Hit by swimmer's ear - ouch!

Today is day 11 and I definitely have not kept up with my blog or diary. We have had exams and lectures every day and there just has not been time between classes, dives and revision to write. Blogging is just simply impossible – the only internet connection that is available works on a wireless dial-up USB modem – and it does not really work at all. I can see my email inbox, but I have not been able to read a single email yet, haha! Uploading a blog post on Google blogger is just a mere dream…

I started getting mild pain in my ear two days ago – but I was too excited about the diving to react to it much. Yesterday morning it was just that bad I had to stop diving. Bugger. We’ve cleared most of the exams by now, except for the practical ones – which require diving. I missed out yesterday’s two invertebrate exams (“pointy” exam and invertebrate trail, today’s fun dive and today’s fish exam (“fish validation”). It’s not too bad, I can do them next week and I’m not the only one who has missed exams but it still makes me feel like I’m wayyy behind the schedule. Petchy even told me the schedule we have is “in the ideal world” because people always fall sick, in particular we tend to get lots of ear problems here. I would still rather be done with the exams now than having to do them next week. The plan for the next few days is to also go through Reef Check survey method, the CCC survey method and practice CCC surveys (Reef Check does not really require any practice since CCC survey method is far more comprehensive than RC).

Lecture & exam schedule

The rest wading in while I'm shore marshalling with my sore ear

Anyway, I’ve been trying to kill time by wasting it absolutely instead of doing much of anything useful. I started off pretty well yesterday with doing some revision on invertebrates and algae although I knew I was not going to be able to dive. However, I failed to do any revision on fish (which I really need since there are just too many silly little fish to remember. Just go on a reef and try to learn the names of the damsels, gobies and blennies that you see and you’ll know what I’m talking about… We do not of course need to know all of them, we only need to know certain target species . Still, trying to see which of the little damsels on the reef are target species, which are not and how many of them are out there is a rather annoying task. Fish move. Damsels move muchisimo. Counting damsels on a well populated reef is like trying to count ants in a busy nest. 

Exam time

Getting kitted before the in-water exams

 Apart from revision, I’ve also focused on playing useless games on my iPhone. I am currently particularly hooked on a silly frog game where nothing happens. You just bred frogs, take them to happily hop in a pond and breed them again. Colect little presents and decorate their froggie habitat. Take them to the pond again. Breed them again. Run out of space in the habitat. Nothing happens. But the frogs come in so many different pretty colours. Besides, could there possibly be any activity that is not better than studying for exams? :)

Frog game

I also tested out our laundry well today. As we do not have any running water, we either have bucket baths in our bathrooms or go to the well nearby to have a bath (yes, also a bucket bath). I don’t actually mind. The views from the well are quite nice. We can see the sea, the banca boat and the beach. I’ve had showers in much worse places than this one. The laundry washing point is next to the “shower” well so it also gets nice views. We can also leave our laundry with a local lady once a week. She charges rather reasonably for the washing. However, I figured that considering I only have a limited amount of clothes and only one bedsheet and towel, I might as well do my laundry myself since I can’t be without my towel or bedsheet. So, this morning I had a little stroll with a bucket to the well and washed all of my dirty clothes to the great amusement of the local teenagers. Obviously they do not see white people doing laundry by hand too often. They were almost as entertained as the two guys who were staring at me showering on the first day here. I did still get all of my t-shirts, underwear, bikinis and bedsheets washed, rinsed and hang up on the laundry line.

My bed doubles up as the laundry line today, haha.

We also went for a little stroll in search of the local rum (Tanduay) and apple vodka with one of the other volunteers. We are strictly speaking only allowed to the nearest village shop which is about 200-300 meters from the camp, up the hill. However, if that shop does not have the things you need (or if they are closed which happens about 5 times a day) you may need to get a little creative with the rules to ensure sufficient supply of goods (such as alcohol – what could possibly be more important on a Saturday night than that?) I even tried having a beer before the allowed time. CCC rules say we are not allowed alcohol before 5.30pm but because today is a cloudy afternoon I though at 4pm that it’s already beer time. So, as I realised it was only 4pm I found another cap from the used caps cardboard box (it happened to be a pepsi cap) and put the cap back on the bottle. Sigh. Now I’m sitting on the porch talking to Rosie about having a beer now, NOW, NOW, RIGHT NOW although it’s only 5.15pm. We just really need beer. Who invented this no beer before 5.30pm rule?

