On old temples and old books

So what have I been up to? Not a lot :). And it felt really really good, for a while :D. Once I got home, I stubbornly refused to budge! The previous weeks sort of caught up with me and I was quite happy to just be lazy for a bit! What I did, was catch up on a bit of reading.

Given the rather unsatisfactory end to A Long Way Down (completely a fault of my imagination, of course, not the author :|), I decided to give About A Boy another go. Nope, no surprises there :). While trying to decide between going back to the GRRM's and giving High Fidelity another go, I went looking for Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.

Unfortunately, my favourite book store under the stairs in this town (well, actually it's a book store under the escalators) keeps insisting it will be available next week. For the last two weeks! Well, I suppose to be fair it did go up to two weeks today... Anyhoo, what I did find was the third book of the Inheritance Cycle.

I wasn't really planning on going any further than those first two books, like, ever! But hey, I wasn't ready to deal with the Song of Ice and Fire again this soon after the heartbreak of Ptolemy's Gate. But I did want to get back to fantasy pronto... so. But then as I started off with Brisingr while waiting for others to get their shopping done, I realised I didn't have a clue. So yeah, started off with Eragon all over again. I had the time :). Yup, it's still the same feeling. You've gotto make some major concessions to CP, use a lot of imagination to make it look good :).
And then plans started intruding into the pretty solid walls of lethargy I'd managed to build about me :D. It was just a couple of days out with the extended family. On the way, I suppose by design, but catching my completely by surprise, we went past the place I'd spent the first 8 years of my life!!!It's not like it hasn't happened before, but the whole anomaly of scale thing caught me off guard :). You know, how you always thought there was this absolutely enormous temple whose shadow you loved to play in a long time ago, watching the vast river flow lazily by? Well, then you go back about 18 years later, and things seem to have shrunk a fair bit!! :)
I was especially thrilled to see the people crossing the river though!! You see, there is a sort of triangular island (yes, there still is) at the confluence of two rivers. And we used to cross the shallow sandy riverbed to get to those really top hide and seek locations and what not :). Then of course, they'd release the waters from the dam further upstream and we'd get stuck for hours! Good times....
So yeah, it was a pretty cool trip. And there's a whole bunch of plans just around the corner! Which is good, 'cos while I'm pretty good at keeping my self entertained, I'm not sure how much longer I'd have been able to keep it up :D.

Currently: hatching plans!
Listening to: The Fray - Vienna

The Caribbean under water - Part II

I know Puerto Rico is part of the Caribbean, but IMHO, the island's way too big to properly qualify :D. When we headed off further east though, towards the Virgin Islands, now that was definitely more like it! :)

