That’s me (on the left) and my instructor hovering in the deep blue (Bali, 2015)
It’s been a hectic 12 weeks ever since university began and frankly, I have to admit that I haven’t exactly adapted, yet here we are with the second last blog post.
Seriously, where did the time go?
Time truly flies when you’re having fun (the pandemic doesn’t help either) and I have to agree. I’ve always wanted to share my diving experiences, but it never seemed to resonate with my group of friends (most of them are afraid of water), and this blog gave me the chance to do just that. In addition, to the peers whom I’ve interacted with, I’m more than happy to know that you are enjoying this virtual diving adventure.
Unfortunately, all journeys end, and in the case of diving, that’s signified with a safety stop. In short, it’s simply spending 5 minutes in depths of 5m below the surface, and you can choose to either hover in one spot or you could choose to do some light swimming in the area to see what else you can find before you say goodbye.
Another version of a safety stop (Photo by Daniel Kwok under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) license.)
I’m mostly the latter, but I’d like to take things slow for once and simply talk about how this whole scuba diving experience changed me as a person, especially when it came to the way I viewed the environment, which I’d split into two parts. Oh, and shoutout to Dr Coleman for inspiring me to write about this when I consulted her at the start!
So… Did scuba diving really change me? Sounds cliche, doesn’t it?
Well, let’s just say it was a turning point for many things that simply cascaded into something bigger.
The main thing that comes to mind might not be surprising, but scuba diving taught me to be brave and take the leap of faith. Personally, I felt that if I didn’t learn, I wouldn’t have been able to do things as crazy as signing myself up for Outward Bound Hong Kong, and I’d say the same for my academic pursuits.
A photo of me in Hong Kong after scaling a 379m tall hill
You could ask my friends what they want to be, and they’d say doctors and researchers, but when it comes to the environment? Nah, and despite taking up a diploma in Environmental Science, most of my classmates wanted to remove the “Environmental” part. I remember how much I heard the words “boring” or “there’s no future”, but I never let that get to me, and believe me when I say that this wasn’t looked upon too well by my parents’ friends or family either.
I simply kept going despite the negativity, and it did get me thinking about the difficulties behind the advocation of climate change. As much as I’d like to talk about environmental woes, it does feel that there’s some form of alienation when it’s being brought out to the table. It’s as if the topic is something to be touched on and quickly forgotten in a matter of minutes – it’s disheartening, but it’s sadly true for the most part.
There comes the next question, why should the views of ours influence what we want to do?
And besides, there’s so many ways in which we can make a change on our own, and they aren’t difficult to do. Sure, we might all want to change the world and as much as we might not have much time, but I strongly believe in the need to actually change oneself first and if we ourselves believe that we can make some change, I have hopes that everything will turn out for the better eventually.
Hey Natasha!
Thank you so much for introducing your passion for scuba diving to us! Your blog posts not only delivered vivid underwater experiences, but also brought to light many marine initiatives that I was previously unaware of! I think your really resilient for continuing to pursue a career in environmental advocacy, even when friends and family thought otherwise.
That actually reminded me of a passing comment a doctor mentioned to me once during a check-up last year. When I mentioned that I would be majoring in BES, she went on a little about how that particular area of study was redundant since the world will eventually end. I thought that was a REALLY nihilistic opinion and it was a really odd reason for not fixing our environment. I didn’t really challenge her opinion on the matter because a)I didn’t really want to start a debate surrounding my life choices during what should have been a medical check-up, and b)I just wanted an MC to enjoy the rest of my day (before reporting back to the army).
All in all that was a pretty disheartening medical check-up, even though I was physically fine.
Despite that wet blanket of a comment, I’m still glad to be majoring in BES, and I’m grateful to have peers like you!! Thanks for a great blog and hope to see you in the flesh soon!
Cheers!
Joseph.
Hi Joseph! Thank you for dropping by once again and for being one of my most consistent readers hahaha and once again, my Outlook didn’t register your comment again and I only just saw this, and it just had to be the very last day of this assignment. Nevertheless, I really appreciate your words of praise.
Also, my parents were actually supportive of my decision to go into this field and truth be told, they actually allowed me to be whatever I wanted to be. Like all parents though, they did have their hopes and aspirations (i.e. my dad wanted me to major in Chemical Engineering while my mum wanted me to be a lawyer), but they kept quiet about it and only told me after I had set my goals in stone to pursue something related to the environment. Fun fact, my first dream job was to become a cashier at Cold Storage and I just found out quite recently that they’d actually be perfectly okay, and it was more of their friends who were a little more skeptical. Regardless, as long as my parents were okay, I’d be more than okay with it too, and that was why I went down this path. And besides, it’s my decision and my life anyway, and no one has to go through it but me hahaha.
Oh, and thanks for sharing your experiences once again. It brought both laughter and a sigh with a slight shrug to the shoulder because as much as we want people to see the cause we’re fighting for, it’s still a pretty new idea because we’ve spent all these years industrialising and making life better, but now it seems as if we’re trying to reverse everything we have done to a certain extent. It’s a little bit ironic, isn’t it? We strive for progression and for us, we see climate advocacy as the way to go, but to others, it just seems like we’re going backwards and I can totally understand why that’s the case. As much as we’ve well established that we don’t have time left, the fact of the matter is that we need to be patient and understanding with the people who don’t view things the same way we do, and it’s up to us to change that in our own ways, big or small.
To end off, don’t worry about being a wet blanket, I still got something out of that, and I’m happy for you too that you’re proud of where you came from (because I didn’t get much of that in Poly as I mentioned)! All the best for finals preparations and see you soon too! ^_^
Hi Natasha,
It has been very interesting reading about your diving adventures on this blog. It really feels like I am diving into the depths. I think what you said about alienation and that the views of others shouldn’t influence what we want to do really resonates with me. Sometimes I find myself apprehensive to speak my mind about environment issues, afraid I’ll bore my friends and family. Sometimes I can almost taste the judgement from people when I tell them what I am pursuing in school. But ultimately I know it doesn’t matter, as long as I do what I believe in 🙂 Thanks for sharing!
Clive
Hi Clive! Thanks for stopping by and despite it being a crazy 13 weeks, I still can remember the fact that you were the one who shared about wanting to dive and wanting to write about the marine environment as well, and I have to admit that I’m glad you actually stuck to that to a certain extent, especially since ice is just the solid form of water anyway hahaha! Also, I’m glad to have read that something I wrote resonated with you too – it just shows that we’re not alone in this, and as I’ve shared with Joseph, as much as we wish for it to be a quicker process in terms of promoting the ideology on why it’s important to save the environment, it’s only right we give people time to accept the new idea too. Nevertheless, I do agree with you that it doesn’t matter what the world thinks, simply because they’re not you, and if you believe what you’re doing will make a change, albeit big or small, you will make the change. While you might not see it, I’m sure it’ll come around eventually, and besides, like they always say, the one who planted the tree usually doesn’t usually get to see the results. That’s okay though, what we’re doing will make an impact, it’s just a part of our course, so don’t let anything get you down! If you need any form of support, the entire BES family’s here; we only have 47 people anyway!
I’m glad you enjoyed my content, and if you do learn how to dive, let me know! I’d love to hear of your adventures and if you have anything to ask or you’d like to borrow my textbooks beforehand to read, let me know too! ^_^ All the best for finals and see you soon!