Flamin' toast

Another short blog today….Dave Hwreliak turned up this afternoon and so I am meeting up with him and his girlfriend and her brother. A little dinner at Tutka. I’m also trying to kill two birds with one stone….James and I feel we should treat Noé and Célia to dinner, as they have cooked for us so much. As tomorrow is our AI party, however, James chose tonight….which would have been problematic until both groups thought Tutka was a good idea…..hmmmmmmm Thai food.

By the way, you’ll all be happy to know the missus made it back to the big T.O. nice and safely. Thanks DG for grabbing her from the airport…..I’ll buy you a Singha!!

Today started off auspiciously enough. I was up at 2 with yet another full-fledged bout of the cold (yes, it’s back, itchy throat, snotty nose, chest congestion and all)…then four and then I finally said fuck it and rolled out of bed at 6-something. Fed the pups and decided that the way to maybe beat a cold is to work it out of my system. So I went for a run. Made it to Hippo and back in good time. Although, the reality is that it is really in vain….tomorrow we have to do our first open water presentations, so I am on the boat for 7:30 and we’ll be out all morning diving….making the dream of kicking this cold anytime soon a friggin' pipe-dream.

After the run I decided to set Chez Chris on fire….

No seriously.

The missus brought me over her grandma’s old toaster. Now, she will back me up on this, it doesn’t seem, how do I say this…..quite right. It burns parts of the bread pretty fast and gets super hot also extremely fast. And it doesn’t pop the toast up, so you have to do it manually. We’re talking like 9 seconds after you pop it down. And then it won’t let you toast any more toast for a while as it is still blisteringly hot. In fact if you try to pop another piece of toast in, the toaster makes a sound similar to the fuck-up sound on Family Feud (hey, like the use of capitalization there? I am getting all grammatical and shit….oh and Family Feud is Family Fortunes for you Brits).
Well, I was a little dopey after no sleep and a run this morning, so I lay on the hammock for half an hour, then showered and made brekkie. Except I took my eyes off the toaster. We’re not talking simply burning the toast black….I turn around and the bread is literally on fire on top of my fridge!! Wee panic attack as I see this oh-so-well-constructed-Thai mansion burn to the ground in my mind’s eye. I ended up using my surgical scissors to manhandle flaming toast over to the sink. All in the nude!! I could have set fire to my pubes!! Luckily….still pubilicious.

We didn’t actually start the IDC today until 10, but I was there at 8:45 because James, Noé and Célia wanted us to practice our academic presentations. Some unhappy campers today…I did well…(I actually almost aced it, but I feel bad for those who are being fairly hard on themselves today….kinda like me with my physics exam the other day). It is truly unbelievable though how much PADI wants you to sell sell sell throughout everything, even when helping students realize a mistake they made on their theory. It is quite disturbing. I suppose this is what we have to do for the IE, but then the reality will be that we can maybe tone down the hard sell when we get into real life….I think it’ll be easier to soft sell a lot of students in any event…
Oh…..and talking of physics exams….well, last night, knowing we had to do more DM exams today and having been pissed off at my physics exam results from the other day, I did five practice exams in physics, physiology and dive skills and the environment last night. I finished around 11:30….yep, I am an uber-geek. I did the practice exams from a booklet that Tim had given to me about three weeks ago with a bunch of practice exams in it. So when I got in this morning, before we started doing our academic presentations, I checked my answers, found out what I had gotten wrong (I am doing a lot better you’ll be glad to know) and did the academic presentation.

Turns out that the DM exams we had to do today were the same ones from that book! Well the first one of each section. I feel really bad now, because perhaps not unsurprisingly, I got 100% on all of my exams…..hmmmm

I intend to do the exams a bunch more times anyway….best to know this stuff inside and out so I can pass the IE first time….plus I will really need to know this stuff to increase my own confidence when I have to teach….I don’t think Noé was impressed with me though….how was I to know!!

I have to say though, today was brutal in that James and I had to watch the one guy give his academic presentation who we don’t know how he even made it to DM. I don’t mean to be mean, and I know that Célia would slap the back of my hand for talking about this guy like this, but he is a cluster-fuck in everything. He can’t do any of the skills, the presentations, shit…tie his shoelaces right. And throughout it all our course directors are constantly telling him “awesome job”, “really good”, etc. Either the IE has a super-super-low threshold or they see something I don’t. I have a feeling it is them still buying into the whole “positive reinforcement” philosophy…..but at some point I think reality needs to kick in!!

Anyway, gotta run…..off to see Dave….