Mad Hatter

Enjoooooy!

Passed level 1! 🥳 My last day was hard. I was very congested and had problems equalising because of it. I had a grumpy day and had trouble relaxing. I thought I was going to fail. So I asked my instructor about how she deals with bad days and she gave me a nice little pep talk. Then for my last two dives I decided to go slow and enjoy all the cute fishies and suddenly I passed the last requirements without any struggle! Except for doing an extra flip when turning around by accident and trying very hard not to laugh underwater. 😄 Relaxation is interesting. It’s surprisingly difficult to do on command. I’m beginning to think that I’m not very often truly relaxed in real life, only distracted and that’s not really the same thing at all. I found that 1) it takes a significant amount of concentration to get into a relaxed state, and I can’t do it at all when fatigued and 2) it feels like my relaxation is on a timer. I can bob in the water for a little while and use my techniques to feel more relaxed, but pretty quickly distractions and thoughts and boredom start bubbling up and instead of going deeper into the relaxed state it gets worse and either I say fuck it or I have to start over. So that’s my new number one homework, learning to relax and deal with boredom. Oof this is going to be hard!

The reason is that in order to equalise the pressure in the middle ear at depth you need to be able to push air from your mouth to the nasal cavity and that’s only possible if the soft palate is in a neutral position. If you fail to equalise you burst your ear drums and nobody wants that. I’d call that very practical homework.

Hi!

Yay yay yay! So happy for you!

Cool!! As for coding it really depends on what you’re interested in doing, fintech is a little too vague. App/web development, data analysis, machine learning, backend services…?

That’s a lot of hours of not being tired! Well, assuming you didn’t wake up at 4 pm.

Super curious about what you’re making! Is it a con costume or something like that?

As someone who’s completely given up on habits I’m interested. What I’m more interested in now is energy/focus management. Lol same. For weeks on end. The number of poor plants that have died this way… 😄

Youch that must’ve been a helluva bang! Glad you got well so quickly.

The downside is that it’s a Filipino backyard, meaning roosters… and karaoke. Day 1 was really good! The reef is crazy, it’s flat for only a few meters and then there’s a straight 40 m drop off. I’ve never seen such a dramatic drop, very cool. We talked about relaxation techniques, how breathing works, finning technique, how to get down the line, equalisation technique… It was a lot! Aaand we got homework. The exercise is to hold a balloon to your mouth and deflate it by adjusting the soft palate to a neutral position, i.e. the position where you breathe with your mouth and nose at the same time. I didn’t manage. On the upside I already got the depth requirement for level 1 (12m), pretty comfortably too, as well as the pool swim (30m with fins) which takes off a bit of pressure. Onto day 2!

There’s a kitten too! And it’s mum. And a mystery dog. It’s all very fluid here. Two chickens wandered into the common area of my current stay today, acting like they owned the place. 😂 Sardines, that’s the thing I’m excited about!

I also enjoyed Piranesi, it was an interesting read. Rare to come by fantasy books that feel original!

Found a place to stay! It’s tiny, but cheap and it has a garden with a hammock and herbs, an assortment of animals, including a white puppy called Chubby, and the host is lovely. I’ll set up tomorrow then on Monday it’s course prep, whatever that involves. Excite!

Saw your challenge, it’s a good time to make a comeback. 😉 In a way it’s amazing, in others it’s exactly the same. Alas running away from your problems doesn’t really work. 😉