So, life here is rather nice and quiet. And beer deprived. But hey, even that’s an improvement from our little military camp in Eritrea that had a “no sex” rule. Here only beer drinking time is limited :)

That bottle of San Miguel with a Pepsi cap on it

PS. Did I yet mention that yesterday (when I was not diving due to the ear problem) there was a second sighting of a whaleshark on our house reef by one of the groups doing their inwater tests? Two sightings of whalesharks while diving in less than two weeks... again a few people getting their names on teh “whaleshark spotting wall” – but not me...

Drinks fridge

Bar rules

Surviving the latin names of corals - and the hangover

Saturday 9^th was partially a “jolly” day with less science activities. We went for a jolly dive in the morning in on one of the dive sites nearby – and we actually found a warty frogfish! Very happy with that although my photos of the frogfish are absolutely rubbish. I really need to improve as  a photographer before buying an expensive camera – or maybe I’ll just buy the expensive camera and I might be able to take similar photos to what other people take with a piece of junk J

Warty Froggy

Moray

Chromodoris annae

After lunch we had another coral lecture to finish off the target species and went for a “pointy” dive in the house reef. I dived with our education officer Lea which was really nice since she has been with Coral Cay for a good while and is very good at the species identification. I could even “ask questions” on the other species (as much as you can “ask” underwater where you cannot speak).  We also found a feeding coral and a comet. (For those of you who do not dive: A comet is a fish that pretends to be a moray eel with a fake “eye” on their tail.

After diving and washing up the gear I went for a swim. I managed to do one hour of swimming in the open sea although I was dead scared of the titan triggers on the reef, haha! I thought they might chew some additional holes on me booties which would be less pleasant. I haven’t seen any jellyfish here yet but I still wore my short wetsuit to protect from the smaller stingers – a good idea because there were some in the water and one of the nasty buggers decided to sneak under my wetsuit. Well, they did not sting that hard so the Finnish princess survived her first open water swim in the Philippines J

I also made my way to the well to “shower” and since there was no audience of local men this time I even managed to wiggle out of my bikini under my towel and get changed. Little things are sometimes so difficult here – like trying to get a good bath and staying reasonably decent. Aseady noted, I’m sure the local girls don’t bathe in their bikinis therefore I shouldn’t really blame the local men too much for standing staring at us – but it still feels kind of odd trying to have a bath with an audience.

In the evening we had a party and got some Tanduay with coke and beer to bring to the beach and made a nice bonfire. I think I went to bed about 5am after dancing with Lucas, Lea and Lance on the porch for a good while, haha. I think the rest of our little survivors group only went to bed about 5.30am.

I woke up at 8.30am and could not sleep – as usual when I drink. I just completely lack the ability to sleep! We tried to figure out how the stove works but the gas kept turning itself off as soon as you let go of the switch, therefore I gave up on it and decided to have some toast with peanut butter instead as Neasa and Mike were kind enough to give me some of their peanut butter (They were probably the first people to get up this morning). I also managed to do some revision on the coral although I was rather braindead. I would really need to study some more but my brain cannot take any more latin names before its had a good rest. I seem to be on kitchen cleaning squad but considering Joe who is the staff member to explain to me and Gareth what needs to be done in terms of cleaning up the kitchen  is not around we won’t be doing it quite yet (he might do some cleaning too I hope!) I decided to sit down on my bed and write my diary/blog instead. I think it would be a good time for a nap now – it’s about 11am and I should really sleep some more.

Learning about corals and killing a dive computer

Day 3 08 Oct 2010

The porch cleaning really turned out to be the easiest task in the task list. Nice. My cleaning buddy (our science officer Petchy) swept the porch after breakfast and I mopped it. Took me perhaps 5 minutes. Max.