We landed in Beef Island and given the general lack of public transport and the spread out nature of our interests (namely the hotel, restaurants we wanted to eat at and the diving place) decided to rent a car. What we got, was this!And then of course, there was the omnipresent injunction: "Drive on the LEFT!!!" Which wouldn't have been an issue, except for the fact that over 90% of all vehicles in Tortola are left-hand drive :). Yup! Welcome to BVI! Took me a while to get used to what could easily be termed the worst supposedly off-road vehicle I've ever been in :P. And the rather tortuous and hilly route we took to our beach side hotel definitely didn't help. But thereafter, things got better :).
Idyllic is probably the word that best describes the place we were staying in, way out on the West End, at Little Apple Bay. That's a real bay, by the way :). It's like that all over the place, fruity bays all along the coast :D.
Sadly enough, we decided to go have a look at the only town on the island to see if there was anything worth seeing. The absence of a things to do part to Lonely Planet's online guide on Tortola should have warned us. Well, let me tell you, there is nothing. And I mean absolutely nothing to do here, but for diving and surfing and sailing and having an awesome holiday on the beach. But none of that requires you to visit Road Town, so don't! Seriously! It's depressing :|.Next morning, however, we were up for the best couple of dives of the entire trip!! The wreck of the RMS Rhone! An iron hulled wooden Royal Mail Ship that had sunk in a hurricane back in 1867! I'd been a little worried that my rather non-extensive experience might be a problem. Thankfully, the divemasters were totally awesome!!So let me say this straight away, we did 6 dives off Tortola and St. Thomas, and all of them were wreck dives. I was hooked right from the first one! The fact that the Rhone is probably one of the world's most renowned wrecks (and it is indeed worthy of that title, really!) may have had something to do with it. But there's more to it than that. Wrecks, by their very nature attract a hell of a lot more marine life than your average reef!To add to the experience the visibility was simply awesome! So taken were we with the place, that we decided to add another two dives the next day. (Well, okay, the fact that there was really nothing much else to do may have contributed to that decision a little. :D) The rest of the day we spent cruising the coast and managed to get a fair taste of that other Caribbean thing, rum :D. No, we did not over do it, and yes, we were responsible :). The thing with this place is that every restaurant or inn almost, has their own rum!!
The last two dives in BVI were in Wreck Alley and here there were a whole bunch of boats sunk mostly by design, in varying levels of ruin. But at least you could tell these things were boats, with bows and sterns and bridges and masts and the whole lot :). Plus, by this time I was beginning to get half way decent at the whole diving thing :D.
Sadly enough, we were off to St. Thomas pretty much straight after those last dives. We'd been warned, but we had to see it for ourselves. Charlotte-Amalie, the main town on St. Thomas, is extremely busy and crowded! It's quite nice, but is a bit of a shock when you've just landed up from West End, Tortola :). But we'd managed to find ourselves a pretty decent place to stay and a place to dive!
We wanted to do the WIT Shoal, the ~400ft WWII Loading Ship Tanks vessel, but of course the weather had to be too bad. So we settled for the Miss Opportunity, an ex-hospital ship. The cool thing here was the penetration dive! You actual swim through a rather narrow passageway through the middle of the reasonably preserved ship! Very cool :D. What was also very cool was this turtle we managed to annoy a bit, probably :).The last dive wasn't supposed to be particularly awesome or anything, just your average beat-up broken down barge. But that's where we saw the stingrays in the sand!! Even managed to pat one on the head :P.
But with that our diving trip was more or less over. With visibility and conditions not really the best, we decided against more dives on the day we were leaving. Plus, by that time, we'd more or less been saturated with diving for a bit :). And then onwards it was just getting that residual Nitrogen out of the system and slowly winding my way back out, through Tortola and San Juan and all those flights back home :).
Now if only I can find a way to keep at this!!! I am really really hoping I manage to add to these figures soon! 11 dives, 6h 28m, max 133ft, 4 reef, 1 wall, 6 wrecks! :) Okay, mostly just the wrecks. And maybe do the Advanced Diver course at some point. Who knows, maybe what felt like a dream far far away from the real world might not be that hard to recapture? One can always hope.

Currently: looking for dive partners!
Listening to: Gui Boratto - No turning back

Underwater pics courtesy of Vishnoi.

The prick word: metaphorically :D

It shouldn't be, really, but I find it a bit surprising how you remember things, movies, books, songs even, not how they really were, but somewhat altered in your memory over time. Even when you think about them often. Or is it because you think of them often. (My drift here is this, if you weren't thinking about something at all, you'd either not remember it or at least not have embellished the details with fantasy. In either case you weren't remembering it any different from what it actually was. But I digress.)

So I was reading A Long Way Down again. And for the most part it was exactly as I remembered! Hilarious :) mostly... But what caught me off guard a bit was the end. I could have sworn there were a couple of chapters that had gone missing!! But of course that wasn't it, I was reading the exact same copy :|. I suppose it also caught me off guard a bit that it's now been over a year since I read it first. Definitely didn't seem that long ago.

