Best Holiday EVER!!!!

Hello faithful readers. My sincere apologies for my lack of blogging. Life in Bangkok is busy as shit and I have found it difficult to find the time to do much of anything other than working and sleeping (and even that is turning into a luxury I sometimes can't afford). I miss my days in Japan where there was so little to do that I actually had time to blog and jog and play kendo and watch 4 episodes of 24 in one sitting. Sigh...the life of a real teacher sucks compared to being a gaijin monkey.

Although my new school has a whole dumptruck full of annoyances and general dissapointments, it does have this lovely thing called a "half-term break" which means not only do you get a break between each term (there are 3) but you get a break in the middle of each of those terms! Yippee! For our half term we (about 11 of us) decided to head down to Koh Tao, the diving mecca of S.E Asia, strap on some fins and jump into the great blue abyss.

We must have some kind of amazing sea karma because we managed to achieve what some divers try to for months, sometimes years...we swam with a whale shark!! On our second dive! It was a baby, only about 4 meters but it was absolutely amazing. It swam right up towards us and checked us out. Even more lucky for us, it was the day our videographer was out with us and he got it all on film! Video proof! Ha!







After this amazing experience, we couldn't help but fork out some more of our hard earned baht to literally get deeper (30 meters under to the deep blue sea) and darker (night diving!) by taking our Advanced Open Water course and getting doubly certified.


On our night dive we saw all sorts of creepy and cool stuff. Meter long barracudas hunting, blue spotted stingrays and bio lumincent plankton. But the best had to be our deep dive off of Chumphon Pinnacle.

As part of our deep water certification we have to take an underwater test for nitrogen narcosis. Being that deep and under that amount of pressure (4 atmospheres) messes with the nitrogen levels in your blood and well...who needs a martini when you can have a nitrogen cocktail! As they would say in Japan - "let's enjoying getting drunk underwater on nitrogen!" Apparently it affects everyone differently, for me I just got incredibly giggly as I stood on the bottom on the sea. Not too dangerous and I didn't try anything crazy like sharing my regulator with a fish.

Now, I think an explanation of this "narc" test is in order. It's a pretty simple math test where we have to ad and subtract numbers to make 5 at certain speeds. This is hard enough for me on dry land considering my super mathmatical skills imagine being drunk underwater and doing it. To make matters even more interesting, we had some rather exciting yet slightly uninvited guests for our mathlete challenge






Why do math alone when you can add 2 plus 3 in the company of 4 meter long bull sharks. And yes, bull sharks have been known to eat people...actually they are responsible for more attacks on human than any other shark in the world. Even more than great whites. Now see that patch of sand where he is swimming...that's where our super math fantastico challenge took place. As freaky as they were, they were amazing. I never would have thought that I would pay money to strap a metal tank on my back, fasten a belt of lead weights around my waist and sink down 30 meters below the surface to swim with one of the 3 most deadly shark species on the planet. Even more surprising is that I can't wait to do it again. I'm already looking into doing a 4 day live aboard in the Similan islands in February. ADDICTED!!!


One of the down sides of having a such a wicked time is that it made my rather bland and oft times incredibly frustrating job here in Bangkok difficult to return to. It has got me to thinking A LOT about what I am doing and why I am doing it and what I am doing it for. I must admit that I don't like my job. Lately I seem to spend more time being frustrated and annoyed than feeling empassioned about what I'm doing. That is not a good thing for teachers. When the spark is gone the flame dies quickly. Sadly enough it's not the kids that have me down, its the ridiculous way in which the school is run. I am not a teacher who is interested in being a part of a school where dollars are more important than the best interests of the students and their education. If I wanted to work in the corporate money hungry world I would have gotten a job on wall street - not in a school.

sooooo.....as things often happen in my commitment phobic brain, I have been inspired to partake in a bit of a career change when my 2 year contract here is up. Not a permanent change, lets call it an "extended sabatical"....as a scuba diving instructor.
The way I figure it, I can get my emergency first response at school starting November, then onto my rescue diver course probably in April. This summer I will head down to the south of Thailand for my entire break and do my dive master course (hopefully with a videography specialty!) then when I'm done my contract in June 2011, come home for a few months (the school gives me flight money as part of my contract), then fly back to thailand to start my "sabatical." I should be able to get my training done in about 6 months then work work work. If you want to call living on the beach and diving everyday work.

So, there you have it. Ms. Inaka's future plans as of November 3rd 2009.

If I've learned one thing over the last 6 years of global vagabonding it's that one can never make plans because the wind blows people with open wings to unexpected places. I'm ready and willing to set sail.


Cheers from the gentle breezes of change
J