Pummkin’s Pitch

For awhile, work was all I could think about. The inspiration for my work came in that ability to channel something in me into something worthwhile but of late, I seem to have lost it. It must be a creator’s greatest nightmare to experience a blank, an uninspired phase that decelerates everything else in your life. When I encountered a sad occasion at the end of September, a week of crying did me a lot of good. It was almost like a severance. Then I went through my archives of the tens of thousands of photographs I took and picked out a few to elevate my mood and symptomatically treat my signs of withdrawal.

And then things became alright……

Send me some inspiration please…..

The two days that I got to see my eldest sister back in 2005 didn’t count as she was on an urgent mission to see dad in his last days on earth. I had a dive centre to run on an island who’s Indonesian workers were besieged by a wicked management. It had been 11 years in total, that I haven’t seen my nieces nor have I met the additional one to the family. The temperature was freezing by my standards, giving me the chore of wearing leggings underneath my pyjamas, with flannel top plus a hoodie over it. And we haven’t even gone outdoors yet.

My darling nieces have grown and for a change, I got pampered with food as they baked a pumpkin pie and made brownies for me!!! I got tucked into bed at night by Zazi, who’s 13 years old and enjoyed girlie talks with the eldest one of 16 years. They taught me how to rake leaves which I thoroughly enjoyed in their backyard while discovering bunny holes in the ground where they hibernate for winter. My sister would take me to the huge hypermarts during the day while the kids are in school and I spent 7 blissful days with them in Charlotte, North Carolina doing stuff that girls do!! I got to taste my first caramel apple and found a conditioner for my hair that doesn’t fluff it up like a lion’s mane.

My brother in law took us to Billy Graham Library to see the legacy he is leaving behind, the crusades that he rallied in and the magnificent work of God in his lifetime. His wife was buried in the grounds of the property too. The library was scheduled to be closed for renovations during winter and I’m glad I got to visit it.

Nonetheless, 7 days is too short to make up for the 11 years of separation and parting is never easy. I watched the youngest one score in the volleyball championship and made it all the way to be the champions of the season! Ah! The sports’ trait is running in the family after all! The eldest is trying for the swim team while scoring as the top student in her grade. The second one is just as talented to be the top in her grade too, making me miss all their witty and intelligent conversations. I miss them already. The 35hour journey home made me jetlagged for a week. What an opportunity it would be if I would get a chance to spend more time with them.

As soon as the meeting was over, the planning for my next excursion began! The following day, Wolfgang and I, drove to Disney World (yay!). Stepping into a world that’s foreign to mine, the music seems to be emanating from all directions, projecting from the plants, the pillars, the authentic postbox and possibly even the dustbin! Disney has a way with the world he created and he made sure the surround sound really encompassed you! The parade in Orlando, Florida’s fantasy land, had begun as Wolfgang and I walked in, almost running into the crowd to catch the floats that carried my all-time favourite Disney characters!!!

It’s the child in all of us (especially me) to experience Disney once in our lives and this is it! I joined in the parade to dance with Goofy, Mr. Incredible, Donald Duck & the whole host of people celebrating together!

My quest for their autographs had begun soon as the parade was over as we set out to explore the park. There’s nothing like a sunny day with blue skies for photography! The castle’s main corridor was adorned with mosaic pictures & medieval arched ceilings. Walking through it was so surreal!

Staying on till the end of the day where the pyrotechnics was displayed, I sat in the middle of the castle’s courtyard to capture the fireworks……

For the rest of the pictures, you may search www.pummkin.net/gallery

I made it to the meeting! The who’s who, who does what’s what in the world of diving were all there in the Orange County Convention Centre in Orlando. I enjoyed the food. Burnt a lot of brain cells talking and convening in the meeting as it challenged my somewhat limited knowledge in technical diving, being a recreational dive instructor. Despite calls to take up technical diving professionally, I still want to maintain my status quo. Two days of intensive debate and discussion. One for Malaysia. We put in the bid to host the next meeting in November 2010. Let’s see what happens then!

RSTC hosted lunch & dinner! Thank you, Julie!

When you walk on a road to a destination that diverges from your destiny, every step becomes increasingly difficult. There was a time when the vision was similar, the paths crossed were timely but differing and misunderstood objectives cause people to grow apart. The grieving has to happen and the mourning of the loss but as time and tide heal the wounds, the dawn of that new day will permutate to your requirements.