We started the morning with a lecture on corals - mainly with the Acropora family. We got a list of species in the family and a picture of each during the lecture. Then we wrote the names down on our dive slates and went for a “pointy” dive and tried to find the species that we had just seen in the lecture slides. 

In the classroom

 The first dive was not too difficult as twe did not even do species, just coral growth forms. Otherwise the diving went rather well although our WelshmanGareth had a little stumble. His dive buddy Jesse was pointing out for him a scorpionfish and as it was really well camouflaged Gareth did not spot it and thought he was asking him to identify another coral form by its general form and shape. So Gareth took out his slate and pointed out to his dive buddy that the scorpionfish is a “sub-massive” form of coral. Well, you could call a scorpionfish submassive – but calling it a coral is rather pushing it. :)

Some of the target species: Tubastrea micranthas - handily surrounded by anthias as its name indicates

A "submassive" scorpionfish

After lunch we had another lecture on corals and went into more detail on hard coral types and had another pointy dive. I was rather struggling with the latin names and trying to differentiate the corals from each other.  We only need to learn about 250 species in total and this includes fish – but finding the specific 250 that we are looking for and being able to distinguish them from all the other life forms in the sea (for example, there are over 500 species of fish in this area…) at this stage feels very challenging. I‘ll probably laugh at my difficulty in finding them in the first few days by the time I get to end of my 10 weeks and become a coral guru (I hope at least! Haha. )

I even had my first workout today after the second dive. We are not allowed further from the camp on weekdays and Saturdays than the small shop in the village. This shop is about 300 meters from the camp. Not that far – but it happens to be on top of a steep hill. I managed to run 5 times up and down the hill and around the base building but then I had to give up although it was only 35 minutes of running. I did some situps, weights and stretching after that to get into a good one-hour workout. That made me feel very good about myself. Now, I just have to keep up with doing these workouts.

After dinner we had yet another lecture but this time on educational programmes that Coral cay runs to create awareness of environmental protection in the local communities, in particularly among the school-aged children. It was really interesting to hear from Lea and I’m looking forward to playing a role in our “Fred the Fish” play or going to the schools to do some fun activities with the children – or even having them visiting our base.

The highlight of my day was however that Joe saved my dive computer. I ran out of battery after the first dive on the first day. I really had not checked my battery levels – so stupid of me going for an expedition for 10 weeks!  Luckily our project scientist Joe’s spare battery for his Oceanic  fit my Suunto Vytec and Joe even helped me change it. I was so grateful – and so happy! My computer is back, hooray!  I take back what I said about hating Joe for seeing the whaleshark. Actually I love him, haha.

My Suunto Vytec

Coral Cay Philippines: Days 1 & 2

I left Manila on the morning of 6^th October to catch a flight to Tacloban airport on Leyte.  The domestic terminal in Manila is rather modest and of course does not have for example screens with information on where and when flights are departing. That would be totally excessive in Philippines, informing people of their flight status!

With only minor delays I made it to Tacloban, having already found a Welsh bloke called Gareth at manila airport. Gareth was also on his way to Coral Cay Conservation project but he was going to spend 8 weeks on the project whilst I’m here for 10. We picked up another 4 volunteers in Tacloban – some of whom had already been in Philippines travelling for some time. All of us were staying with CCC for reasonable times, the shortest being Jacob with 4 weeks here and longest Cheryl with 26 weeks (!) with Coral Cay.

First night was rather chilled out: The usual introductions round, settling in into our accommodation and relaxing out on the porch. 

Coral Cay Base. Kitting area on left.

Gear washing tanks

Laundry line. Scuba shack in the back.

 After a bit of site orientation and some information on diving standards and Coral Cay, we had a short break before our dive. Me and Cheryl spent it cleaning up the cupboards and the bathroom in our room. The rooms were – oh well – as expected in a place that has dorm rooms, lots of people staying short terms and all cleaning done by the volunteers. That’s all I say.

Lounge and dining area

Kitchen

Sogod Bay area map

Wall painting of some of the target species

More wall decorations. Most of the indoor walls are painted with marine life.

