I'm FREE (lancing)!

ABN AMRO needs more than EUR 2,5 billion to survive. Ex-ABN AMRO CFO committed suicide. Major traffic jams expected on European highways during the next four weeks due to holiday season. Madoff condemned to 150 years jail. 36% of the muslims in The Netherlands wants to emigrate elsewhere because some peroxide blond scares the hell out of them. Woman (Caucasian) confesses to her husband (Caucasian) having had an affair with another man minutes after giving birth to a baby (Negroid).

That’s the result of browsing nu.nl for 10 minutes. I have a big smile on my face, take a deep breath and inhale the smell of the tomato sauce simmering on the stove, made by Stefano for tomorrow’s dinner (chicken liver and stomachs). I was working for TGI today, conducting my first Advanced Open Water course, there was hardly any wind, the dives were great, my student was happy and of course, the sun was shining. So I close nu.nl and decide to ignore the rest of the world for the remainder of the evening.

*****

2 days later

Today I have a day “off”, in other words, no work for me at TGI. I haven’t yet spread the word to the other dive centres that I’m available for free lance work, but so far, it hasn’t been necessary. I worked for 8 days in a row with TGI and tomorrow I have a family of four people doing a Discover Scuba Diving course with me, in French! I knew my languages would come in handy some day! :-)

Moving on from Divemaster to Diving Instructor brings a whole new dimension to working in the dive business and so far, I love it. Feedback from my first students is that I am very patient (me, patient????), very thorough (hmmm, well, when I put my mind to it) and even though they knew I was just fresh out of “Instructor’s School”, they said they were very happy with me. Always nice to get compliments of course, but quite a relief too... Needless to say I would have been rather distraught if my new choice of career wouldn’t have worked out. Anyway, my first experiences point towards a positive direction, so it promises to be a beautiful summer!

So today I played housewife. A few days ago, Sebi & Chris left - two German brothers, ex-Gounies who worked with Stefano a few years ago and whom I met when we were all on holidays in Thailand. They stayed with us for two weeks and since our house is sort of a walk-in living room for all sorts of friends, it was really time to clean up. So I pulled up my sleeves (figuratively speaking of course, it’s probably 40 degrees outside, so sleeves are just a distant memory) and got started. While I was disinfecting the bathroom, sweeping & mopping the floor, washing the sheets, dusting the furniture and scrubbing the oven, I had a lot of time to think and I realized that the last time I cleaned my own house, it was still the previous century. I decided early in life that some things are just not worth doing yourself. Like things that give you a back ache, dry hands from all the chemicals and make you aware that your house is really much dirtier than you thought it was before you got started with the cleaning. Those are the things that you should outsource, whenever possible. However, when you earn EUR 35 a day and you have to choose between (trying to) save money for a next holiday or hire a housekeeper, the choice is easy. And you will not hear me complain.

*******

Several days later

My experience as an instructor is building up and my learning curve very steep. The job is great. For the past three days, I’ve been doing the Open Water Course with a 16 year old French girl and she is doing fabulously well. Quite a difference with the course before that, when I had two students: a 10 year old Dutch boy who really did not want to study the theory and cried as soon as he made one mistake in the water and a Latvian woman who spoke 10 words of English. Try to explain words like decompression sickness or air density to someone who doesn’t even understand the words ascend and descend... It was a challenge, but they made it!

The past week I’ve been working for dive centres in Hurghada, yes, my business network is expanding. However, driving to and from Hurghada is in itself an experience. You may think diving is risky... Try driving in Egypt. Especially at night, when you don’t see anything because there are no streetlights and oncoming traffic is driving without lights until they are 20 meters away from you which is when they proceed to blind you with the big lights, just to make sure you see them. I think I’ll try to stick to jobs in El Gouna as much as possible... I prefer to die under water then on the road.

Taking the bus from Hurghada to El Gouna, is not too bad though. Today, I took the bus home for the second time and the driver actually recognised me from the week before. He pulled out a chair so I could sit while waiting for departure, offered me a cigarette (no thank you, all cigarettes kill, but Cleopatra’s do it instantly), offered me a can of Sprite and then charged me the “local” price for the bus ticket (EGP 3,5) instead of the “tourist” price (EGP 5), friendly wink included.

Anyway, since I became a free lance instructor, just over two weeks ago, I’ve had 2 days off. Business is going well so far, let’s see what the future brings! The day after tomorrow however, I’m taking a day off to spend some time with Stefano. It will be his birthday and part of my present is a massage at a fancy Spa, which I don’t have to pay anything for because it’s the payment in kind from the modeling job I did with Ivan as a photographer. After working for eight days in a row, I could use a day off. And I’m very much looking forward to spending a day with my man, who will be off to Italy next week for at least three weeks, maybe much longer... :-( I’m worried. Who’s going to cook for me, clean the house, water the garden and make my espresso in the morning when he’s gone?

I’ll let you know next blog... :-)

Kisses from the Red Sea,

xxx

Yaisa