I took 43 pictures today!

I have no excuse for not writing, because I haven't been working. Well I have a little bit of an excuse- I've been sick. Not really sick, just a cold. But the weird thing about diving is that people will do it with any kind of ailment except a cold. Basically, if you are congested, your eustachian tubes might be blocked and you won't be able to equalize your ears. Or worse, you'll be able to go down just fine, but on the way up, your ears won't equalize, and there's nothing you can do about it. Because you have to come up eventually.So even though I showed up for work yesterday, I asked Asako, the Dive Supervisor, if we had enough staff so I could just lead the snorkellers. It turned out that Liz, who is a brand new (like one week) instructor, but has worked for Tusa for a while, showed up even though she wasn't rostered on. She had her first student the day before, and she was going to finish his course yesterday, so she thought she had to work. (That's not how we do it-- who ever finishes the course gets the certification.) Anyway she really wanted to stay because she wanted the cert, and she was also totally hitting on her student. Now I don't really like her that much, she's kind of bossy even though she doesn't know anything about instructing, and she wears short short shorts to work that are totally inappropriate. And she hit on her student, which was funny because he was not into it at all. So since I would have taken the cert from her, I was tempted to stick around. But since I wasn't feeling well, and they offered for me to leave, I took the opportunity. Then I came home and we did what any other 22 year olds would do on a day off in a party town: we did a jigsaw puzzle.

Later we saw an enormous group of Japanese tourists crossing the street by our aparment-- like 250 of them blocking traffic. I took a picture. Think about it- I had time to notice them, go inside and get my camera, come back, and take four pictures and there were still this many! Crazy. And yes, it's blurry on purpose. I'm artistic like that.


So today I just had a normal day off, and am feeling a little bit better. I'm still taking decongestants, which make me a little hazy. My boss called me earlier to see how I was feeling. Then he said something about the sun today, and I thought it was a little weird that he was talking about the weather, but I just sort of agreed, thanked him for calling, and hung up. Several hours later, I was thinking about it again and suddenly realized that he was probably asking me about my SunSuper account, which is like an Australian retirement account that we are all required to have, and for which I have not given them the number. Which makes a lot more sense than him talking to me about the weather. Oops. I did tell him at the beginning of the conversation that I was still on medication. Hopefully he'll call back.

So once some of the haze wore off, Jon and I went over to the Cairns Rainforest Dome. It's kind of small, but the zoo is about a half hour drive, and we didn't feel like renting a car, especially since I am under the weather. It's on the top of one of the hotel/casinos, which is a little strange, and it is a part-glass part-screened-in dome, as the name implies.


Well, we were impressed. They have about 60 species, including....

A huge crocodile named Goliath! He's something absurd like 20 feet long.



Birds! The birds are kind of everywhere, and like to dive bomb you and flutter right by your head and things like that.


I was giving this bird a talking-to, because he kept following us. He later got together two more of his friends and the three of them cornered us. Creepy, until we remembered that we were bigger and just walked past them.



Bats! We were there for the bat feeding, which pretty much entailed a woman putting fruit onto these little trays and swinging them over to the bats. It was cool to see them up close. The bats here are crazy, there are actually a lot of them in Cairns, just cruising around the night sky. Jon actually took this picture, because his camera has a zoom. (See Mom, I really do need a new camera for Christmas!)



And of course, koalas. See? I'm really in Australia.



...really.

Yarrrr! (because the picture took me as long as the text)

So, sorry I haven't written, I've actually been working! Three days in a row now, and I'm working again tomorrow. One of our boats is out on charter, which means that we've been filling Tusa III to capacity (40 people on today, including staff!). So I've been working really hard, but mostly it has been fun. Yesterday was less than fun, because the evening before I went out drinking with some guys I work with (Jon was working at the hospital) (and yes, it was all guys. I work with a lot of guys. Matt, Tim, Ollie, Nathan, Joel, Justin, and I went and had drinks.) It's a little weird, because we go to the closest bar to the dock, but that happens to be at a nice hotel. This is the Tides Bar. It's just a promotional picture, and you can't see much. But you can see the image they are trying to portray. Not targeting dirty boat staff.

They are used to us, though, and a lot of other boat staff drinks there too, but it does feel a little weird to be wet and and wearing running shoes in this nice wood panelled bar. Beers are $2.50 from 5-7, so we go there a good bit. On Thursday I made the mistake of going with the "I'll have whatever you're having" method of having drinks bought for me. It was a mistake, because the only locally made (and therefore cheap) liquor in Australia is Bundaberg Rum (or Bundy). Is it just me, or does the Bundy Bear look a little seductive?

That meant I drank a lot of rum and cokes, and I am generally not a rum drinker. So even though I came home at 8 and was in bed by 9:15, I was feeling pretty rough the next day at work. Which is especially rough when you work on a boat. Which got me thinking... I'm basically a pirate. Because they drank a lot of rum, must have gotten hung over, and then went and braved the high seas. This was how I consoled myself on the way to work: thinking of myself as a pirate. I can't believe I'm admitting it.Yarrrr!