The gang having lunch

My roommate is Cheryl and we got assigned the “Dirty Damsels” room. All the rooms have got marine life related names such as Saucy Sweetlips, Prawn Stars, Nudi Haven, Groping Groupers and pretty painted pictures on the doors. Our room is rather spacious and there is kind of an ensuite bathroom. Kind of an ensuite since the bathrooms are attached to the rooms - but there however isn’t any running water in the rooms. A bathroom without running water kind of takes some awesomeness off the term “ensuite”.

My room door

The so-called ensuite bathroom :)

We’ve got two buckets  in the bathroom. One of them we fill up from the sea with salt water – for flushing the toilet – and the other one gets filled up either from the tap behind the kitchen or from the well – fresh water for washing up. NO hot water, in other words – not that anyone really needs it when cold water is about 26 degrees. The recommended place for bathing is by the well as the well water is free of charge and for the tap water Coral Cay needs to pay for. (The building that we use as the base is actually given to us for free by the local government who is renting it and giving it for Coral Cay to use. )

After our “cleaning break” that we proceeded for a checkout dive on the house reef. The house reef is very pretty with lots of beautiful corals and reef fish. However, my dive experience on the reef was rather overshadowed by the fact that the one of the other teams saw two whale sharks… I can’t believe their luck, seeing a whale shark on the house reef (!) on the first dive. Lucky bastards. (I hate you Mike! I hate you, Joe!)

After the dive I experimented on the bucket bath by the well. Although Joe had warned us about it during the site visit, I still found it both hilarious and somewhat disturbing that two local men stood by the well where we do the laundry looking at me throughout the time that I was bathing in my bikini, washing my hair and rinsing off the salt water. Surely local girls don’t stand around in bikinis having a bath but still – it was just unbelievably entertaining watching the expressions on their face. They were literally staring at me. I thought I may need to collect their eyeballs from the ground after I’m done. Mysteriously enough their eyeballs stayed in their sockets and I did not get to feed them to the dogs.

Path to the "showers"

The well aka "the shower"

As if that wasn’t enough of an introduction to the local culture, once I got back to the base and was walking around taking photos of the place, our security guard who had sat down at the nipa hut waved me over and started doing introductions. He wanted to know my name, age and where I’m from. As I told him that I was 35, from Finland but living in Singapore he also shared with me that his name was Marvin, he was 42 years old and widower. Obviously he was looking for a new wife. He wanted to know whether my job in Singapore pays well. I said to him not so much but compared to Philippines salaries in Singapore are probably quite high. After this he explicitly told me he is looking for a new wife. So I was on the right track about his intentions. Oh well, he was a nice guy but I don’t think I will be his next wife who lives in Singapore and sends him his monthly allowance back so he can continue his comfortable life of doing nothing.

The Nipa Hut (and Marvin in it)

After dinner we had a lecture on Coral Cay and continued chilling out on the porch. We also found out what cleaning/helping tasks we were assigned to for the next day. I was on the porch cleaning team. Did not sound too difficult, I’ll find out tomorrow what it includes.

Baby Moose goes on a jolly dive and gets kidnapped.

Is Abu Saayaf responsible again for another kidnapping in Southeastern Philippines?

Baby Moose woke up to a lovely sunny Saturday morning and was all excited about the trip to Padre Burgos Marine Protected Area (MPA).  Baby Moose was again going to dive in his submersible, hooray! Baby Moose had a nice little breakfast and tried not to pay attention to anything that Joe said during breakfast since Joe mostly only talks utter crap. Best to ignore him entirely.

Then Baby Moose hurried Taitti to get kitted up and get her lazy bum on the boat since Baby Moose wanted to go diving already. Baby Moose checked Taitti’s kit and was all ready for the dive. Just need to hop in my submersible, thinks baby Moose. 

Buddy check ok!

Just give me my submersible - I'm all ready to dive!

But then Baby Moose was told that the journey to Padre Burgos will take about 45 minutes and that it’s mandatory to wear a life vest on the  boat. Another one of the strange rules of the Coral Cay prison camp. Wouldn’t it be terrible if one of the prisoners drowned and died? Then there wouldn’t be anything left to do for the chief prison officer Joe and all of his prison guards. Although they could just drink Tanduay rum all day. Anyway, Baby Moose thinks that CCC  prison camp should have a life vest for his size if he is required to wear one.

