13 Meters Under (3)

Assistant instructor Tony and the very experience young kid, Instructor Lai, accompanied me to my first dive. It is right next to the nuclear power plant's cooling waterduck outlet. With regulator in my mouth, I test dived in the shallow water for 2 minutes. So far so good, I can see so many tiny fishes and colourful tropical fishes swimming in front of my eyes. Getting up from the test dive and being asked how I felt, I seriously told my instructors that I could lay there face down for the whole day.

We slowly submerged into the water, I breathed slowly, inhaled deeply and exhaled as much as I can to reduce the dead air space in the air passage, which is our breathing passage lengthened by the regulator. Though the air supply is amble, I seemed not able to overcome the irrational fear that I am suffocating. It is quite impossible to surface to grab air without spending time to depressurize. There is no way out! I only had the panic attack the second time with diving with my 2 other classmate, Queenie and Hui.

Surprisingly, coral reef survive and thrive near the warm water outlet of the nuclear power plant. A thousands of small silver fishes swriling in the light blue sea above my head, I could only concentrate on my breathing (breathing through mouth doesn't give me much confidence that my body is getting enough oxygen). However, I was so distracted by the beauty of under water world. A pair of semi-transparent squids flying in the distance of my arm's reach, when disturbed, the pair dashed away with a faint cloud of ink.

When I was a kid, I went fishing with my dad at seaside almost every Sunday. It is so fun to see those fishes we used to catch swimming next to me, just like seeing a long lost friend. There is a kind of black fish with buldge oragne eyes, size about my palm, very territorial. When approaching its rock, it came and stared at me without considering our sizes are dramatic different.

The water temperature is around 29 celcius, by applying this breathing techinque learnt in my Zen lesson, I consumed very little air, while my classmates used up all. What a strange benefit Zen class has brought.