Will's Fountain of Useless Info: Reloaded

Yup... am back from Malapascua already. Here's a summary:

- Dive resort was pretty good, clean and have nice food. Their thin crust pizza is really nice. People are generally very friendly. But one drawback is that they will charge you for anything... water refill, ice cubes, etc etc...

-Dive sites are superb. Managed to see the Thresher Shark... absolutely graceful with it's waving long tail. Lots of macro stuffs too, especially during night dives, where all kinds of crabs will be active... pretty nudibranches, but size wise is pretty small, averaging about 1.5 to 2 inches

- Travelling is a bitch if you don't do direct flight (MAS has, but very expensive). Our Cebu Air flight flies from LCCT to Manila (3 hr+), then transit flight to Cebu (about 1 hr). After that we have to ride a van for 3 hr+ to the jetty. After that a boat ride of 45 mins to reach the dive resort.

- Locals eat very salty food. We stopped by a local food store for lunch (like our mixed rice stall setup), and most of the stuffs are pretty salty (especially the vege). They eat a lot of pork... they have something like our siew yuk (very nice!), char siew (all fats), and other flavors like sweet and sour etc. Another really big thing there is grilled chicken (lechon manok). You can see it everywhere on the street. Didn't managed to try them except for the ones at the dive resort. Flavor is quite good.

Overall, a dive site worth visiting, IF you can endure the long travelling time, OR alternatively you can spend more and fly direct with MAS. ;)

Yeah, some of you might only hear of this place for the very first time. Actually me too when my friends say "let's go Malapascua for diving!".

Malapascua is an island to the north of Cebu island. It is supposed to be the only all-year-round thresher shark cleaning station.

Quoting Thresher Shark Divers site:

The thresher shark, or Alopias pelagicus is a type of mackerel shark or Lamniformes. In German it is known as Der Gemeine Fuchshai, or fox shark. The threshers grow up to a length of 5-6 meters, about half of which is the huge scythe-like tail for which it is named.

And not to worry, thresher sharks feed on squids and schooling fishes like mackerel and herring. :)

Looking forward to a good dive and great fun with my dive gang.

I've always been very afraid that people have high expectations of me. It's not that I can't deliver, or that I'm not capable, but it puts a lot of pressure on me because of the "what if I fail" factor. I hate the feeling of having to disappoint someone. It sucks big time. I guess that's probably the reason why I always try to stay very low profile.

Lately I feel like I've disappointed a few people. One of whom was expecting me to be able to help out on some web related stuffs. But I couldn't find time to actually do research on the matter because I've never worked on these things before. And I don't have the heart to actually openly refuse to help. This made me feel really bad. And then there are other stuffs. All these made me feel very down.

I guess somehow the above made me somewhat commitment-phobic. Because when I am committed to something, I always deliver. So sometimes I dare not commit myself because I'm not sure if I'm able to deliver, and in turn disappoint others.

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Wait... I actually started this post wanting to talk about me feeling sad that most of my blogging friends are now in a half-retirement (some fully retired) mode, mainly due to Facebook. Well some of them said that Facebook can be updated much faster, and friends can get notified through the feed page. But content wise it's so much different from blogging. I would compare Facebook/Twitter status vs Blog is like comparing fast food vs gourmet food. In FB most updates you get is like one-liners, where as in blogs you get to see your friends compose a nice story.

Anyways I'm off to Malapascua, Philippines this Saturday. Yay! Diving again. Hope can see some rare sea creatures over there. Sometimes I wonder how long can I hold on to this passion. With my desire to try out new things, I might give this up and try other things. Of course I haven't figured out what at this moment. Having said that, aikido is here to stay. No way I'm giving that up (I hope).

A very close friend of mine is having some relationship issues lately... and these are some viewpoints that I shared:

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For any relationship to work, both party have to make some sacrifices. And you can't say that it should be fair that each party contributes 50%. In actual fact for any relationships, one party is bound to sacrifice more or contribute more.

In a relationship most of the time a couple will also be complementing each other. One party usually will compensate another party's shortcomings. Nobody's perfect, sometimes both party should overlook some flaws in each other

And of course sometimes you want each other to change for the better... but being human, it's definitely not easy to change, especially if it's a habit that has been stuck with him/her for many years. It is going to take a lot of time and effort, and it is not always successful.

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Very deep huh... like speaking from experience... ;)

They are a very sweet couple. I really hope things work out fine for them...