I left my heart in the sea

Upon my open water course, my instructor once said there are 2 types of divers. The first would be someone who takes their license because well, because they can. They pay the fee and hop on an island and after 4 days they walk away happily being able to put " Scuba Diver " on the description of their Instagram page and then they wouldnt even dive for the next 2-3 years and drop the activity entirely after only going on a few trips.

And then there are those avid divers who just cannot get enough. They spend every waking moment thinking about their last and next diving trip. They scroll their camera roll 10 times a day just staring at their underwater pictures, regardless if the vis is so bad that the pictures are just not " upload worthy". They have one window open on their browser with 3 tabs , fish identification, dive site research and well, Air Asia. 1/4 of their monthly salary is always allocated for deposit for the next dive trip. Guys, yours truly is one of them. 

I love animals and have always been comfortable with water. 45 minutes underwater feels like 10 minutes to me. My heart sinks every time the dive master signals its time for safety stop ( basically 3 minutes before the dive ends ) . Initially I told myself that I'll only go for a dive trip once every 3 months so that I can achieve my new year's resolution of 50 dives in 2015. But hey hey , my current schedule is a dive trip every month ! Its crazy because I work on weekends and public holidays. Which baffles a lot of people as to how I divide my time .

On my last trip, I had my very first near death experience. Where I was just simply clumsy and that almost, almost took my life. Accidentally swallowing saltwater is perfectly normal for divers and it happens all the time but somehow panic took over logic and I found myself frantically pulling my dive master for dear life and thankfully, I was in good hands. 

Every diver will one way or another experience something like this in their life. I guess it makes us want to be extra vigilant in the future. The incident hasnt stopped me from diving. Heck, I'm even that much more interested in learning more about it. I do have plans in continuing my license at least up till dive master level. At least if my career fails, I have something to fall back on.