Final posting

Amsterdam I - 24th September 2008

I am now back home and won’t be seeing the girl again I mentioned in my previous post. Love comes and it is great when it does, but can also fade away and that’s what happened on her side. I have no regrets and would have done the same, even knowing this outcome. As they say: “Better to love, then never have loved at all”.

I have already been here now for three weeks and it is good to be back. I got to see family and friends which I had not seen for almost a year. As my own apartment is not vacated yet by my tenants, I am currently staying everywhere and anywhere, and seeing my friends and family at the same time. It is like making a full tour of Holland, going from the center to the west, all the way to the south and back north to Amsterdam. Seeing everybody is a bit weird, it has been over 11 months that I saw them the last time, but it also seems very recently. I guess mainstream lives do not change that much within a year. Everybody goes on with their normal activities, such as work, social life, and just going around with daily stuff. Regardless of this, it is great to reconnect and have them much closer with me then before.

In that sense, having been away for almost a year, life might not changed that much, but it is really up to what you make of it. These past 11 months have been a great experience. I am glad that I had decided to become a scuba diving instructor, rather than backpacking during such period. Initially staying at Koh Samui, where I did my training and made a home. After Koh Samui, I went for a month to Koh Tao, the island where all the diving takes place in the region. I finished up my training as part of my MSDT program and conducted several team-teaching courses together with some of the more experienced instructors. It enabled me to pick up a lot of experience and pick their brain for tips and tricks on how to conduct fun, easy and efficient courses. Obviously, being much closer to the dive sites, rather than spending two hours coming in on the ferry, was a great benefit as well.

In between, I got the opportunity to travel a little bit, with visits to Hong-Kong (amazing, crazy place) and do a live-aboard of a few days at the Similan Islands.

After that month, I flew to Sydney, Australia, to meet up with a very nice friend, Brenda, and to start my discovery of this huge continent all the way on the other side of the world. Seeing the great city of Sydney with bridge climbs, beaches, some salsa dancing, and spending much time on the West Coast of Australia and seeing other friends, has also been a great experience. Driving around in my camper van, was a lot of fun, but also at some point in time, boring. Luckily, I got to spend a few days at this station close to Ningaloo reef, together with this great Scottish girl, Jacqui, who is already considering going back to Oz, whilst she is back in Scotland now. Australia has been a great experience which I would not have liked to miss out on, but it has been a very dear undertaking. Maybe, somewhere in the future, I will visit again and see other parts of this huge continent with its great, tough, but harsh, and off course beautiful nature.

After two months, I returned once again to the island of Koh Thailand and do some serious teaching. As I had finished my MSDT training, I know had to go around to all the dive shops at the island. As it was just before the high season, business was initially slow, but it was good to make introductions with them. As the season picked up, I got to work with various dive schools and ended up working regularly for a few of them. I’m glad that I have reasonably good language capabilities and got to teach in pretty much all of them, including German, Fren-glish and Span-glish. Yes, although my proficiency in French and Spanish are not really up to a high standard, I was able to work around this. Students were using video and books in their native language, and I had the localized answers as well. In the end, the key thing is that they understand the theory, but most of all, learn and practice all the skills required for scuba diving in the water, where there is no need to speak!

All in all, I believe I certified over 50 people for various courses, but mainly people doing their open water PADI course. It was really great to see people with initially some fear and excitement for diving in the underwater world, becoming a really excited about that. Not all students which start at a course with me, we’re able to complete the course. This was a due to physical or mental problems. I had only a few students who got really scared, close to panic sometimes, while being on the water, but I managed to handle them okay. The situations got a bit anxious and I’m glad I was able to keep my cool and keep control of the situation, which could be potentially dangerous and even life threatening. After all, when you are at 10 m deep, bulging for the surface at high ascent rate is not a healthy option.

I met some great people and made some great friendships of which I hope several will last beyond this period!

Amsterdam II - 2nd October 2008

Since the beginning of this week, I am finally staying again in my own apartment in Amsterdam. The handover with the tenants took a day longer than originally planned, but was relatively easy to do. The apartment is in a pretty good state, and could have been much worse. I still need to do some stuff, like maintaining the wooden floor, but should be easy, as I have not put all my stuff back in the house, so plenty of space to work with.

Thanks so much to everyone who let me stay at their homes, while I had to wait until my home became available again!

Walking around in my home, with so much space, an excellent bathroom and kitchen and my own bed, is strange, but feels really good. It does feel like home already, and will become more and more in due course.

As I will be making my apartment my home even further, I am still looking for a job. There are some good opportunities out there, but I want to make sure that my new position will be something I want to do for a longer time. I have good confidence that I will succeed in finding it pretty soon!

This post is the final post for this blog. I want to thank everybody for reading it and your nice and sweet responses.

Take care!

G.

Koh Tao 3

Koh Tao is enjoying one of the busiest times of the year, now that various countries in Europe are enjoying their holidays. As a result, I have been able to teach quite a lot these past weeks. My efforts to talk to various diving schools, which I called doing some business development (LOL) have resulted in working for a few of them and even had to turn down others because I was already teaching with another one.

I got the chance to see how different schools operate and also gain a lot of experience in teaching scuba diving. I am now a Master Scuba Dive Trainer (MSDT) which requires a certain number of certifications of students and being certified as a specialty instructor which I am in several ones. To become a MSDT was my diving objective when I started out this adventure, so that’s another tick in the box.

Now, only one week left on Koh Tao before I make my way back to The Netherlands, it all seems to have gone by rather quickly. Don’t worry, I am not yet reflecting on these past 11 months; will do that some time later. ;-) I guess remembering all the things which happened during these period seems always a bit difficult and making these time to seem rather short. For now, I can already say that this year has brought me many things and I am not only talking about the chance to get to dive so much. Personally, it helped me to get a better understanding of my life and what I want. And that has become much simpler and easier.

However, Koh Tao brought me something more as well which was totally unexpected. My neighbors at the time where I live where organizing a diner party for friends they had met on the island. As James & Emily are an Italian-Canadian couple, pasta was obviously the choice of food and in this case, home-cooked pasta! It had been a long time I had eaten it. Anyway, they had invited several people from yoga, diving and other occasions where they had met people. Early in the evening, a friend of theirs had just returned from staying in Krabi and came to the party as well, the same day as she had arrived. When she entered, I was stunned by how she looked and who she was. I was immediately very interested in her and wanted to get to know her. Apparently, she had the same feeling about me as well. As from the first moment we hit it of with each other. We got to talk to each other and had a great evening together and with everyone else. In the end, Sophie, as her name is, spent the rest of her holiday with me and we had the greatest time. We developed these great feeling for each other in a very short time and it was very sad to see her go home.

However, we want to see each other again, so I changed my return plans and come back to NL a bit earlier. I will be spending about a week back home getting things organized, but after that, I will see her again. We are both very exited about that and want to see of our feelings, despite the short time we spent together. are still there and then who knows…

Right now, I am so exited about seeing everyone back home and spend face and quality time together. It will be great! I also have been working in the meantime on finding a job. Yes, I will stow away my diving gear for professional use and find something else to do in NL. I already have several options including interviews lined up when I am back. But before I get to those, I will have 2 relaxing days in Samui, fly directly from there via Bangkok to Düsseldorf, get the train to Utrecht and stay with Patrick and his family, so I will be finally back on the 3rd of September!

I cannot wait to see you all!

Big hug,
g.