Well it has been a long time since my last post. Party because I was busy, partly because I was procrastinating. Even as I write this I’m thinking about maybe I should go get breakfast and finish this later!
So I finished my Divermaster course about 2 weeks ago. Alexia and I spent a couple of hours in the confined water together evaluating my skill circuits. We quickly discovered I wasn’t going to need another session because I needed little no remediation on pretty much every exercise.
Then we moved on to the underwater gear exchange. This skill is supposed to be a huge problem solving exercise and I can see that it could be difficult if you had 2 much more green divers performing the skill. Since Alexia and I both have roughly 500 dives each though, it was downright hilarious. Our biggest challenge was not laughing so hard we would drown! The exercise involves exchanging all of your gear with a buddy, underwater, while buddy-breathing*--this means scuba rig, fins, masks, etc. all have to be exchanged while taking turns breathing 2 breaths each from the same regulator. (*Padi doesn’t let us call this buddy-breathing anymore because it was recently taken out of the official Padi literature and training procedures yet is still a requirement for the DM program!).
The skill requires good teamwork, tons of air sharing, and extreme comfort underwater. The extra challenge that Alexia and I experienced was weighting. For some reason as soon as we switched rigs, neither of us had enough weight anymore. Each time one of us took in a large breath that we would have to save for the next 30 seconds, our buoyancy would increase so much that we would begin floating to the surface. So there we were with an imaginary teeter totter pushing one of us up while the other had to hold the other down. I was yanking Alexia down by her foot or calf and then I would shove the regulator back in here mouth as her hands were busy buckling straps or dawning fins. We were highly amused by the scenario but managed to keep our composure until the instant we ascended to the surface at the end of the drill and broke into uncontrollable laughter.
So once I finished all the paperwork and we sent in the forms to Padi, I started working on my diver resume. I needed to walk around the island handing my resume out to each diveshop manager hoping to differentiate myself from all the other new DM’s walking around doing the same thing. The first big challenge here is language skills. Diveshops hoard people with language skills far before anything else—even diving ability and experience. So when work is a little slow (and it still is since high season really hasn’t ramped up), the only people they give the time of day to is multi-lingual individuals. Eventually when they get busy this will be less of a problem and they will start using dependable skilled DM’s. Ironically language isn’t an enormous issue in the first place for a DM. I would say 90% of the people walking off the ferries can speak English enough to dive with an English-only DM. The diveshops just want to cover that 10% case so the other shops don’t get that business which is understandable. The front of every diveshop is plastered with signs and flags noting which languages the shop is capable of catering to.
The next struggle is the under-qualification of being a DM. This is something Alexia and Ryan didn’t face because they came onto the island as experienced instructors. Diveshops much rather have a full compliment of instructors than DM’s because DM’s can only take out 2 types of customers—certified fundivers and scuba refreshers. Instructors can take out every type of diver or non-diver. Here on Phi Phi a large percentage of divers are Discover Scuba Divers (dsd’s). They have never been on scuba before and are trying it out for the first time on their holiday. I have been to many other destinations where the majority of the travelers are already certified divers and therefore have no need for an instructor during their holiday. Some shops plain don’t hire DM’s here and others hire very few and get help from freelancers for the rest of the time.
The next point makes me sound bitter…when a shop tells you they have all their staffing needs, and then the very next day hires a female DM will 60 dives and no experience, it stings a bit. So what really annoys me is the constant lying by the managers. They say they will put you on a list but never call. They say they are staffed up but hire 2 more people with language skills or breasts the very next day. The whole process is demoralizing but the trick is to be persistent. Well I chose another option after a week of failure.
I heard about a shop that was looking for a videographer. They were willing to hire this person with no experience and no video equipment. I walked back in the shop and talked to the manager (a manager that told me he wasn’t looking for anything only days earlier), and he said I could have the job.
So now I have my first job on the island working as a videographer for P.P. Sea Frog. The job entails filming customers getting on the boat, getting briefed, gearing up, entering the water, diving, exiting the water, relaxing on the boat, diving again, and then exiting the boat. Then I spend the next 2-4 hours editing (will be less and less as I get better) so that I can try to sell the video to the divers after dinner. I only make money if they purchase a video and the shops makes a 60% cut because they supply the camera, tapes, dvd’s, tanks, and lunch for me.
I have now performed this duty for 2 days. I have gotten some pretty fun footage and I believe I am off to a good start being a good videographer. I have sold 0 videos so far but not for lack of trying. The challenge of course is reading the customers. Sometimes the sale is more about the customer than the product. I have seen some videos that sold well from other videographers and it’s obvious the customer only buys a video if they were willing to buy one in the first place regardless of quality or content.
So this is my job now—swimming around underwater looking for interesting shots to stick in a video—bouncing from divegroup to divegroup capturing the divers looking funny or posing behind sharks and turtles. Ironically I usually pay people all around the world to let me to swim around and take pictures/video of interesting animals and scenery; now I get to paid to do it or at the very least I get to do it for free!
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