Anyway, today was much better, since I wasn't hung over. It was, however, a dramatic day. I had four Americans for introductory divers, which I thought would be fun because they would all understand my accent. We had various ear problems and panic attacks, nothing out of the ordinary, but I only actually ended up taking one woman for a dive. She was pretty good, but not the strongest swimmer. On the second dive, we jumped into the water first (along with one other diver), and everything seemed okay until we got out of the shadow of the boat. A really strong current had developed. The guy with us got up towards the front of the boat when I realized the woman wasn't moving forward with us-- in fact, she was going backwards. So I told the guy to wait for me up on the mooring line while I swam about 50 feet back to get Ellie. The swim back to her was easy, but towing her back to the boat against the current was a little tricky. While I got her back to the boat, I guess the other guy had let go of the mooring line because his weight belt was slipping off, so Tim had to go get him and bring him back to the boat. Anyway, it all worked out and no one was hurt. It was a little scary though, for a minute.

On a lighter note, when we have Japanese people on the boat, they do a Japanese briefing inside while we do an English briefing outside. They finished first today, and Tim was still going through our briefing, which includes a quick lesson on how to use the marine heads (=boat toilets). He goes over to the bathroom and opens the door-- and exposes a Japanese man to about 25 people! I couldn't see the guy, but Tim looked pretty embarrassed. Anyway, figured I would end with something funny rather than nerve racking. (Don't worry Mom/Mimi, my job really isn't dangerous. I did see a shark today! It was only about 4 feet long, though.) All is well, working again tomorrow, but I'm sure I'll write more when I'm not working!

Why Australia is weird, Part 1.

I'm making this a parts series, because I know I will come up with a whole lot more. I started this last night, and then got a little lazy. But since I actually have like 4 readers now, I figured I would go ahead and post it. Especially since I know you are all dying to see my bike.

1. Roundabouts.
This only is number one because I can see one from my balcony. And I can hear people's brakes screeching as they approach it at least several times a day. I mean I have an excuse to not get roundabouts, but these people grew up with them and they still suck at driving in them. And they are everywhere! They are extra scary when there is a bike lane, because it goes around the outside, so if I want to keep going around and the car on the inside wants to get out, I have to try extra hard to not get hit. As if driving on the left weren't enough...

2. Dairy Products
One of the passengers on the boat asked me what I miss the most about the US (aside from friends and family), and I decided that it is normal tasting dairy. He was British and agreed with me that the dairy here is really weird. His theory was that it's too creamy. I can't really put my finger on it, but it's in everything. The cheese is weird. The milk is really weird. It's pretty good in cookies and stuff like that, but it's just kind of ubiquitous, and sort of ruins a lot of things we cook. I really miss drinking milk, too. Oh yeah, and when you go to the grocery store, your cheese options are things like "tasty" and "extra tasty." No idea what that means. I stay away from it.

3. Clothes
I could go on about this one for a while. I really want to find a picture for you guys of the city maintenance guys, because they wear work boots, short shorts, collared shirts and wide brim hats. It's just totally what you would expect Australian workers to wear, but at the time time it's hilariously absurd. Jon pointed out that all the construction workers here wear really short jean shorts. My theory is that they don't want their shorts to get caught in their equipment. He thinks they just like short shorts. But clothes here are just all wrong in so many ways. Most people dress like they could almost be American, but they will have one element wrong. Like a fanny pack. Or a mullet. Also they have weird standards for what is appropriate, like Jon got turned away from happy hour at a really casual bar for wearing flip flops (which are called thongs here, but I figured people might wonder if I said Jon couldn't wear his thongs to Shenannigans.) Anyway, there were people in board shorts, t-shirts and running shoes, but he couldn't get in in a collared shirt, jeans, and flip flops. That, and people go barefoot at the mall. And in the grocery store. I thought that was illegal.

Cairns! We live along the water on the right side of the picture.

All in all, it's a fun country though. And it's a totally awesome city. I'm sure I will come up with many more weird things, and I will try to surreptitiously take a picture of one of the city maintenance guys. Oh! And not that it has anything to do with what I've just written, but here's a picture of my bike, as promised. The flash made it look red, but I assure you, it is pink.


Note the basket on the back (with my awesome blue helmet in it) and the purple writing on the side. It is a totally sweet bike. It does get me where I'm going, though, and all in all, it's not a bad bike. I'm taking suggestions for names, post a comment if you've got any.

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.

Hi... whoever.

I decided to start a blog. I can't really give a good reason why, except that I was inspired by some of my friends, and I, at least, think my life is interesting. I don't think I'm a great writer, especially since I've spent the last few years writing mostly scientific papers. At the moment, I'm not sure I'll even tell people about this. But I decided I might as well start somewhere, and maybe I will deem it interesting enough to share.

So why do I think I'm interesting? I tend to get around (not like that...). Right now I'm living in Cairns, which is in the northeastern part of Australia. Most importantly, it's right by the Great Barrier Reef. I'm a scuba instructor, and I work for a company called Tusa Dive. I also just finished a degree in Marine Biology at UCLA. I live with my boyfriend, Jon, which is always interesting and usually pretty fun. We cook a lot, and we read a good bit, and we spend a lot of time laying around playing on our respective laptops... like right now. We both have Macs, his is black and mine is silver, his is big and mine is little.... we're very cute.

Right, the title. It comes from my favorite nerdy little kid joke (I have Jon to thank for telling it to me): What do you call a fish with no eye? Fshhhhhhhhhh. And it works with the diving and marine bio stuff. Get it? Whatever, I think I'm clever.

This is me! (because I needed to upload a picture for my profile and shutterfly apparently has URLs that are too long. I am such a nerd.)

Anyway, I'm off to play with formatting and stuff, hypothetical readers. We'll see how it goes.