flights

You know your work has gone to a bad place when you feel guilty for working only a half day… on a Sunday.

Which is exactly what I did today.

I’ve been neglecting this blog, emails from friends and family, and all my hobbies really, not to mention my own health and well-being, for weeks.

My thoughts aren’t completely consumed by work, but my time is. I have plenty of things to write about. Things occur to me all day, but by the time I find a few free minutes, I often don’t have the mental energy to write, or the will to spend one more minute in front of my computer.

That is, if I even remember what I wanted to write about in the first place.

I jetted off to Bali over the weekend to visit my sister (who’s there for a month with her husband and their four kids) and also to do a bit of diving.

We had perfect weather, and it was really great to see my sister and the kids. And the diving was unbelievable. Check out these pix taken with my brother-in-law’s camera (mostly by him).

My colleagues all seemed to give me a bit of the silent treatment when I returned to the office on Monday, but Leilani was probably right when she said I might just be guilt-tripping.

Raymond Seet, our dive instructor, is the Singapore embodiment of a “dude” – dark-skinned and constantly grinning, with the kind of impressively wild hairstyle that can only be achieved through years of salt water and wind exposure.

He led our group through the PADI theory class and the pool session – both of which I skipped, because I’d already passed the SSI version of these. I did show up for the final evening of quizzes and review sessions, and to finalise the itinerary for our trip to Malaysia.

As the de facto organiser and spokesman for our group of six, I was regularly tasked with extracting key information out of Raymond – when is the final exam?what time are we leaving? where are we going now?

Raymond has a way of evading even the simplest of questions. His favourite response seems to be, “um…later I tell you.” Sometimes he’d actually address my question, but always without answering it.

If I was sent to ask him, for example, the simple binary question, “are we paying for this meal, or are you paying for it?” I would return to our group scratching my head. “I think he said…”

This was sometimes frustrating but generally endeared him to us. The only time we lost our patience with him was during the harrowing death-ride to Mersing. All the vehicles on the road to Mersing drive rediculously fast for the road conditions, but Raymond seemed determined to be the fastest. He passed every other car, truck, van and motorcycle.

Ultimately, though, we were difficult customers, and we knew it. Raymond was very flexible and accommodating considering this. He worked around our schedules, provided us with door-to-door service for the entire learning process, and organised a really fun first dive trip – oil spills not withstanding.

Last Friday, eleven of us packed ourselves and our dive equipment into Raymond’s small van and headed off to Malaysia for the weekend. Our mission was to get our open water scuba certifications.

Six of us left Fraser Suites just after dinner. We stopped at Raymond’s office to pick up our rented gear and another couple of divers.

Next was a truly harrowing night ride to the port of Mersing in Malaysia. 100+ kph. Skidding around tight curves. Swerving in and out of the way of oncoming traffic as we passed every fast-moving car, truck, van and motorbike between Johor Bahru and Mersing.

We arrived at our boat at about 2:30am and tried to catch a few winks before the boat embarked for Tioman Island, but the mosquitoes were fierce. Three bites on my face and one inside my ear – not to mention eight or ten on my arms – were enough to guarantee a sleepless night. All of us did manage to doze off for most of the 3 hour ride to the island, once the boat started moving.

We had a quick breakfast on the island then headed out for our first dive – ever.

Into an oil spill.

Apparently, a sizeable spill occurred off of Johor Bahru last week, and some of it made its way over to our first dive site. To be fair, we couldn’t see the oil from the boat. It was only after we’d been in the water for a few minutes that we started to notice a scattering of sticky black droplets on the surface.

While we waited on the surface for our instruction, bits of the oil started to stick to our faces, hair, gear.

We descended to six or eight meters or so and went through a few skills for about 45 minutes. When we ascended to the surface, it seemed like the oil had cleared. But I was the first to swim to the boat, and as I reached to sweep the first clump of kelp out of my way, my arm and hand were suddenly covered in globs of thick, sticky oil.

Crude oil, as it turns out, is much more like tar. It’s sticky rather than greasy, and all the divers and snorklers on the boat were covered in it. Faces, arms, hair, wetsuits, bikinis and all our gear. We had to use diesel fuel as a solvent to get the stuff off our skin and out of our hair.

After the dive, we spent a few hours cleaning our gear and ate a small lunch before heading out for our second dive.

A while back, I met a woman named Sharon at a bar. I have to say, I have no memory of what she looks like. I can barely remember anything about her, but I have her number in my contacts list, and she sms’s me from time to time. From these text messages, I have learned that she is an avid diver.

As a side note, it’s interesting that I’ve maintained a steady – if very infrequent – sms correspondence with Sharon. I chatted with her just once in a bar. That’s all. And although I haven’t seen her since that first night – months ago – she said she would have agreed to go away with our group for a weekend dive trip, if she did not already have plans to go to Amsterdam. It’s possible she has a better memory of me than I do of her, but the likelier story is that we just mutually trust that since we exchanged numbers a long time ago, we must have found each other interesting or at least harmless enough.

Anyway, I bring up Sharon because she recommended a dive instructor in one of her text messages months ago. I couldn’t remember who it was though, and when I tried to contact her to get the name, she was already on her way to Amsterdam.

