took it for a test run on a limestone rock sitting in the parking lot. Not too bad, I just need to find a way to start drilling cleanly, so I don't score the coral surface so much. We went to pick up Sven and Kyle from Miami airport 3 hours earlier than we planned, except Steve took a wrong turn and we ended up stuck in Miami traffic for about 2 hours...