The timely assignment to the United States of America saved a week of grief. Being appointed to represent the country again was truly an honour that I felt I had to live up as the ambassador of Malaysia to the ISO Standards Meeting. I made adjustments, huge changes, sold stuff to make sure I would not be lacking in a foreign country, not wanting to be a burden to anyone. Friends were very supportive, buying up whatever I had to let go. Now if only emotional burdens can be bought!

I arrived in Washington D.C. on the 30 November & spent a night at Country Inn, every moment checking for the possibility of snow as temperature fell to 4?Celsius. Fat hopes considering the autumn leaves were largely left on the trees. I picked up those that fell & endeavoured to make bookmarks out of them. The oaks & maples were my favourite. Stuff that might have seemed ordinary, made my heart leap and dance. A tune that only sings when I’m filled with joy. Out in the cold, I went picking maple & oak leaves for keepsake.

The following day, I flew to Orlando. Had to be ready for the ISO Standards meeting with experts from all of world with only ONE representation from Asia and that is, yours truly. I can feel my world changing already…..

The Damai…..

It’s a long hiatus and one that was not intended to be. Almost as soon as I complete a trip, I had to pack and go somewhere else. Back in July, I was blessed with the grand prize for a lucky draw in renewing my subscription to SDAA magazine and I won an 8days/7nights ALL_GIRLS trip to dive Bali’s most luxurious liveaboard, The Damai in September. What an amazing gift from God!

Volcano - Mount Agung

The back of The Damai….

Massage decks

Built in Indonesia to a length of 33 metres by 8 metres wide, it’s a villa on water! With a cruising speed over 8 knots, this beauty accommodates only 8 divers in private cabins with queen or king sized beds and shower with bath tubs! The best thing I liked about this boat was the individual workspace for camera gears! There were two masseurs onboard to give massages anytime of the day or night! Two feeder boats would be used to send us out to the dive sites from the mothership. Navigating from the south at Benoa Harbour in Tanjong Benoa, we cruised all the way north to Menjangan after one dive in Nusa Penida’s SD Point.

Camera Area…..

My bed!

From left:- Sol, Ping, Lorenzo, me, Meijin, Mei.

Periclemenes soror (shrimp) in blue morph

Scorpion leaffish

Huge commensal shrimp on anemone & sand dollar!

Coconut Octopus retracting into shell & using can top to close the opening.

Menjangan is so beautiful and not many people have dived there at night simply because of the distance to the mainland and the ground considered sacred by the locals. With the access by liveaboard, we were able to recce some areas never dived before at night!!! Currents were swift, and before when people tell me about the Bali currents, I used to shrug it off but I’m telling you, the currents are some of the swiftest I’ve ever encountered! I was in my shorts & thermal vest, every metre I drifted in the dark, away from the beam of my torch was an astounding alert as seafans, huge soft corals & hard reefs emerge from nowhere for me to avoid in a matter of seconds! If a shark had been nearby, it would’ve detected my rapid pulses from breathing deeply and swerving to avoid collision. Amidst all that flying underwater, I managed to take some fantastic shots while grabbing onto a rock. I must say it was the most amazing night dive ever!

Got this Emperor Shrimp & Crab on a Sea Cucumber!!!

Lionfish on the hunt…

Dendronephtya sp. soft corals

Huge Scorpionfish!

Spider Crab

Surely Menjangan had to be the best dive site in Bali! We went on to dive Puri Jati, Amed, Tulamben, Liberty Wreck, Seraya Secrets & back to Nusa Penida. The water condition at Nusa Penida was dangerous and after attempting to dive to see the Mola Molas, we aborted due to extreme conditions unfit for diving.

I spent 5 nights on The Damai, diving to my heart’s content with 4 other girls who coincidentally, were all of Chinese descent! Mei & Ping are Malaysian Chinese residing in Singapore, Sol is Chinese Singaporean, Mei Jin is Shanghainese and I’m Nyonya Hokkien who doesn’t speak a word of Hokkien! The following 2 nights were spent in a luxurious villa in Bali called Villa Casis, where we returned to after we shopped and roamed the streets of Legian. The bathtub was handmade in an egg-shape which enclosed me entirely. The room overlooks the pool.

The Villa Casis

The bathroom

The bath tub….

Returning home with tons of pictures, great dive experiences & having met great friends over those 8 days was like a dream come true. Thank you for making this possible, Alberto (owner of The Damai) & Scuba Diver Australasia Magazine!!!

Almost as soon as I got back from Hanoi, I had to certify a group of students in a secret island over the Merdeka Day weekend. With all the reports of whale shark sightings in the area, I was beginning to resign to the fact that perhaps the whale shark is a myth! I have been diving for 16 years and I’ve not seen it! Why?!?!

