Because my memory has been less than spectacular, I need this blog to remember ……………….. things I did today. Or plan to do someday. Or want to remember one day.

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After 3 years of planning and postponing to get dive certified, I finally enrolled in the basic openwater NAUI dive class last May consisting of 15 hours of classroom lectures and 15 hours of confined pool sessions. We had our dive check-out last weekend and before I forget, the following are last week’s highlights …

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The NAUI jump: to cap off our last swimming pool session before heading out into the real thing (the ocean, that is!), we were all instructed to stand at the edge of the swimming pool, un-geared with our fins, mask and weighbelts dangling from our arms and our hoses and bouyancy compensators (that jacket that inflates or deflates) laid out on the ground before us, with the oxygen tank turned off. One by one, we had to shout “NAUI!” before jumping into the abyss of the pool, carrying with us all our gear, including the BC and tank. Somewhere along the way down, we would have to manage turning on our oxygen tanks so we could breathe properly while we sank 30-feet into the bottom of the pool. Once we hit bottom, we would have to wear all our gear on one by one – and only then could we emerge back to the surface where all our other classmates were waiting to cheer for us… what a thrilling experience to have been able to pull it off because none of us ever imagined that we would be asked to do this at the end!

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Then the weekend in Anilao… we visited 3 divespots: Twin Rocks, the doomed-floating casino/wreck called Dari Laut and the Cathedral… we saw fish of all sizes and colors of  the rainbow, fed lots of them, had our pictures/video taken, said hi to plenty of Nemos, chased a huge metallic blue/green/purple mantis shrimp with googly eyes, made friends with pretty little nudibranches and christmas-tree worms, squeezed the fat and funny-looking green sea cucumber (my bad! That’s no way to treat a sea cucumber but I just didn’t know what on earth it was when my dive buddy passed it on to me!), stayed away from the lone lion fish and moray eels, and tried to pick up as much marine debris/trash as we could along the way…

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We did 6 dives all in all (4 via shore-entries, and 2 via boat-entries), but we were supposed to do 7 before being certified (plus we have to pass a written exam too)… strong currents prevented us from doing the last dive so we would have to go back again to do that sometime soon…I’m planning to go back for a day trip on July 7 to complete that 7^th dive, if you want to tag along and do some dives, or if you’ve never dived before and you want to just try an intro dive in Anilao (which is what I did 3 years ago), let me know =)

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My son turned 13 this week. Can you believe it?  I can’t believe it either. I now have a teenage son! He starts 7^th grade this week too…soon, he’ll be taller than me….

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This was how he looked like during his very  1^st Christmas…such a sweet, angelic little baby… 

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And this is how he looked like last Christmas, in 2006…he likes to make scary faces now =]

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He had a pre-birthday swimming get-together last summer with some of his friends…

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When he was younger, he said that he wanted to be a clown when he grew up…I’d really much prefer it if he became a doctor though =) …anyhow, this photo was taken just this week at Enchanted Kingdom (I’m sure he would love Disneyland! =) …

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I hope and pray that his teenage years will go by smoothly, that he won’t get into any major trouble, that he won’t give anyone, including me, any heartache, and that he’ll turn out to be a nice young man =) 

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