"These life vests ought to be a little smaller" says Baby Moose

Baby Moose just chillaxed with the boys on the boat – including Danish baby Jakob whom Taitti says has got the exact same facial expressions as her two brothers.  These guys are never up to any good – that’s why Baby Moose rather enjoyed their company.

Don't they just look exactly like Moose abusers?

 There were also some nice people on the boat, such as Tracey, mike and Neasa. Tracey even shared her diet coke with Baby Moose at the dive resort the group stopped by for lunch and chilling out. (Note that diet Coke is a luxury item in Napantao area and it cannot be found in any of the local shops. You have to go to a bigger town to find diet coke – or a dive resort).

Tracey, Mike, Neasa and the other nice people on boat. (Note prime suspects for kidnapping on left).

Tracey sharing her diet coke with Baby Moose

 Baby Moose enjoyed the views of the sea and hung out on the porch (again with the guys who are never up to any good) while waiting for his food.

Enjoying the sea view

Baby Moose lounging

Eventually Baby Moose was just so hungry it sat down on the table and decided to keep an eye on the condiments bottles – in case food does not arrive Baby Moose could have a bottle of chilli sauce or ketchup instead. One bottle of tomato ketchup would definitely be nutritious enough for a little Moose.

Baby Moose ready to eat. Two of the suspects for kidnapping Baby Moose in the background. Prime suspect is not in the photo.

The Mimic Filipino got his food before baby Moose and being very hungry Baby moose just had to go over and take a closer look at his plate of bangers and mash. Baby Moose was thinking whether he could sample some of the food but decided he maybe should not as Mimic Filipino looked very hungry and might get upset if Moose ate his food. Or even worse, if he was hungry enough maybe his eyesight would get blurred and he might think Baby Moose is another sausage on his plate and eat him. Baby moose decided not to risk being gobbled up for Mimic Filipino’s lunch. No thanks, don’t want to die today.

Baby Mooser sniffing Mimic Filipino's bangers and mash. Could sniffing someone's sausage be enough of a motive for a kidnapping?

Even the prime suspect (Mimic Filipiino) was caught on film at the crime scene. BM has passed out after sausage sniffing

 Luckily the food arrived quickly and Baby Moose could enjoy his chilli fish. After his meal he decided to have a nap on his banana leaf. His rest was however somewhat disturbed by the fact that Taitti announced that Baby Moose needs a bath tonight. No way, I’m not going to bathe.

After that Baby Moose disappeared. It was not seen after Taitti went to get her first dessert (first out of 3), the marshmallow&chocolate ice cream. Prime suspects - seen nearby crime scene are Sweetlips the Scuba Instructor (sometimes also known as Jake), Mimic Filipino (his CCC friends do call him also Lance), Randy Bumgardener (who tries to hide his true identity by introducing himself as Jon) and also Gareth the Groping Grouper (aka Crazy Welshman). It is somewhat unclear which one of them may have kidnapped Baby Moose. Mimic Filipino, Randy Bumgardener and Gareth the Groping Grouper all have got a well-known track record of previous moose abuse and hence remain high on the list of suspects. Sweetlips was merely seen in the area and therefore is less likely to be the main culprit although he most certainly withholds some important information regarding Baby Moose’s whereabouts. Prime suspect currently is Mimic Filipino. The police and crime scene investigators are trying to establish whether sniffing someone’s sausages could enough of a murder motive or would it rather provoke an unkind act of kidnapping against a ransom. We have however not ruled out the option of involvement of organised criminal groups, such as Abu Saayaf who have previously invaded dive resorts and held foreigners as hostages against a ransom payment. Baby Moose being a highly visible and wealthy looking individual may well have been targeted by a similar group.

We shall keep you posted on Baby Moose’s kidnapping and the next steps. We would also like to assure you that the authorities are doing everything in their capacity to ensure that Baby Moose will be found and returned back to CC  prison camp safe and sound so he can serve the rest of his 10-week sentence.