On our 5th dive which was my 2,209th, we set out to look for it and after 40 minutes hovering in the blue or was it green, due to the unusually high plankton content in the water. Almost given up, we surfaced to get back onto the boat when the boatman shouted for me to backroll into the water as a whale shark was approaching on the surface! Well, as you guessed it, the whale shark is no longer a myth because I had an encounter with TWO!

Walking into a house that resembled the traditional Nyonya Baba house of Melaka was so surreal. In Hanoi, where the Chinese have immigrated & settled, the houses are no different from the olden Chinese houses that we have here except that they have preserved much of the ancient feel by keeping the furniture as is and maintaining the way of life.

We were on our way to get civet poo (weasel, they call it) coffee and passed this quaint house which we paid some dong to get in.

The open space in the middle allowed the hot air to escape in addition to ventilating the whole house with fresh air. Absolutely great. Now if only houses here were made like this, a pool in the middle would suffice!

A constant reminder flashes on my PDA to look into areas which I’ve neglected since shuttling between countries became a weekly affair. Tasting the best that Hanoi had to offer, I actually miss the food in Green Tangerine after I got back. To say that I have not fine dined is not true, to say that I’ve not eaten the best is also not quite right since I have attended dozens of food sampling fares in my line of work as an editor.

Green Tangerine serves the best French cuisine in the whole of Vietnam.

Apart from that, I was also taken to Bobby Chinn’s, another exceptional place with truly the finest foods, tastefully prepared & equally good on the buds.

To complete the Vietnamese dining experience, Indochine was the place to be. Authentic Vietnamese food.

Treats upon treats, I knew I would have to work doubly hard when I get back to lose the pounds that I piled.

Before long, I had my trip to Tenggol, then Bali for 9 days. Now I’ve really got to get myself in the mode to detail my experiences for the rest of the trip! Here’s a short one for now.

When I set my sight on the boats that lay soulfully on the seabed of Pulau Bidung years ago, I never thought I would be interested in how they were sunken. A man called Alcoh Wong, whose son I’ve come to befriend after his demise, was instrumental in detailing the lives of the VBPs - Vietnamese Boat People. I paid a tribute to him here. It would have been great to sit down & detail his experiences with the VBPs had he been alive.

Knowing the journey would have to take me to the roots first, I had to make a trip to Vietnam to soak in whatever I could. Last year in November, I booked ahead for our flights to Hanoi to spend a week discovering the political city ruled by communism. Little did I know what I was in for when we got there. The traffic had its sovereignty given to motorbikes as thousands of them preside over other vehicles. Crossing any road was a nightmare, never had I been so challenged in what seemed to be a part of life, became a kindergarten affair as I screeched across the streets. I soon learnt that you must walk slowly across and the motorbikes will avoid you.

My pivotal point was to take notes as Chien recited the history of the wars that put Vietnam regressively backward as their neighbouring country, Thailand, progressed far ahead. The tours we took to Halong Bay & Tam Coc caves, although they were no connection to what I was looking for, provided a glimpse of how life had been, were in huge vans with an ex-army tank drivers who drove as if he was still at war! Each time I looked ahead, there would be a truck/bus/tanker coming straight at us as he overtook like a mad man. Trotting off the main road to some short cut right next to some padi field was a norm by their standards and the lawlessness of their drivers put some of our Mat Rempits to shame. By the time I got to the World Heritage Site, I was disoriented and stupefied. To say the least, harrowing was an understatement but Chien seemed to have enjoyed the ride, maybe even enjoyed watching me squirm.

Taking the boat ride out, what stunned me was the view, and posing for Chien drew more than illicit attention from other shutterbugs who fired away before I made faces to express my unwillingness to be a part of someone’s accessible data in a storage hard drive. Surely coincidences are part of God’s plan when we met a couple from England who happened to be VBPs!!! Story on that later.

Back in the city, I wanted to savour everything on the streets, stopped only by his decision to eat something ’safer.’ Sugar cane juice infused with lime was a refreshing thirst quencher as we walked the streets of Hanoi, shooting everything in sight. To astound me further, I was shouted at when my subject disapproved her picture being taken. Come to think of it, Vietnamese women are not very courteous nor timid by any standards. The war was won & fought by these deceptively, demure women too.

We watched the World Heritage Art - Water Puppet show and it was every bit thrilling for me. To see a dying art with a traditional story line enacted by puppeteers who steer the wooden puppets submerged in water from behind the panels, made it all the more appealing to my hunger for traditional arts. An orchestra of musicians playing traditional instruments akin to those found in China, was even more impressive.

