Happy Valentine's Dives!

Hello good folks!

Happy Valentine's Day to y'all! I spent my V-day in Mabul Island, staying with Sipadan Water Village Resort again, this time leading a group and most of them are couples, of course. Had a lovely holiday, this wonderful resort organized a V-day event for everyone which includes dance performances ranging from slow and traditional dances to the fast and modern dances all performed by the resort staff. Games for couples were organized and judged by my pal Bobby and the celebration ended after Abigail (Mabul Island's best singer) sang her ending song, "My Valentine". The party didn't end there, we continued at the bar, binge drinking is always great fun with a few good friends, live music and stuff too. That night was pretty romantic (kudos to the resort staff for their tireless effort to make it all magical) and love was in the air and underwater too.

The diving was alright, they say it could've been better but I'm easily satisfied. Visibility was rather poor in some parts and when it comes to muck-diving, it can get quite murky this month and the lack of sun didn't help promote the dives as well. Photography would be restricted to macro lenses at places where I did my dives, and the poor vis and strong currents did hamper most of my shots. But besides all that, I returned a happy, jolly and smiling man. I'd rather have bad dives than having bad days at the office or working overtime at the cold, lonely and dark office, like most of you folks :P (joke) So here is a beautiful suggestion, an idea. AN IDEA! OMG I HAVE ONE LOL!

*Ahem* Anyway, take your leave and off-days to come here for diving (Recommended: 4 to 5 days) during March to June this year, where the weather and dive conditions are lovely. Sipadan Water Village and Sipadan Kapalai Dive Resort would be your perfect place for hardcore diving in the world famous Sipadan and its neighboring islands around the Celebes Sea. BornSea Pompong Island Resort and Mataking Island Resort would be perfect for beach-lovers as well as divers. I assure you wonderful dives in the various little virgin islands around the Sulu Sea. It's gonna be a blast but do place your reservations for the resort and diving as well as your flights fast, since it's going to get quite peak by March.

Give me a nudge (email) if any of you need more information and advice on the resorts and diving here and I can help plan your trips as well as offering you the best price and service I would gladly provide you, eg: logistics, resort & dive reservations, scuba & snorkeling gears, PADI courses, etc. It would be cool to meet you awesome readers in person and dive with you guys as well and I consider myself quite lucky to meet a few of you folks from countries afar.

I'm gonna shut up for now, enough of the sales talk already! XD So I hope everyone likes the underwater pictures I took yesterday. Cheers!


P/S: I had a close-encounter with an adult banded seasnake some two days ago. I was crapping in the toilet after a heavy lunch and after that I realized that a big chunk of my crap didn't get flushed down, when other bigger ones were gone in an instant. I flushed again but it didn't go away. Intrigued that my crap could be so damn awesome, I took a closer inspection only to find out that a snake's head is popping out! Quickly, I got hold of a stick outside me chalet and poke it in and down as deep as I can go (without getting my fingers of course) and proceeded to flushed it down, making sure that after the tenth flush, it's really gone. So what's a banded seasnake doing inside a toilet anyway? My best guess was it slitthered through the resort's sewerage system and found its way to me by sheer luck. So imagine this folks. I was crapping for about 5 minutes without realizing that a banded sea-snake was staring up my ass the whole time, waiting for me to finish so it can crawl out from the sh*t hole. Imagine how would you feel after that. I felt great though, that snake got owned.

Left: This tiny red-cheek anemonefish lives in a tiny patch of anemone coral I found at Mandarin Valley, Kapalai. It's really puny hence the enhanced level of ultra cuteness...

Right: This white-eye moral eel nearly bit my groin. Look at that cute perverted face...

Left: Bubble-coral shrimps are abundant around Mabul and Kapalai rather than Sipadan Island. Go dive Mabul or Kapalai and when you see Bubble-corals, get close and check it out. You might be impressed to find other cool stuff apart from this shrimp, eg: Orang-Utan crab, Many-host goby, etc.

Right: This black ribbon-eel is a juvenile one. It's gonna turn either blue (Male) or yellow (Female) when it reaches puberty and is willing to mate. Sad that I failed to take a good shot of this bugger, it kept moving around so much and I was cold and lazy.

Left: The bluestripe snapper, Lutjanus kasmira, (also known as the bluestripe sea perch) is commonly found in our area. This school is getting fatter day by day living under the dive-rig: Seaventures. Good food around I bet...

Right: This special "Pikachu" nudibranch was discovered in our first dive. Me mate Froilan found it, and it's really tiny and hard to locate since it shares the same color with the sand and debris. Kudos to Froilan although I failed to take a better shot of this species. I blame its over puniness.

This is the Red-margin shrimp goby. When I just started out as a dive guide some eight years back, a Japanese old man wanted me to show him this fish and it was my first time guiding divers to Kapalai too. I was quite pressured since that old fart was no joke with his expressionless face and chain-smoking as well as that bad-ass NIKONOS-V of his. This pro wanted a good shot of this fish for his book or something and I prevailed (It's not abundant but not at all rare anyway). Since then, this fish has always reminded me of my younger days and the feeling all rookie guides will or have faced when guiding divers who expects you to point to them what they want. Until today, I still requests Dive Master trainees under my guidance to show me this nice little goby.

The Pink-squat lobster (also called Hairy-squat lobster) is a nice subject for macro photography. I have heard other guides calling it the squat crab instead of lobster which is considered a mistake but I found out that they are somewhat correct too. Squat lobsters are decapod (meaning having ten legs) crustaceans of the families Galatheidae and Chirostylidae, including the common genera Galathea and Munida. They are not lobsters at all, but are more closely related to porcelain crabs, hermit crabs and then, more distantly, true crabs. So next time, when someone says its a crab, don't point a finger and call him or her a noob.

This cuttlefish is the subject of pure lulz lately. A cousin of mine said he saw a cuttlefish with really big testicles. Some of us were really surprised how he managed to locate and see that particular organ and then some smart-ass came over and yelled "It's Tentacles!" I choked.

Left: The Angels: Emi, Josey and Ayumi
Right: The love-birds, Christy & Chin. It was a blast diving with everyone!

Underwater pose: Emi & Ayumi

Chang Yavun & Christy. Been like ten years since I saw Chang and it was quite nice meeting her again. Hopefully she will be able to dive with me soon, and that would be even nicer.

New friends, two friendly faces living in Australia and they are fluent in Japanese. No joke dudes. Introducing David and Kimberly, it was lovely diving with them! (Oh yeah, you got the pictures I sent to you already?)

A lovely couple: My neighbor Stanley (I just realized that he lives a stone's throw away from my house...) and his pretty girlfriend Ms. Wong

Standin round these cool, energetic, vibrant, zesty youngsters made me look like an old-nut lol. Lovely and friendly people they are too.
They are: Daryl and Jason, the ladies are the lovely miss Zenlin, Yeeven, Ming-Ming and Kahyee.