TD 2010, Training Days

I have no idea what is going on around the athletes and the competition.
I’ve been in blue hole a lot, but with a bunch of useless students, and had no time to dig for gossip among the real freedivers. Luckily out of 8 4star students, 5 have fallen like dead flies, so we had a break. I thought I had the time to go hanging out with the real people. But then I took pity on a couple of wannabe moutfillers, and since they were willing to pay a decent amount of money I promise to take them on a 1 day mouthfill workshop.
The idea was to infiltrate in the training situation and see who does what. I was hoping I’d see a black out, because my boring students never give me the satisfaction. Well, except Greg the other day, when he gave us a little samba, which was the only highlight of an otherwise very boring day. However, the mouthfilling went very well, but the two of them, Clemens and Vassilli were being very demanding, so I had no time to look around.



Today it was raining. We were diving, and it was CLOUDY AND RAINING! I know that some people living in sad countries dive every week end in cloudy and rainy places. But hey, in 8 years I’ve been here, this was a first. It was amazing, especially considering it is summer.

Today all the Swedes and the Danes (the people living in Denmark, not the dogs) who are staying in Sharm came to Dahab for the registration and of course to dive in blue hole. Obviously they were all on top of each other, and they were all looking pale, balding (the guys) and blond (the girls). How original.
Except Sebastian. He always needs to do things differently, so he doesn’t look bald, he doesn’t look blond either, he doesn’t look pale, he didn’t dive, and he was smiling. He even hugged me; which was quite shocking. And I’m not easily shocked. I think he never hugged more than 3 people in his whole life.

Instead of training for her world record, Swedish Annelie is playing around with her camera.
I think Annelie believes in the blond theory, which was postulated at a late hour during one of the Triple Depth parties (I think Erika Shagatay is doing some study on this); according to this theory, blond freedivers, especially if females, are much better freedivers than brunettes and gingers. The reason behind this is that little brains burn little oxygen, and therefore more blood is available for the blood shift and more oxygen is available for the organs which really need it.
Now, I don’t know if this is true or not, but I know a couple of brunette freedivers who could totally discredit this theory.
As for gingers, now that I think of it, I don’t know a single ginger freediver! There must be some scientific explanation behind this. I hope Erika will consider doing some research on it.



There was a potentially broken eardrum today. South African Trevor had to stop his descent at 79 meters because somebody shot him in the ear, or at least this is his side of the story. I think it was rather that his eardrum committed suicide.
However, hopefully it will be just a nasty middle ear barotrauma and he will be able to dive again in a couple of days. Shame though, because I know he was doing very well and he looked very happy all the time.

Polish Matt has been touching the bottom of the blue hole several times already, so I’m guessing he is definitely one of those who will win blog immunity and maybe a tan-through bikini.



You can tell Matt is a deep diver by the look on his face.



Here Samo, the only slovenian with an afro.

Seems like the Serbs are doing well. especially now that they started doing safety for each other.
Gordon, who is half Serb but he’d rather dive with the Spanish (maybe the reason behind this is that the Spanish girl who shares the buoy with him is always diving in her bikini?) thought it was much more fun to dive with only one functioning leg and one functioning arm, so he decided to crash with his bike and limp for the rest of the month. I think he’s sad because he’s not getting enough female attention. In fact last year he spent most of his training days with his face in between girly legs (I’m not going to mention names; if you want to know you have to ask Ingela, who even has pictures to prove it).

Oh, and I almost forgot the little gem of the day. Dutch Bertrand was about to do a variable weight dive using a heavy bottom weight to descend. Now, the weight was only 6 kilos, so I told him to do few kicks at the beginning before he could start falling. And so he does: duck dive, 3 kicks and then he stops. And then he starts floating back. But of course he’s not noticing that, and he’s there with his eyes closed thinking, wow, this is so cool and easy! Until he popped back to the surface, first with the tip of his fins, then his ass pooped out, then he rolled over, and only then he realized that he wasn’t freefalling toward the abyss.
That was precious dear Bertrand, thank you.
Luckily you have sense of humor and you laughed. I would have shot myself in the head out of shame.

Finally in the afternoon everybody fucked off and went bothering poor Lotta who was sitting in the shop for the registration. Luckily my retarded people were being so useless in the water that it took forever to finish the diving, so we got back late enough to miss almost all the people.

And of course, regardless all the friendly (and unfriendly) advise of bringing all the right paperwork, how many people do you think got it wrong and came with half of what they needed for the registration?
Many, of course. And not all of them were blond.

Tomorrow the official training is starting.
We’re only having 4 buoys out since the rest are doing their own thing, thank god.
We’ll put a floating rope across the hole for our buoys. You are most welcome NOT to attach your buoy to it, and if you really have to, please do NOT make a bloody knot unless you want to be screamed at. It drives me insane when at the end of the day I have to go undoing the knots that other people do to my ropes and don’t even bother doing it themselves when they leave. Like I don’t have anything better to do with my life.

Oh gosh, how can I forget the important news?? I have a new pet.
I told Husband that if he ever felt like buying me a present he should go for either a diamond, a house with the swimming pool, or a sport car.
But like all men, Husband is not very good at listening, so one day he got home with a pet instead.
Its name is Jacques, it’s not very furry and it doesn’t like bones.
But it’s good at tricks, like photography for example. Plus it can speak, and therefore I’ll refer to it as he instead, since I like pets more than I like people.



Initially Jacques offered to be my slave, which flattered me very much. Being south African he doesn’t know that in the rest of the world slavery is frowned upon; so despite not having anything against slavery myself I had to decline because I’m very sensitive to the public opinion and I’m always very careful not to offend people and their beliefs.
So we decided that he was going to remain my pet. Occasionally though, when nobody watches, he does some slavery work, like rinsing my equipment, carrying stuff, running errands, making coffee and other lightweight slavery work.
But normally all he does is to play with Lua, sniff the customers in the shop and do all the cute things that make people happy so that they end up buying a fdd t-shirt or a lanyard. He lives next to the shop (in the almost not illegal anymore Freediving center) so that he can guard the place. But please nobody tells this to Mr. Kim!
How to blame Mr. Kim: Jacques is so totally cute that everybody wants him. Lotta is desperately trying to get him for herself. And I can foresee all the slutty female athletes will try to attract his attention.
You are all warned. He is mine!



Here above Mr. Kim with Sam, his biggest fan.

Pictures: the ugly ones are mine, while the cool ones are from Jacques.