Currently: ...
Listening to: Massive Attack - Antistar

El Caribe bajo el agua - Parte I

It appears that before I embarked upon my little Caribbean adventure, I wasn't sure if there would be any diving involved :D. And come to think of it, that's actually true!! Just goes to show, eh? As it turns out, all we did was dive :).And it all started off with a somewhat open ended last-minute travel arrangement that saw me land up in San Juan without much of a clue and only a brief set of pointers. Somewhat miraculously therefore, an hour or so after landing, I was already in my somewhat antiquated, but extremely cosy room in the heart of Condado, barely a stones throw away from the beach :). Oh, and I'd also figured out that pretty much everyone speaks Epañol, and not too many speak the old Inglés! :)

Seeing how I was somewhat unfortunately occupied for those last few days on-board, all the planning for this trip had been left to my partner in crime. He'd even gone so far as to set me up with the Open Water course! So I spent the next couple of days grasping with the basics of Scuba. Seeing how the last course I'd done was about a year back, the prospect of quizzes, tests and the like were somewhat annoying :P. But I was a whole lot happier once we took to the water!In retrospect, the diving wasn't exactly earth-shattering in PR. Or more to the point, my first four dives as a part of the course. But then again, to be honest, I was so totally over the moon at the time, I hardly noticed :P. Plus, I was mostly too busy breathing, equalising, checking the gauges every half a second and clearing my mask from the invading water only marginally less frequently, to pay too much attention to the fish. The nice ones that is, that were actually patient enough (or curious enough I suppose) to hang around and observe my antics :D. Okay, make that the first two dives, it got better from there on :P.
There's also the fact that a lot of people go diving off Fajardo, which is on the east coast, and to Culebra. So many, in fact that even when you leave at different times, and follow different routes, you end up spotting divers from other groups while underwater! It also doesn't help the visibility much. But even so, as far as beginners' dives go, it was awesome enough to have fired my imagination and curiousity :).
That way, our last dive in PR, off the barely visited southern coast, was totally awesome! Once I got through the certification, and with still a couple of days to kill in San Juan, we were badgering my dive instructor, Angel, to get us something different, and not over-crowded! He left us hanging for a day, so we figured this would be the time to pay Old San Juan and its castles a visit.
As it turns out most of my pics from the entire trip were from that one day :D. I suppose seeing how we spent most of the rest of the time underwater, and since I didn't have a casing, that was somewhat representative of the focus of the trip :). But the 2 castles, though defaced somewhat by the WWII takeover by the US and somewhat ungainly incorporation of bunkers, were still quite impressive. The similarity with the fortifications in Cartagena was quite striking, and inevitable, I suppose.
The other thing about old town is the colour scheme :). All the houses are in pastel shades, and sometimes rather deep shades! The quickly changing sequence of colours as you walk down a street is quite something. I suppose there was more we could have done by the water-front. But we were too busy figuring out about that last dive to bother :P.
The place is called Patillas, and it's really a very very small place. Most people from outside would never have heard of it. Off the coast, however, the bottom of the ocean just falls off! Without any form of organised diving, we ended up in this fisherman's little boat! He took us out, we plopped overboard, head over heels, and landed on this ledge, about 70ft below. Then we noticed the edge, looking over it, you couldn't see the bottom! Needless to say, that's about the deepest I'll ever go. (We only went to about 133ft, mind, nowhere close to the 1500ft bottom!!) As expected, there was a lot more marine life on the wall!
On the way back, we even managed to pack in a visit to one of the largest bioluminiscent waterbodies around, Laguna Grande near Fajardo. After the deep dive, we weren't exactly fresh and raring to go. (Especially with that near running out of air situation that I shall definitely not go into :|.) So when we realised that this would involve a rather long kayak ride through mangroves in the dark without any personal lighting... :|. I can't say I was too thrilled. But the spectacle was quite something!! If only the guide had cut down on some of his 'information' and just let us hunt for some more jumping fish etc.! As it is, the fiery wakes of the kayaks and the trails our oars left, were enough to provide a fascinating display!
So that was about it! The week was over in a flash and it was time to head off to the second leg of the trip, to the British and US Virgin Islands! And all those wrecks! I'll get into that in another post :).