As each day held different surprises, I’d detail them over the next one week, if I have internet access.

The revolutionary social networking tool has taken the world by storm when the viral hit us some time in 2007 though it was created in 2004. Without much hesitation, I signed up for a profile and proceeded to add my list of friends to my network. Those who signed up prior to their facelift would know how the incessant pokes became obsessively funny as you throw sheep, cows and progressively earn the right to throw an elephant at your friends or fling a thong at them if you are naughty. Keeping in touch became a constant adjective and not knowing what your friends are doing has become a thing of the past as Facebook updates your friends’ (and yours’) status to reflect their current preoccupation with their cameras/bikes/computers/travel and their lucid and wanton sex lives.

One actually wonders what kind of information is deemed suitable to be shared or rather made public knowledge of if certain privacy controls had not been put in place. Knowing security can be breached and accounts tapped, I scrutinised every fine line in the terms and conditions of use, went through every settings to put controls in place, set up boundaries that prevented bulls from charging through and an electrocution sentence of ‘blocking’ anyone for breach of moral ethics in my actual circle of friends. I never add anyone I have not met unless it was an introduction from close friends. We would have to have some kind of interaction on forums that have a verified list of members who socialise regularly. Even with that, I get the occasional stalker who would add friends on my list who may be of use to whatever purposes they may harbour or get an obsessed ex-girlfriend of someone whom she thinks I shouldn’t be seeing. Now what would my world be without drama?

As more people jump on the bandwagon of FB-dom, few realise the potential of this remarkable social media networking tool. It’s not just an interface on your browser that tells you who does what, but it’s a media that connects you with people you have lost touch with, make connections with the people that you often do, allow a simultaneous update on the various media platforms that you use such as Blogger, Wordpress, Flickr, Picasa, MySpace, Gmail and so on, using integrated browser tools such as those available on Flock. Some use it to promote their services, which people may never know its existence if not for the suggestions that their friends made. From the pictures uploaded by friends or friends of friends, you may see new discoveries right before your eyes in the comfort of your own home! A friend of mine, an award winning underwater photographer, Tony Wu, is in Tonga to document whales and he’s tagged 15 calf since the day he arrived and what’s great to know is that we have resources to National Geographic lifestyles delivered live to you over Facebook! It’s no longer tedious to sieve through blogs to see what your friends are up to when you get to read an update on your homepage and read further if that tickles your fancy.

Using FB to bridge various groups of friends, keeps everything in one place for better management of communication. Now with some of these actions pertaining to the stuff you can do to your friends ‘virtually,’ it’s easy to misconstrue their action if you do not take it with a pinch of salt. You should not lose hair, lose sleep and lose relationships over something virtual and what makes your connection with one another real is to have real social outings and physical/emotional bonding sessions with your friends.

Note to the muscular sex:-

Guys, if your girl flips on you over what you did on FB, it’s because you weren’t sensitive enough to her! I can’t teach you what to say or what to do to wrangle yourself out of trouble and appease her but the day you stop working on your relationship is the day you deserve to lose her. A girl derives her self-worth from how much her man loves her (generally as a woman’s biological make-up was built that way) and if you send someone flowers, you better send her a double bouquet. If you’re not learning and adapting from your friends’ successful relationships/marriages, you ought to be whipped. I know you like that, don’t you?

Note to the fairer sex:-

Remember girls, men are wired differently and if they go wild online, it is in their world of make-believe that drives them to do so. If you are still the person he comes home to, you ought to do what it takes to keep him. Whatever the case may be, whoever sends him that virtual flower in a pot, an egg that hatches into a cute animal or a love ice cream, AND he responds to it, take it at face value. He’s trying to be nice to earn brownie points for whatever but he knows YOU are his biggest brownie point so live it!

So the person you had been secretly admiring has given a virtual flower to a drop dead gorgeous chick on his friends’ list who happen to be prettier/sexier/more happening than you, but in reality, what is the level of friendship you have with him? A hello/goodbye one? A see-him-but-can’t-talk kind? Or a deep, meaningful conversations type that carries you through thick and thin? You have your share of guy friends you talk to or connect with and so should he. Life shouldn’t be difficult. We cannot change a person but we can change our perception of things to make us become a better person. If he still doesn’t notice you, it’s time you go out there and make some real connections with people who would value you more than what he can. Then you can add him, tag pictures you take together and let others see what they missed out on. You go, girl!

Facebook is only a tool, it should never be allowed to ruin your relationships. In the course of life, you will find a few who would walk out of your list for whatever reason only known to them but if they are insecure, it should not make you any lesser of a friend to the 99 others who are still on it.