So we ended up with the man we call crazy Raymond, whom I met through a dive shop in Lucky Plaza.

For this weekend’s trip to Malaysia, I’ll be joined by a few of my colleagues and a couple of their girlfriends. That’s a story in itself.

I didn’t want to be linked up to some random stranger, so I asked my colleague, Betts, if he was interested in coming along as my dive buddy. He said he was interested but reminded me that his girlfriend would be arriving in Singapore in a few days, and so obviously he’d like to bring her along. Cool, but I still needed a dive buddy.

So I asked another colleague, Robb, if he was interested. He said he was, but told me that his girlfriend would also be arriving in Singapore in a few days, and he’d obviously like to bring her along. The more the merrier, but I still needed a dive buddy.

Right after I talked to Robb, who lives across the hall from me in Fraser Suites, I returned to my apartment with a plan to send out some calls for a female dive buddy, to make things…well…symetrical. I immediately thought of Sharon – a woman I met a few months ago who’s a big diver and once texted me to say provocatively “I’d love to get wet anytime.” (talking about diving, you dirty monkeys).

I also thought about Maiko, a beautiful Japanese woman I met recently. She’s in Singapore for a short time, scuba-certified, and seems like she would be open to an adventure.

But when I picked up my phone to make the first call, I saw that I’d missed a couple of calls while I was at Robb’s place. The first was from my colleague, Minh, our project manager.

Putting business first (when will I learn?), I called him back. He said, “hey, I want to go diving with you guys.”

He’s not pretty, but now he’s my dive buddy.

Before I embarked on this second trip to Singapore, I enrolled in a scuba diving course through Bamboo Reef diving school in San Francisco. Because I’d procrastinated, I had to take my lessons during Memorial Day weekend. This meant I had to go with private lessons instead of a group class, which would have cost half the money. But it also meant I got undivided attention from the instructor, an enormous Irish bartender named Paddy.

Paddy hurried me through the instructional DVD, let me skip the medical disclosure form, fed me the answers to the final exam. This worried me a little, because I actually want to know what I’m doing when I hit the water.

But all this allowed us to spend extra time in the pool – learning by doing. He made sure I understood the important stuff about breathing, ascending, understanding the dive tables.

Now I’m in Singapore, and I’ve booked a three day trip to Malaysia to get my open water certification.

At the Mexican dinner on Saturday night, I spent some time playing catch with James, the five-year-old son of my colleague Judy. He asked me if I would hang out with him sometime and started to propose a slew of activities – the Fraser Suites playroom, miniature golf, ice cream…

Eventually, he said he’d make a list and call me at 10:30 the next morning. Too much, this kid.

And on Sunday morning, he actually called me.

Judy dropped him off at my place, and we started to chat about what we might do for the rest of the day. It turned out he actually did make a list (with his mom’s help), but he’d left it behind. So of course we had to go get it – after a quick breakfast of beans and rice.

Ad Judy’s place, we consulted his list:

- Breakfast
- Playroom
- Mini Golf
- Lunch
- Ice Cream

I managed to negotiate Mini Golf off the agenda until next week, and we headed to the playroom. We played some video games, built a fort, pretended to fix a car.

Next was lunch and ice cream, but before we headed for home, James wanted to stop at Bread Talk to buy a surprise for his mom and dad. We picked out a few sweets, including a sugar donut, and James gave me the following piece of advice…

If I were to buy a “sugary donut” like that, he said, I should give half of it to my “life”.

“My life?” I asked half innocently. “What do you mean?”

“Like my mom is my dad’s life,” he explained.

“Ah, I see. But what if I don’t have a life?”

“Well, then you should get one. Or else you’ll eat the whole donut and get a belly ache.”

My first meal in California after six months in Singapore was Mexican food. So was my next meal, and my next.

So, when I was getting ready to return to Singapore, I picked up something you absolutely cannot find here: handmade tortillas and real taqueria salsa. I brought these in quantity and hosted a big Mexican feast for my compadres on this project.

I spent Saturday morning shopping at the Tiong Bahru wet market, and I spent all afternoon making carnitas (slow roasted pork), black beans with chilis and lime, pinto beans, refried beans, mexican rice and guacamole.

I think it was appreciated. My friend Rebecca took one bite and said, “when I close my eyes, I can almost hear the drunk hippies in the Mission.”

It’s amazing how often I get comments here about my chopsticks technique, or the fact I don’t mind chili sauce. Even my Singaporean colleagues who’ve travelled quite a bit seem amazed to see an ang mo wielding chopsticks with any proficiency.

And women I meet in Southeast Asia are amused to no end that I can cook, and even more amused to learn that I actually enjoy cooking. In traditional circles, men don’t cook. In more modern circles, no one cooks. The rat race doesn’t leave much time for domestic pursuits.

That aside, when women find out I’m 36-years-old, unmarried, and cooking for myself no less, I become either a tragedy or a comedy to them. Probably a bit of both actually.

In the wet market Saturday morning, while shopping for dinner, a chinese auntie told me it’s “high time” I found myself a good wife.

But then I’d have to kiss my CLEO cachet goodbye.