Currently: lazing about some more :D
Listening to: Gui Boratto - No turning back

Underwater pics courtesy of Vishnoi.

Oh Nat!

So the holiday finally wound down. Got to the point where we'd almost had enough of diving for a bit :). Took a fair while to get back though! All of 5 flights. But in that time I finally managed to finish up with Ptolemy's Gate.

I'd been getting the feeling that things were looking a bit darker with old Bartimaeus as the books went by. You know, the first one's really hilarious. The second one, still quite funny, but with a generous dose of darker stuff. The last one.. well, what can I say. It was awesome, but I wouldn't call it funny.

See, now I'm a sucker for happy endings. Unfortunately, this wasn't it. I'm sure there have been a whole bunch I've read that are much more heartbreaking etcetera, than this. Just that I can't put a finger on the names.

But for all that, the series does make for a really good read :). I do take exception to this being classed as a children's series though :|. That's sort of like calling those last couple of Potter books children's bed-time story books....

So yeah, I got back home yesterday. And while there were rumours that I might have to head off to the boats again, not in 3 months, but in 3 days, it now appears that is not the case :D. I can't say I like flying this direction much though, the jet lag is horrible. I managed to sleep most of the daylight hours, and then another healthy 10 hours overnight :P.

Pics and tales from the Caribbean to follow :).

Currently: lazing about :D
Listening to: U2 - No line on the horizon

Aside:

The waves are crashing on the white sands five feet away from my feet. There's a bunch of people surfing on the oh-so-blue waves as they crash into foaming white. And those crashing waves are drowning out the music playing on my laptop. Which seems to be a thing of great interest to a white dog with a red and green collar that has a little Union Jack in the shape of a dog bone and a red heart hanging from it.

I've just spent the entire morning under those blue waters, gaping, as best as I could around my scuba regulator, at the most majestic thing I've seen yet, underwater that is. The wreck of the RMS Rhone. It's way too hot, or I'd be back in the water, on the beach-front of our spot on the northern coast of Tortola, instead of whiling the afternoon away, staring at it :).

Awesomeness. That should be a word if it isn't. And this is it. :)

PS: Love the way the really huge waves start off as just a shadow... and then keep rearing their heads higher and higher and higher...

Currently: on holiday :)
Listening to: waves crashing over Craig Armstrong's piano

Certified!!!! \:D/

:D

A fair bit has happened in the past week. Mostly good stuff. Very good stuff :). I'm into my last day in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and I am now a certified Open Water Diver! :D Yup, wicked!! >:)
Over the next few days, today included, we're planning a few more dives. I'm already hooked :D. It helps I guess, that I love being in the water. And, as one instructor put it, the almost space-like feeling of weightlessness makes it an absolute thrill!! A low speed thrill, I should add :P.While here, it would have been a crime not to visit the castles and streets of old San Juan, so we did. But I'll leave all of that for a later post, when I'm a little less busy having a blast :D

Currently: living the dream :)
Listening to: Frou Frou - Must be dreaming

Pics courtesy of Vishnoi.

Maybe tomorrow (I'll find my way-ay home)

It's like someone hit the brakes while you looked away for a moment, (the girl in that car as it flashed by on the other lane... someone familiar? From a long time ago?) and hit them hard. You shudder to a crawl, confused. (You were driving, you see. Or so you thought.)The trip was going okay. It wasn't going great or anything. Not lately. But it was ticking along, the hours and days rolling off one by one with reasonable predictability. And then time just bloody stopped!!! I haven't been this desperate to get off the boat in a while!! Does it have anything to do with the fact that this should be it for the rest of the year, I wonder? :)So after daydreaming (and sweating profusely) through the last few days, now it's just one more wake-up. And then one more night back in Cartagena. We were originally slated to fly out from Barranquilla, which happens to be Shakira's home town, by the way. But then fate conspired to take us back to familiar territory.So in a couple of days, the longest vacation I've ever had, should begin :D. Imagine that! Somehow I don't think I'll be dying to get back to the boat even after that though :P. Then again, I really do hope when I have to head back, it is back to this tub. As it turns out, I've grown rather fond of it. And although it would be mostly the people, in this case, I couldn't say it's all just about the people, seeing how 'the people' form a rather volatile entity :).One way or another, the possibility of displacement always exists. So I suppose when I pack my stuff tonight, I'll be a little more careful than usual to ensure that nothing I leave behind would cause me too much grief if I were to never see it ever again...Currently: in suspended animation
Listening to: Ingrid Michaelson - So long

