Well, not a bad day so far. 7 hours sleep. That’s OK.

And so cold here, I had to wear my down vest to take off the chill getting into the car, so cold at 12 degrees C.

And the drive was nice. Light traffic and no fog, nice sun behind my back, listening to Concierto de Araunjuez. It skips in a few spots due to the old CD player in the car, but a very nice disk.

It is fortuitous that the office is west of Kuwait City. It would be much more hazardous driving into the sun morning and afternoon!

Wore my new shoes today. The fancy ones. Only problem is it make my pants look a bit short!

Well, so comfortable with a thin leather sole and such soft leather. Fits like a glove. But at the end of the day, looking at the sole wear I don’t think they would last very long. At work walking on just a bit of gravel and the wear really shows.

I may as well wear them. I bought a new suit in Calgary last August (was it that long ago!) for here but the daily wear in the office in West Kuwait is fairly casual as it is an Operations Area. But mostly when I go to Main Office or other meetings I wear a dress shirt and often a tie.

And for all the latest news in Kuwait go to Kuwait Times

Update: Check out some new ways to create reefs.

The Kuwait Dive Team which varies in membership and activity level has done many things particularly they have previously installed many mooring buoys. This is very important for the reefs. The placing of anchors from boats absolutely destroys the delicate coral which would take hundreds of years to regrow if ever. There are also companies that do reef balls like the Kuwait Reef Ball Company which I’ve not heard of until seeing their web site.

From this page on reef ball deployments:

“Scuba divers are the only group of humans on the planet that see, from day to day, the amount of destruction going on in our world’s oceans.”

In fact, I honestly now eat fish, particularly local fish with a different perspective. Now that I’ve been swimming with them and know that they are overfished, it seems different. Last month seeing an actual cuttlefish in the ocean for the first time changes my perspective of it in the Chinese restaurants. Wow, so many years eating cuttlefish and not knowing what it looks like.

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Aside:
Tide is important while diving. Very important as it makes the currents and changes the water depth here by up to two meters. You can go to EasyTide to get free tide predictions.

Update:

I heard from a friend here that there are even Bangladeshis that make only 18 KD per month. That is about CAD $72 per month. Or you could say, as they probably work 60 hours a week, making it CAD 30 cents per hour or so. And they would probably still save money to send home, living packed 15 to a small apartment. I may try to go see this for myself some day and take a wide angle lens to get a photo. A very wide angle lens to show them all in the room.

So the workers suffer while some get richer. Ultra modern facilities, the most expensive shops and the worst cared for labor.

Well it is like that here in Kuwait also. And the maids are another thing. If I recall the Phillipinos are paid KD 45 a month plus board and the Indians KD 35. The maids will accompany a family to dinner and push in the chairs and get some food but not eat at the same table, or even some people will leave them outside. That’s the system.

So there are not great social protections for workers. See this story, CNN.com - Dubai’s boom suffering labor pains - Nov 29, 2005.

And for more read this.

Not too impressive a profile. There were four of us on the boat. Instructor with a student and I was to dive with another person. But he didn’t check his gear assuming the dive center would pack his wet suit. Well, no wet suit for him so he didn’t dive.

So I went diving near the anchor line to just hang out near where they were doing their class. The visibility was very poor. More than a meter from the anchor line and you lose sight of it and there was also a current. So I practiced my frog kick at the bottom near the line, hovering at fixed depth, but lost sight of it at one point and then couldn’t find the line and came up. No problem not far from the boat and then back to the anchor line and down again for a bit.

One observation is how finning into the current just to stay stationary sucks down the tank of air at least twice as fast as normal!

Good thing I’ve been going to the gym! All that finning gives the legs a good workout. Lately I’ve been working out on the rowing machine and that seems to be more specific to the muscles used for finning.

This dive was more interesting. Actually fun! Though many people wouldn’t say it was fun. Three of us went around the reef to the wreck which is an old cement barge on the bottom about 7 meters down. Very strong current and 1 meter visibility but floating around, practicing my improved buoyancy control gained from time in the pool. All in all I enjoyed it and so did the others.

Fitness and Exercise Articles Just for SCUBA Divers

Nothing stranger than driving around Kuwait listening to bluegrass performed by Alison Kraus and Union Station. Definitely not the native culture. The lyrics are a bit whiney at times and the singing a bit nasal, but gotta love the musicality, fiddle and banjo with dobro and acoustic bass. The car stereo goes loud and clean.

And on the topic of the bass line of bluegrass here from answers.com which I think they steal from Wikipedia:

Double bass in bluegrass music

The string bass is often used in bluegrass music. It is the largest instrument in the violin family, and is made in several sizes. Most usual for bluegrass use is the 3/4 size bass. Less frequently used are the full and 5/8 size bass.

The upright bass is plucked for most bluegrass music. Some modern bassists have used the bow.

The bluegrass bass is responsible for keeping time in the polyrhythmic conditions of the bluegrass tune, enhancing the flow of the music with tasteful fills and runs. Most important is the steady beat, whether fast, slow, in 4/4 time, 2/4 or 3/4 time.

Early pre-bluegrass music was often accompanied by the cello, which was bowed as often as plucked. Some contemporary bluegrass bands favor the electric bass, but it has a different musical quality than the plucked upright bass which gives energy and drive to the music.

Common rhythms in bluegrass bass playing are, in 4/4 time (plucking on the beats) 1, 3; 1, 4; 1, 3, 4. In 3/4 time (waltz time) 1; 1,2; and 1,3. Bluegrass baselines are usually extremely simple, typcially staying on the Tonic and Dominant chords throughout.

Cedric Rainwater, bassist for Bill Monroe and later Flatt and Scruggs, helped to define the bluegrass sound with his characteristic walking bass, where each beat in 4/4 time is plucked, going up and down the scale.

Notable bass players in contemporary bluegrass music:

• Roy Huskey, Jr.
• Todd Phillips
• Mark Schatz
• Mike Bub
• Edgar Meyer

The Wikipedia dobro article is quite interesting also.

Just what everyone needs, just make sure it floats and you don’t have to worry.

Waterproof MP3 Player Audio Solutions: H2O AUDIO

Well, an evening of blogging sure takes time

Once we move into the villa in January, higher speed Internet will make it faster though!

Look on the right side, way down. Looking at the weather in Calgary makes it feel much warmer here.

Uraifjan or Qit’at Uraifjan is Kuwait’s largest nearshore platform reef only 10 km southeast (20 minutes by boat) from the port.

Well this wasn’t much of a dive in fact. We tooled along a bit for about 15 minutes then decided to surface as the visibility was so poor it wasn’t a lot of fun. And another thing, it was the first time diving with this guy for me so it takes a few dives to get used to each other. Also, I had 2 kg more weights on for this dive. Ten not eight. So, it was a good experiment and probably a kilogram overweight. You have to add weight to dive, the amount depends on the density of the water, if salty it is denser and you need more weight, plus on what you are wearing. The thing when diving is you want to be neutrally buoyant but:

• the tank buoyancy changes during the dive as it gets more empty. At the start it will sink at the end it will float. You need to compensate for this.
• a wetsuit as it gets deeper compresses becoming less buoyant

To compensate for this you have a buoyancy compensator (BCD), which is inflated so you float on the surface and then you deflate it to submerge. And while you descend you might at a bit of air to it. Ideally you don’t add much as too much air is hard to handle as when you change depths in the water the BCD air bladder will also expand and contract with different pressure changing therefore in it’s buoyancy. Confused yet?Here’s an article on it.