Divemaster Job in Aqaba, Jordan 7th December - 13th December 2015

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I MADE AN INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT BECAUSE I LOVE MARK ZUCKERBERG

Monday – Hot water!

Just before I start the blog this week I must be honest. Writing the blog is really starting to drain me. Writing it all then putting it on TravelBlog.com with photos and everything else etc really is taking up so much time and it’s making me lose motivation doing it and other things in the centre. So I have decided that instead of writing every single day I have just included the highlights and not include the days were pretty much nothing happened worth mentioning. As always Happy Reading.

I had a day off today and instead of pissing about I decided to do something. I had a list of things planned to do today and I accomplished them all! Sort of. First I was to have a shower! That may seem a bit trivial but I had my boiler installed yesterday by the handyman Belal! As a result I now have hot water. It’s a good time too because for the past month I have basically just put my head under the shower and washed my hair to get clean… The water is really frigging cold and so I didn’t actually wash my body. But before you get all grossed out I clean the necessary parts and of course I always took a thorough shower after diving. After leaving the boiler on all night I get exactly 5 minutes of hot water. I have a timer on my watch that I start when I get inside it so I know how long I have left. Today I really had a spring in my step and I was just really happy! Never underestimate the power of hot water and the good it can do for you!

I had the rest of the day to email Maya from the USAID event, write my blog from the previous two weeks and clean my apartment. I started with the email as that would be finished the quickest. The email is to get more information about the $100,000 USD that we can apply for to bring in things we need to the centre such as new regulators, cameras, wetsuits, compressor for the tanks etc. Every single item has to have a price estimation, reasons for why we need it, what we will use it for etc. I will apply for the items in the coming weeks as it requires a lot of time to research all the things we need for the centre and firstly read the 5 separate documents that Maya has sent me.

After emailing away it was time to clean my apartment which really does need a good scrub. I don’t really have the time or motivation in the evenings to clean up the place so my day off was the perfect time to. The cleaning was the easy part (sweeping and mopping) but the hard part was where to put all my rubbish i.e. empty Oreo wrappers, milk cartons and bits of other things as I have ran out of plastic bags which I get from the shop I buy from and use as bins hanging on all my doors in my house.

Finally and something which I was dreading to be honest was the blog. I do enjoy writing the blog but having two weeks to catch up on was a ball ache trying to remember it all. When I was in Israel I didn’t have my laptop as I had no battery because the plugs are like the ones in Europe whereas in Jordan they are the three pin plugs that I use in the UK. I hand written things down that happened to me over the two eventful days in my little Liverpool pocket book that was given to me by L.F.C. as a leaving gift. It took me about 5 hours to write everything that happened in the past two weeks and I wrote it all in one go.





Tuesday – Took my GoPro

2 dives today hooray! Ahmed actually led this dive because he needs to do at least one for his Divemaster course and he will do more for the experience, Inshallah. We did the standard dive of Cedar Pride shipwreck and Japanese Garden afterwards as he knew those sites and would not get lost. On the first dive we saw two turtles… Which were very close to us and weren’t afraid but Mohamed had my GoPro so I couldn’t take any photos or videos. Gutted. I’m too relaxed for Mo I need to just tell him that I want it on every dive as he has a camera now and it is my GoPro after all.
We were with Ahmed’s boss called Ghassan from the farm that he works on in Jordan. He’s an impressive guy and over a meal in the evening he was telling me his life story about how he was the son of around 10 children to his mother and father and they couldn’t afford all of them to go to school. His uncle had a couple of kids but wanted more and so they took in Ghassan as he was the smartest of the 10. So therefore he was able to go to school and the principal of the school went one day to the house of Ghassan’s uncle and aunty and said it would be a real shame to not put him through University as he’s very clever. They scraped together some money from I don’t remember where and he went to study engineering. His father however thought he was going to Egypt to study religion. Sneaky Ghassan. But now he is very rich but he still stays humble. Something that has stuck with him all these years from his father is that ‘The money you earn isn’t for you, Ghassan. It’s for your employees to make their lives happier and more prosperous’. For years he didn’t understand it he said, but now he understands that now with the more wealth you have the more responsible and kind you have to be with it.

Another story is about his employees 80% of whom are Nepalese and 15% are Indian. The Indians were being paid more for the same work, probably resulting from the fact that the guys making some decisions in Ghasan’s company were Indian. Ghassan found this out and raised the salary of the Nepalese which is only fair. But then some of the Indians left the company because the Nepalese got a raise and they didn’t.

We also talked about Ahmed and that he wants to improve his life. But a big help for him would be if he learns English and I think he will, Inshallah (direct translation: If god wills it). He needs to learn it if he wants to get out of the Middle East and see the world, it’s the best path for him.

Ghassan also brought 2 gifts to the centre. A shorty (cuts off at the elbows and knees) and a full 3mm wetsuit (cuts off at the wrists and ankles). Ahmed also received a full 5mm wetsuit and so he tried it on and started running around the streets like a mad man loving life. Ghassan also bought me a red filter but it doesn’t fit my camera as it’s for a GoPro 3 and I have the 4… Oh first world problems.




