Hah, PADI open water certification is to me! Finally. The water was horrible, in terms of visibility, so we could see the sunken Cessna only from about 2 feet. But the whole thing was pretty awesome, and I really enjoyed the instruments-only navigation at depth.
In other news, I’ve had songs from The King and I stuck in my head for the past few days.
Last night was a great Ladysmith Black Mambazo concert. Just for the record, their founder and still-leader has the best name ever: Bhekizizwe Joseph Siphatimandla Mxoveni Mshengu Bigboy Shabalala. The last time I saw them, I was very little, and fell asleep up in the balcony. This time, I was feeling ill and left a bit early, but every moment I was at the concert was worth it. They were filled with energy, of course, but more, they were filled with (apparent?) spontaneity. At a certain point, one of them lifted the shirt of the guy next to him and rubbed his belly, to the other guy’s apparent shock and surprise. That sort of thing kept happening. At one point, the group behind Mr. Shabalala wouldn’t stop singing the baseline once he had finished the song. It was pretty fun.
However, I’m still feeling a bit ill. This is a particularly bad time for it, as it sort of precludes open water certification this weekend, which precludes getting that at all before Zanzibar, which is sad. I could perhaps spend two days and get open water in Zanzibar, but… I am not holding out too much hope for that. It’d be a lot of time in a cramped schedule.
Scuba is totally awesome. So, a day half spent underwater is a good day. But there’s not much to say about a pool dive. However, the swim test at the start caused an interesting realization.
The first thing we did in the pool was the swimming test: 6 laps of the pool, constant swimming, and then 10 minutes of treading. The last time I did anything like this was about 4 years ago, during orientation at Swat, and it was a pain, but not too bad. Now, doing it again at higher altitude, I found it… not hard. But when I first came here and was swimming laps, I only made it up to “a whole six” after almost a month. Here’s the realization: I could have easily done six laps then, too. It’s not that I lack physical endurance, as I often claim I do. It’s only that I lack mental endurance. And when I have an external motivator, I will rise to that.
This makes me want to achieve similar results from internal motivation. That’d be good.