I am one who is true to my friends and would defend someone to death if I know they are being wronged but as much as I would like to keep in touch with everybody, it becomes almost impossible to split my time for each and every friend of mine I deem important in my life. I want to tell all of you that you are very much a part of my life, have helped fashion and shape my situations as much as God had put you there. Please forgive me if I haven’t been poking you in awhile, I have so many issues that need to be dealt with that sometimes I feel like an octopus running out of tentacles. You know that I would love to rock your world as much as you have rocked mine and till our oceans collide, I would have to contend with sending you love ice creams and throwing the occasional sheep at you just so that I can laugh at our times gone by…….

Frantic is a word synonymous to my packing and getting ready for each trip involving Air Asia. No doubt that it has enabled me to go many places that I hadn’t been before, one of them being Manado in North Sulawesi, a mountainous area and landing point to Lembeh Island where I was to spend eight blissful days diving in the Lembeh Straits. Known for the weirdest and most bizarre creatures, some say that if they were live-sized, they would make great monsters in alien movies!

Armed with the housed LX3, my bag had some serious arsenal. On a mission to track down the weediest of the weedies, hairiest of the hairies and deadliest of the spikeys, I was not going to leave Lembeh’s volcanic seabed unturned. And some European divers sure took my unspoken mission literally by kicking up a storm of black sand when they piled on the weights without sufficient buoyancy control in the water. My Flamboyant Cuttlefish was smogged by the powdery soot as soon as I began filming the undulating iridescence on the torso. My first sighting so I wasn’t going to be drawn into a midwater commotion.

The sea urchins here are bright & colourful but deadly and I wasn’t going to sit on one anymore. Examining each one for tenants became a preoccupation on every dive, only to have me surfacing to ask the Divemaster, Ramli for Udang, Ketam & Cacing!

A predominantly Christian population in Manado, I managed to climb over several mountains to get to the local church. Plagued by a persistent cough before I got there, I was severely drugged in between dives.

Almost every creature that we had wanted to see was shown to us by our beloved Ramli.

Without further wasting another minute, here are the bizarre creatures of Lembeh….

The comical Box Crab…..

The hideous but colourful version of the Devil Scorpionfish

Look at the grain of the sand, this Hairy Frogfish is only about 6cm…..

Immediately after the dive expo, my dive season kicked off with a trip to model for an award-winning underwater photographer, Lawrence Alex Wu. The trip gave me an opportunity to test my 10Bar underwater housing for the Lumix LX3 prior to my Manado trip days after I got back.

Five blissful days testing and being directed for a change while having some eventful dives with the PADI Course Director, Vincent Toh, made it more hilarious than ever. With the great visibility of 30m and beyond, we made up hand signals as we went along, which was quite innovative on our part considering we’d never been so far apart to take those shots!

I had fun with my new setup but if you want to see work done by Alex, please visit here.

Some of the pictures taken with the LX3:-

On the first weekend of July, after preparing the opening speech for the President, I was told that he couldn’t attend the opening ceremony. The Vice President was away, making me the next in line as the Honorary Secretary to deliver the keynote address.

It’s a different feeling altogether when you get to be on the platform of the ministers and those whom you helped steer the dive industry.

Having been involved for most of my life in building the dive industry has somewhat given me the assurance that it will be here to stay and that our youth spent on a passion is not lost at all. Here’s a picture taken with the Tourism Ministry after the press conference of the opening ceremony…..

There will always be issues surrounding people in the dive industry, more so if they are doing well. I’ve come to accept the fact that there’s no stopping what others might say about you, be it good or bad but track record would prove them otherwise.

I’m happy the way issues have turned to my favour. God has blessed me with a lucky draw of an 8day/7nights luxurious liveaboard Bali trip and many new friends. Launching back into my first love after a long break has given me a newfound sense of belonging in the sport, a refreshed spirit and a renewed passion.

When I breathed a sigh of relief, after coming down from the hills, I did my rounds and sat down on a little chair to be at the same level as my mutts. Some minutes later, Andromedia appeared from the pen, ready to wrap up for the day and I said to Andromedia who was with Melanie, “I really feel like a superstar here………and these are my fans…..” - spreading my arms wide open to show off each mutt with their incredible characters, surrounding me.

With a puzzled look on Andromedia’s face, he said to me, “Pam, you must be really boring………all of them are asleep already,” pointing to the 10 or more dogs that laid around my little chair either on their tummies or on one another. Hmmmm…..I don’t mind being boring if I can be with my mutts, my heroes……

Let me share with you, for half a minute what it feels like, in this video.