Category: Uncategorized

An afternoon start. Very nice weather and calm.

The visibility was only about 2 meters though. We did some navigation underwater by compass.

This was my first dives with the new weight pouches. Nice, not having a heavy 10 kg weight belt. Also not time to balance out the weights so they are not all on my hips. The dry suit is still an adventure. The problem is I get my trim almost right and then all the air decides to rush up to my feet. Then I start to go up feet first. And as it is not so deep with poor visibility it is a challenge.

So the second dive I adjusted my weights on to put more on my hips to keep the legs down. Not bad, but still I don’t have that perfect horizontal trim.

Then the night dive. Bad visiblity. Fun, kind of neat poor visibility but with the lights kind of like being explorers. In the bad vis and night particularly you need to be careful about the sea urchins!

The first dive, I learned a lesson. We went out around the wreck and at one point I took the lead. Then I was going on and my buddy wanted us to stop and head the other way, so he shone the light on me but I didn’t see it. So then when I realized he wasn’t there I turned around to see where he was, that is, do a circle with the light, to see if he can then see me. But I think he was just around the corner. Now the problem for me was, that being a steel wreck, at night with no visiblity after turning I cound NOT use my compass to figure out which way I was pointing. No big deal, I surfaced and he came up a few minutes later, then we went for part 2 of the dive back toward the boat.

I chatted with a lady in the pool today, who teaches in Kuwait and has her own blog here:

find oma wally: You’re Gonna Love Kuwait if…..

She’s lived in Calgary, I’m not sure where whe is originally from.

She teaches at an International School here which really has only Kuwaitis in it.

You know, I was walking around today on a very pleasand sunny day of the weekend and realized that whenever it is warm and sunny it feels like a vacation. It is because when I grew up, the summer vacation was the time when it was warm and sunny.

True, or speculation?

Janaki made cookies today along with her weekend buddy, Ringo.

She got Ringo from Mr. Mike her guitar playing, singing teacher. Ringo is given to a student who worked hard for the week and they than have Ringo for the weekend to do everything with. Ringo comes with a book where all the children write a story of what they did with him and also put in photographs.

Well, today we turned it on. During the day it isn’t really fully needed but more in the night so we can close the windows for quiet and have a bit of fresh air flowing. The daily highs are near 30 now, nights go down to the teens. 🙂

One of the janitors came by this morning into my office in shock with tears in his eyes. His expression of pure grief is something I will never forget.

My first thought was that he’d been fired but that didn’t really match his expression. But he said with his limited english that his son had been hit by a car.

The Bangladeshis that work here are paid very little. That is why at Eid we all gave a janitorial donation in the office and also why they do extra like cleaning the cars to make extra money.

So, he said his son was hit by a car and badly hurt in the legs. After speaking with someone else here for more details he needs the money for blood and I think also to pay for the public hostpital costs as he has no insurance at all. There are private hospitals that you pay for but from what I know even if you go to a Kuwai public hospital you pay, just much less. Unless you are a Kuwaiti, then you don’t pay at all.

I have a health card from KOC, in Arabic which says KOC insures me.

And apparently for bureaucratic and legal reasons here you admission from an accident in a crash is always first into the public hospital then if you need surgery or further treatment you have the option of going to a private facility.

In my case that would mean KOC’s Ahmadi hospital.

If I find out more I’ll post it.