Charity

Hello all! It's been awhile, hasn't it? Procrastination is such a crime!

Well lately I've been getting more mails from people asking me to teach them freediving. And I'm under moral obligation to say yes, because if I don't, they might try learning by themselves and die trying! I mean, that's the worst case scenario, but you never know!

More importantly though, them not dying in the pool is a good thing. Should any one of them die while breath holding in a pool, and the press gets wind of it, us (the TRAINED freedivers) here in Singapore will get screwed over. The government will probably ban all breath holding in pool, like what they're doing in the US of A. We cannot afford to let them happen.

Right now I'm not charging anyone to learn from us, but I cannot teach for free. While I'm not teaching as a professional, time is important. I don't think Jade would teach for free either. Even if we don't charge for lessons, we should at least collect a small token for a club fund. This money could be used to build a counter ballast rig, amongst other things.

I'm actually teaching in place of Jade. Jade had her parents over from Switzerland last week, and so wasn't free. This week she's gone to Jakarta, and thus isn't available either. Jade's the head coach; all I'm doing is representing her.

Anyway, over the past 7 days I've taught 3 new divers how to freedive safely. I've taught them rescue procedures, buddy safety, some techniques and given some training advice. My 3 grasshoppers are Jeroen Elout from Holland, his girlfriend Patsy who's a local, and Wee Kiong (or just Kiong) who's also a local. So far they've been fine as students. I'm glad.

As a result of all that teaching, I've been bugged to get my company started. For all those who do not know, it's been a dream of mine to start a diving company for a while now. I had begun to when ADEX was here, but it kind of came to a grinding halt shortly after, due to a variety of reasons.

Now I've got the fire started up inside of me again. I've contacted Freedive Dahab to enquire about taking an instructor course. The reply I got back was that they'll need to evaluate me to see if I'm ready for it, seeing that I've never taken a freediving course before.

I've never had the need, as I told them, because I've had Jade teach me everything I know. However now it's necessary, so I'll be seeing some money go bye bye. It's going to be worth though.

Ben Noble has done an instructor course with them and passed, I found out just now. Maybe when he passes this way I could get him to teach me the Aida ** and ***, then I won't have to learn it while I'm in Dahab. Makes me look more professional, eh?

All this is tentative, I've not made my mind up about anything at all, other than the fact that I want to start a company and teach diving.

Boy, it's been quite a rant! I hope I haven't bored you to death just yet and scared you away from this blog. Hope to see a repeat visitor!