Monday, October 16, 2006

What I do all day

I'm feeling bold and have decided that I might let people in on the fact that I've started a blog. I'm kind of embarassed, but mostly worried that it's just going to be really boring. Anyway, I thought I might start with a "day in the life" sort of post, because it's easy and I don't want to start studying for the GRE Biology (which I take in Sydney in a few weeks).

So I do work most days (But not today, which was nice, and also why I had time to think about starting a blog. And I don't think I'm working tomorrow, either, which will hopefully also be nice.) I work on Tusa 4 (or occasionally on Tusa 3). This is Tusa 4.



I get up at about six, which is a little rough. Apparently I am getting used to it, since I woke up today at 6:30 even though I didn't want to. That also meant that Jon woke up at 6:30, even though he really didn't want to. So on a normal work day, I try to eat a little bit, but not too much (I'll get to that later) and put on my uniform. It's a big improvement over the Down Under Dive uniform (the company that I worked for previously, who stuck me in the office and barely let me do any diving, which is why I quit).

The Down Under Uniform

The Tusa Uniform

I realize that they are pretty similar, but the Tusa ones definitely looks better. I also happened to strike the exact same pose, which was not on purpose. I think I work with too many Japanese tourists, who absolutely love this pose (as well as the double peace sign pose). I also look a lot happier in the second picture. I am a lot happier in the second picture, because I don't work for Down Under Dive anymore. After a month and a half of being promised time on the reef (and then having it taken away from me every time), I gave up on them and found a new job. That's the great thing about working in the dive industry in Cairns: I worked for Down Under Dive (notice how the initials are DUD? There's a reason.) on Monday, quit on Tuesday, did a trial run with Tusa on Wednesday and Thursday, and signed a contract on Friday. There is a lot of demand for instructors here, so it's easy to find something that works for you. I kind of wish I had figured that out a month ago, but whatever.

So, back to my morning. I bike over to the marina, which is usually really nice, because I can bike along the water without having too many pedestrians in my way (afternoons are a little trickier). My bike is totally awesome, and I will take a picture very soon (I have been intending to take one for about two months now). It's pinkish and has a huge basket on the back. I got it used for $40 Australian, which is like $30 US. Sometimes it slips out of gear, which is a problem if you are in the middle of an intersection and you suddenly realize pedalling doesn't do anything. Generally it's a good bike, and I've definitely gotten more than $30 of use out of it. At the marina, I head to the boat and try to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing (since I've only worked for Tusa for like 4 days so far). In the mornings, it usually consists of putting together dive gear, setting up coffee/muffins, drying the seats on the boat, meeting customers at the bus, checking people in, collecting money, and making small talk. I always try to find the Americans on the boat (most days there is like one American couple out of about 25-30 people) and chat them up first. Sometimes they turn out to be Canadian, but I talk with them anyway.

It takes about an hour and half to get out to the reef. These boats are a lot smaller than the DUD boats, and I didn't work on the boat for them that often anyway. All that means that the first day of my trial, I got super seasick. Like vomiting off the back of the boat seasick. Like Japanese instructor bringing me water and extra vomit backs seasick. Like they still make fun of me for it seasick (which is unfair, because I gather everyone gets sick on their first day). Since then, I've been fine, although it also hasn't been as rough since then. I've also been taking ginger pills, which some people tell me don't actually do anything, but one passenger told me that he saw a MythBusters where they tested different seasickness remedies and ginger worked the best. Who knows, but I'm feeling better. But that's why I don't eat too much before work.

The diving with Tusa has been really good. We go to a wider variety of sites than we did with Down Under, I guess because it's easier to dive at smaller sites with 25 people than with 130. I've done lots of different things: leading snorkellers, leading certified divers, teaching introductory (resort) divers, and teaching Open Water students. It's nice to get that variety, and I think it's great that we don't actually teach any courses. We get the Open Water students from ProDive, who does all of the classroom and pool work with them, but they only have a liveaboard boat. If students want to go on day trips, they come out with us instead. That means I don't have to spend any time teaching students how to use dive tables or showing them videos, I just get to do the fun part.

Anyway, during the day, we do everything from setting out food and doing dishes to tying up the boat and filling tanks, along with all the diving. Some days we put all of the Japanese divers and staff on one boat, and all of the English speaking divers on the other boat, and some days we mix it up. It's interesting having to do all the briefings in two languages, as well as trying to deal with the Japanese divers. (I need to learn how to say things like "put your foot in the fin"... right now the only thing I say frequently is sumimasen, which means excuse me. They always laugh when I say that or when any of the other non-Japanese staff say it. I don't know why they get such a kick out of it.)

We go to two dive sites, with lunch in between. The lunch is catered by the same people who catered for Down Under, so I'm a little sick of it by now. We have salads that rotate, so we'll have some combination of potato salad, cole slaw, rice salad, greek salad, pasta salad, green salad... that's all I can think of, but I know there are more. We also have meats of some sort, but I haven't really been paying attention, and bread and fruit. Some days it's pretty bad, others it's pretty decent... it could definitely be worse.

As I said, the diving has been good. I've seen one shark (pretty small white tip reef shark, just sitting on the bottom... it didn't really seem to care that we were there), a couple of turtles, several sting rays (one of which was a decent size bull ray, which, as every single person who I talked to about it told me, was the type that killed Steve Irwin), and lots of fish that you probably don't care about all that much. We do see some pretty large (like four feet long) Napoleon wrasses, which are pretty cool and very gentle, and the other day I saw some big triggerfish, which are not gentle at all. They have four huge teeth, and can get pretty aggressive. From what I hear, they tend to be more interested in eating divers' fins than anything else. Anyway, there is lots of nice soft coral here, and some pretty substantial massive coral. It's not the best diving I've ever done, but there is a lot of it, and I certainly don't mind getting paid to do it.

So that's pretty much my day, plus the boat ride back and cleaning the boat at the end of the day, which I don't mind but I feel like I'm always asking what needs to be done. It means my work day is from about 6:45 to 5, which is long, but not too bad. The people are cool and generally pretty young. Last night we went out with some of the people I work with and some of the people from Down Under (some of the Tusa people used to work there as well). Down Under is definitely a hard partying crew, and we also hung out with some weird guys with long blonde hair who work on Passions, which is a sailing catamaran that takes people out diving as well. Everyone hits happy hour, probably because no one can stay out too late since we all work early in the morning. I have been totally out of practice with drinking, and we didn't eat before going out, so I was pretty hung over all day.

Alright, I was going to go into what I did for my day off, but I really think that this has gone on long enough. Sorry if it was super boring and rambling, I promise I will try to be a little more topical in the future.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Not boring at all, in fact it sounds wonderful!!!