Wishing for that silver lining to broaden in the face of the gathering storm

I really should know better :. Hardly a day had passed since I wrote blissfully of being in no hurry to leave Cartagena, and lo and behold, suddenly, processes that had moved mere inches in the previous fortnight, progressed in leaps and bounds! Out of nowhere, we were leaving port in a day and heading off to deploy the gear I'd hoped to not have to set eyes on for another month at least :(.

At least there was one last trip into town. The final result was sadly minus the much needed new sneakers, but was interesting in that I can now say I've had the supposedly famous Colombian 'firewater'... With somewhat mixed results :P. And then it was time for the Trident to make its rather picturesque way out of the harbour.We went by some more of the fortifications, some green seemingly uninhabited islands, smaller satellite towns spread amidst the lagunas. All in all I was quite sad that we were leaving actually :(. Not least of all in anticipation of the suffering that awaited us :. Not that I still appreciated the full extent of said suffering.Well, things went rather okay for the first couple of days on the back deck, barring a few batterings to the head etc. And then two things happened. I decided to commit to my proposed trip to the Caribbean, more specifically, to Puerto Rico and the British (and maybe even the US) Virgin Islands. (Which, hopefully is to include some scuba diving, *fingers tightly crossed*!!) Then, to my surprise and joy, I was informed that I would have to take the next trip off! (Which translates directly to an unprecedented thirteen weeks off!!!! And hence a lot of potential plans :D :D.) And then it all got shot through the head by the rapid and violent decline of the weather into an absolute mess, as can be seen below :(.The direct implication? Crew change might get delayed. Which in turn means my plans for the Caribbean could very well get sunk all the way down to the bottom of the ocean (well, the bottom of the Caribbean Sea actually), along with my hopes of getting that Open Water certification :(. So now, with less than a week to go to the supposed crew change day, and ever worsening forecasts, I'm in something of a state :. Prayers for fair weather in the region around 11º 5' N/75º 30' W on the 14th would be very highly appreciated indeed!! Please....? :)

Currently: worried!! :(
Listening to: She & Him - Please, please, please, let me get what I want

A real vacation! Take III - Afterthoughts

It's not like I have anything much left that needs saying about that trip :). But you know, a fair bit has happened since, it's been almost about as hectic as it always is :)). And when things did occur to me, there wasn't necessarily the time to think them through.

I'm planning another trip by the way, well, sort of. Don't know if it'll work out. But it'll be nice if it does. Here and there, bits and bobs around the West Indies. Places I don't need a new visa for :). The low key kinda stuff. Yup, I'm beginning to really warm to this no office during break deal :D.

I'm glad this trip's turned out like this so far though. Helps to calm things down a bit. And not in the enforced, lid screwed on top of boiling pot kinda way. Actually letting things slow down a bit. On their own. Now there's a thought. It's called not over-cooking it. I wish I was better at it.

Too bad we got shooed off the jetty though. Right when I'd decided I should go get a new pair of sneakers to leave on the boat! My old Nike Air's are just literally falling apart now :-<. I really like those shoes though, it's a shame I never managed to find another pair quite like them...

It is a good feeling, to know you are missed :). Sad, a little bit, maybe, but nonetheless true.

Currently: salty (from an unexpected, and unexpectedly fun, boat trip!)
Listening to: DJ Shadow - What does your soul look like, Part 3