Day one of the IE done.....

So, the first day of the IE is done! An early start too. I woke at 5 a.m. as some jungle bunny was scrapping it out with some other jungle bunny in what sounded like extremely close proximity to Chez Chris. Ok, I don’t know if they were bunnies, but they were from the jungle, I just know it. And they weren’t happy campers. They weren’t dogs or cats, that’s all I have….

Anyway, an early awakening and you know how it’s like, once you wake up once that close to your anticipated surfacing time, you’re screwed. Sure, you may fall asleep again, but you know they buggered you up royally. You crawl out of bed an hour or so later feeling like a bag of doodie. Well, at least I did. I probably should have gone for a run, but I was pooped and besides, no running for me for the three days of the IE. In any event, I feel like I have bruised my heel somehow, so not running until then is probably a good thing.

What to do, what to do? I hung out on my balcony for forty-five minutes, munching on barely moist granola (stupid numbnuts here forgot to buy milk yesterday). The dogs were happy I was home for more than five minutes. I also got to achieve my masterful knot tying capabilities, as I swung back and forth on my re-tied hammock, now highly secured using two sets of breathtakingly perfect two half-hitches. Then I trundled down to Bans (no, I wasn’t stinky, I also showered), to sit by myself in the IDC classroom. So, bored, I re-sat the DM exams I had already done previously. Did very well too.

Then the kids turned up. We finished our paperwork, agreed to pay PADI some more money (why not, they never pretended to be anything other than a bottomless pit of money-grabbing craziness) and went for lunch. Shock, horror….the first day in weeks where Bans hasn’t provided lunch for us. It was, quite truthfully, a sad moment. But we survived and popped down to Coffee Boat for a wee bite to eat. The camaraderie level was quite high. The six intrepid remaining Bans candidates are now quite tightly knit.

And then the moment of truth, it was time to pop over to Buddha View to commence the IE. A little daunting, in fact. There were a bunch of other candidates from other schools, so we all crowded into one small lecture room. You could actually feel the various school’s candidates weighing each other group up. Hysterical. I have to say that our group looked the most relaxed and professional. Even in our civvies. A couple of the other schools all had t-shirts with their schools on and IDC printed across the back, but as I pointed out to our group, we’re all representatives of Sunshine and Bans, but we’re still individuals who can bring a touch of personality to bear in our dealings with others. Those others? Sheep. Sod ‘em.

After a brief intro…it was into the exams. I got a total of four questions wrong. Two on the DM exams (one in physiology and one in equipment…although I don’t know which ones as they didn’t tell us) and two on my standards exam. Which meant that I got 100% on three of the DM exams and 92% on the two mentioned above (12 questions, thus 92%) and 96% on the standards exam. All of the Sunshine/Bans group passed both the DM and standards exams, with one exception. Pierre, our Swedish/Lebanese member, forgot to answer one of the questions on the standards exam entirely. He had a few other questions wrong too and unfortunately when he missed answering that one question, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back and pushed him over the fail line. He passed his DM exams, but unfortunately there is no make-up exam allowed for the standards exam. So he can continue on the other elements of the IE, but he will have to re-sit that exam on a future IE (minimum wait of five days…but the IE’s are all over the place…i.e. Phuket, Australia, etc., so it is going to be a major pain in the arse for him).

Which, obviously, sucks for him.

Célia was a nervous mess in the exams, but came out flying. Moshe also sat on the seat of his pants on a couple of the DM exams, but squeezed through. James had some issues on one or two of the DM exams, but similarly was cool….he was ecstatic to pass. Noé actually beat me by one on the DM exams by only getting one question wrong, but dropped a few on the standards exams….not enough to stress about though.

I have a couple of photos of the Sunshine/Bans group before and after the IE exams, but not thinking straight, I left the cable to transfer the pictures from the camera to the laptop….I’ll try and remember for my next online session.

After everyone was out, we all gathered and then made our way back to Bans. Where we spent a couple of hours prepping for our academic presentations in the morning. 8:00 bloody a.m. in the morning. Shudder.

Talking of which, I still have to polish mine up, so I am signing off for tonight to go finish.

I hope to get on tomorrow night, but it will depend on how frazzled I am. Tomorrow, as I said, is the academic presentation, but also the open water portion of the IE in the afternoon.

Later, skaters…