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This morning I started my third level of SCUBA certification at Manta: Rescue Diver.  I decided pretty much right after starting the advanced course that I would stay on for Rescue Diver and then I'm really gonna go.  I bought my ticket to Australia to make sure. 

The progression works like this: Open Water Certification to 18 meters (4 days, 4 dives), Advanced Diver to 30 meters (3 days, 5 dives), Rescue Diver (3-4 days, 6-8 dives), then comes the real commitment, Dive Master.  This takes at least 1-2 months, I think you have to complete about 90 dives (?) by the end of it.  I figured I'm here and having fun with this so I may as well complete as much as I can with the time that I have (racking up quite a bill here!).  Plus, part of the Rescue Diver course is First Aid, Emergency Response training (CPR, etc) which is probably a good thing to do anyway. 

After this, if I ever find myself somewhere else wonderful and beautiful where I'd like to spend 2 months diving I can just pick right up and go for dive master.  The dive masters in training end up being assistants to the instructors, because after dive master you just do 10 more days of training to become an instructor, and that's basically just 10 days of learning how to teach, no more learning how to dive.

So today we did 2 rescue diver practice dives, Me, Nick (British) and Kevin (Canadian).  The instructor and two dive masters in training come along, and do all kinds of ridiculous things, fake panic, rip my goggles off, try to steal my alternate air source, and I'm supposed to be the one to gain control and fix the situation.  Of course once we are all comfortable and un-suited back on the boat, somehow they are off the boat "drowning".  Its pretty fun and pretty stressful so far.  Everyone who has been through the course keeps telling us how much more fun the next couple of days are going to be.  Then we came back and practiced CPR on the saddest looking, most torn up and battered CPR dummy I bet has ever existed. 

I will be doing this for a few more days, and then have to get back to Bali to catch a flight to Brisbane at around 10pm on the 11th.  I may have a few days to play with next week if I want to make one more stop in Indonesia, either on Bali, or Lombok, or somewhere else but I'm not really sure what I want to do yet.  I'll think about that.

2 days ago Nick, Kevin, Susanna, and I finished our advanced course, a group of people had just finished their open water course, and 2 girls had just finished their dive master certification, so we organized a big dinner at a nice-ish place down the road.  We ended up being about 35 for dinner, and it was really a great time.  After that, to the bar for Vodka Joss shots, which are awful.  Joss is come kind of red bull in powder form, and the local vodka is pretty painful to ingest.  The protocol is, open the Joss packet, empty it into your mouth like pop rocks, take the shot, swish it around a little, and then swallow it all.  Its cruel and unusual punishment really.  Being the only night out so far, one of those and a couple of cocktails was enough to punish me the next day.  I decided in advance to take the day off from diving the next day since I completed my course, and it was just as well as I spent the day having my own "after party" consisting of water and movies. 

And that brings us to now.  I am in my room, thinking about dinner.  I have to stay away from the cheap local food, it disagrees strongly with my digestive track.  But actually, a safer and very decent meal is not so much more expensive so its really really worth it.  Not to mention cheap local food does not include anything salad-like, which I often crave.  Nasi Goreng or Mie Goreng, fried rice and/or noodles, some kind of cooked vegetables, and you can get fried chicken, fried looking boiled eggs, beef, and other things that are edible but I'm never really sure what it is.  It's pretty tasty, add the homemade chili to it and its really a lot of fun to eat, but as I said, it sits like a brick in your tummy and the discomfort does not stop there.  I learned to avoid it after just a couple of trials.

Anyway, I'm really glad I came here (Gili) and wish I could tell you about 10,000 more things about it and Bali, but I feel like I've barely told you anything and somehow still wrote so much.  Like, I haven't even talked about the cats and the dogs!  This is already long enough, I will write some kind of reflective essay coming I think.

I leave Indonesia one week from today, but right now I'm going to find dinner and wifi.