Wednesday – Where’s everybody going?

Big news today… Belal has left. He started here about 2 weeks after I started so for him to leave is a big blow to me as I really enjoyed his company. He left because he needs more money to support his family but also because he hasn’t got any PADI certifications yet from the centre. Mohamed said he would get them after Ahmed left which is soon but Belal couldn’t hold out for much longer. It’s a real shame as now I have nobody to watch Game of Thrones with but hopefully he will return in a month or two when he’s earned some dough. But that isn’t the only shame as I’ve said I got on with him really well and he is great fun. With the cleaner guy who left about a week ago and Ahmed leaving tomorrow I am beginning to think I smell…

Moving on we had two more dives today with Ghassan and Ahmed. Both of them were to Cedar Pride and we saw a Napoleon fish on the first one but it was too fast to keep up with and I’m just not fit enough to keep up with the pace of the thing. The fish would effortlessly swim but escape the shot of my GoPro very easily.

I went out in the evening with Abdallah and two of his friends who I think are motor heads. They have a two door sports car with tinted windows and red neon lights inside. Pimp my ride have definitely been in touch.



Thursday – While the divers are away the fish will play

First full day without Belal and I don’t like it. It’s a tad more boring as I had good banter with him but I had two dives today to keep me occupied. Both of them were at the tank site and I took along Mohamed’s camera to snap away. I saw lots of scorpionfish and stonefish! I love the photos of the Anemonefish (Nemo) maybe I’ll make an Instagram.

As soon as I arrived back the beach there was a Spanish guy who was waiting to do a couple of dives. After packing the necessary equipment we jumped in the van faster than you can say ‘Hasta luego caiman’ (see you later alligator). What we saw on this dive was amazing and so I have decided I now love afternoon dives. I never really do many dives in the afternoon but this dive was amazing as I saw an octopus boxing. Basically an octopus was surrounded by other fish circling above like vultures each taking turns to swoop down to Mr. Octopus. But the octopus was fighting back and I shit you now (apologies for the language nan) it was literally punching the other fish away with her tentacles like a irradiated Rocky Balboa. I was so surprised and amazed at what I was seeing I swam too close to the boxing match and I must’ve startled the little underwater critters as the fish soon swam away and the octopus retreated back underneath the corals. I really wish that I caught it on video it was truly one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had underwater and possibly in my life! I just really friggin’ loved it!





Friday – dos dives… Is that Portuguese as well as Spanish?

Uno dive today with 2 Brazilians who are on a round the world trip… Ermagerd jealous! (say Ermagerd out loud if you don’t know what it means). Standard dives to the Cedar Pride Wreck and Japanese Garden but on the first dive the woman out of the couple was having some issues equalising and I was literally about 5 seconds from sending her back to shore after ascending and talking about the issue. But after swimming at Rainbow Reef to keep her at 3 metres so she would see some stuff she signalled the all ‘Ok’ to me and we headed out to check out the Wreck.




Saturday – Empty wallet

Today I have joined the Instagrammers on Instagram! I made my account this morning and as of writing this part of my blog at 14:27am on 12/15/15 I have 9 posts, 81 followers and I’m following 94 people. Scuba Pro have actually liked 3 of my photos so far! Amazing! I also received a message from divingspecials.com who have invited me to join their website for ‘exclusive 50% off diving trips across the world’’. They’ve also started following me (not in a stalky way gran) where they have basically subscribed to my profile and whenever I post a video or photo they will see it! It’s quite a big deal for me as they have 14,200 followers and are following 5000, including me! Is that good? I don’t know the rank of royalty in Instagram yet but know I do like Instagram.

I also splashed out the cash today on a whole host of trinkets. Well actually I just bought 3 things but my lordy lord they were expensive. The first is a 4G internet USB connector for my laptop so now I have super-fast internet and it has better reception as the other USB just kept on losing connection and was a pain to share Wi-Fi around as you had to keep on setting it up every time I plugged it in. It was about £50 which is a big chunk out of my wages but I think I can still make myself last until the end of the month until my next payday. However I also forked out a wod of cash at the Movenpick hotel in Tala Bay. I explored the hotel with Abdallah and we went into the bar at about 9pm… Big mistake as the staff outnumbered us… We were the only two in there. I bought Abdallah a drink and I asked what he wanted. He replied ‘whatever man’. Big mistake for him. I ended up ordering him a cocktail called ‘sexy lady’ for 10.50 JD. Needless to say that he loved it, who doesn’t enjoy a sexy lady?

I bought two rum and cokes but fuck me altogether the bill was 40 JD which is absolutely ridiculous. No wonder nobody was in here. I didn’t realise that when I ordered the rum the coke brought another hefty price tag of 5 JD combining my two drinks to 24 JD as the rum was 7 JD, in case you are good at maths I know there’s a gap. Abdallah bought some cigarettes.

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Photos

THERE'S A STRANGE HOODED MAN IN MY HOUSE!
Just joking it's Belal and Ahmed checking out where to put the boiler

That's Ghassan in the background blowing bubbles
Also on Instagram

A Stonefish!
On Instagram too!