My sister Shelley is always shocked when I blog about certain stereotypes in the diving world. I think she is a bit more politically correct than I am, and I’m guessing that she thinks people will perceive me as a racist or something. Of course, I am not a racist — just a realist. I know that a stereotype is not true for everyone, but a broad generalization based loosely in truth. Is it wrong to acknowledge these loosely based truths, or is it better to pretend they do not exist for the sake of politeness? I guess reasonable minds can differ. But as for me, I like to call a spade a spade. So get ready, Shel, because I have some spades to call out.
Last week I had a visit from the Filipino divers who inspited my rant in the blog entry linked above. They had found my blog entry and read it, and were super-angry, ready to kick my ass. Just kidding Shelley! They were there to go for another dive with me. They had come in a few months back to do a discover scuba course, and I litereally had to drag them through the water because they were so bad. But they came in for another dive with me. You see, despite the fact that they were absolutely awful, I am an amazingly fantastic instructor, and I made them feel good about the experience even though they had no right to feel good about it. (So I guess seeing them again and their ongoing efforts to dive are really my fault.) And they didn’t come alone — they brought two new friends, both Filipinos, to try diving for the first time. Lucky me….
If you’ve never done a discover scuba (often called a resort course) before, here’s how it works — you start out by going through some dive theory, then you learn how the gear works, then on the land you go over some basic skills that you need to be able to do while diving in order to stay safe. Once you’ve gone over these skills on the land, it’s time to get wet; you head into the water and do those basic skills in the shallow water. Assuming you can complete these simple skills, it’s time for fun, and everyone goes on a fun dive on the reef (maximum depth 40 feet). Once you’ve successfully completed a resort course, you can then do a “repeat resort”, where you skip the dive theory and skills, and just go on a fun dive under instructor supervision.
So last week when these guys came in I had two repeat resorts (my original Filipino students), and two new Filipino students doing a resort course for the first time. I started out by going through dive theory and skills with the new divers. They seemed to understand the material, which is better than their friends had done their first time around. Although I did constantly ask “do you understand?” because they had blank looks on their faces. But they nodded yes, so I assume they actually did (again, it’s probably my mistake for assuming that).
As a quick aside, I have a hard time teaching these guys because i can’t pronounce their names. This is not their fault. It’s mine. And this is one of my weaknesses — I’m very self-conscious when it comes to names, and I get uncomfortable when I’m not 100% confident in someone’s name. Combine that with the fact that these guys have names like Njajanmdo and Xiu-wan, and it’s a recipe for awkwardness.
With dive theory done, it’s time to hit the water. As I get these guys motivated without using actual names, saying things like “ready for fun, Pal?” and “you’re going to love this, Champ”, I know that trouble looms.
My fears are confirmed when we get in the water, and one of the new guys is frozen. Literally. He is floating in the water, and I say to him “put on your fins.” He responds “ok”, but makes no actual movement to do so. After about five minutes of me trying to convince him to reach down to his feet and put fins on, he finally realizes the inevitable — that it was not his day for diving. He informs me he wants to get out of the water, and as I do the dance of joy on the inside, I wear my poker face and try to leave him with some sense of positive feeling about his experience. As it turns out, he did feel good about his adventure. This was his first time in the ocean. Ever. Just what I always hope for in a scuba student….
One down, three to go.
My three remaining divers headed out to the shallow water to do our skills. We swam about 50 yards away from the ladder, and went down into water about 8 feet deep to do some very basic skills. As we descended, I was paying special attention to my one remaining first-timer, and as it turns out I was wise in doing so. He got about a foot below the surface, and started to freak out, and clawed his way back up. I came back to the surface (and brought the two repeat resort guys back to the surface, since they can’t stay down alone) and asked him what was wrong. He said that he got nervous, and that he was ok and it woundn’t happen again, and insisted that he wanted to go back down. So we did, and he actually made it to the bottom. Once there, though, he looked around for a few seconds, his eyes got wide, and he spit his regulator out of his mouth and began clawing at the water trying to get back to the surface. In case you don’t know, spitting out your regulator is a bad thing. So I grabbed him and brought him to the surface, and I made the executive decision that he was done for the day. The entire group had to swim back to the ladder, and this guy was out.
Two down, two to go.
Make that three down, actually. One of the repeat resort guys (whose name I still don’t know) had become too tired from the swim out and back, and he was ready to call it a day. Fine. Back to dry land for you, Ace.
That left only one of my original four divers. Luckily for me (I guess), he was actually able to go down and go for a scuba dive. So we cruised around for 20 minutes until he ran out of air, and headed back in.
I will say this about my Filipino divers — after their dives, whether they did well or were horrible, these guys are always in good spirits. Maybe they are very cheery guys. Or perhaps it is because their expectations are so low, they view the simple act of getting into the water as a success. In any case, they are always happy after their attempts at diving. I would generally consider that a very admirable quality, but they are not an easy group to teach at all. And above all the other flaws these guys have, the biggest negative about them is that they do not tip, and so that makes it very difficult to admire anything about them. As we know, tipping is good.
Unfortunately, I’m such a good instructor that I left these guys feeling good about themselves, which means that they will most likely be back for more misadventures. In fact, they were saying that may even try to get their actual open water diving certification. Curse my awesomeness! Ah well, we all have our crosses to bear, I guess, and mine is that I can make Filipino guys whose names I don’t know feeel good about their awful diving skills.
Perhaps the worst part of it all is that if they do actually take the open water certification course, I’ll actually have to learn their names — “hey You” doesn’t work so well when you see someone for multiple days in a row. I think that when they sign up that will be a good time to finally use some of my vacation days!