Gili Trawangan isn’t the sort of place to keep to a schedule, and Indonesians aren’t the sort of people that are ever in a rush.
Two doors down from Blue Marlin, where I am finishing up my Divemaster Traineeship, there is a nice Indian themed restaurant/resort/cafe of sorts called Pesona with a half decent internet connection and a coffee machine.
Sound like bliss, no?
After all, the coffee machine at Blue Marlin was sent off to be repaired months ago and never came back, the wifi connection is not available to patrons and is so ridiculously slow that we couldn’t even stream the Triple J hottest 100 over the internet on Australia Day.
Unfortunately, neither of these issues are being looked at as potential revenue for dive shop despite Pesona being full to the brim with Australians on Australia Day and tumbleweeds rolling across the dining area floor at Blue Marlin, where the Kitchen manager had chosen to put on an Indonesian buffet instead.
It’s frustrating to be so reliant on technology but in this unprecedented and glorious Information Age to ignore the benefits of technology is ludicrous, it’s a shame to have to kick and scream like a spoiled child to get access the unlimited information and independent media and unplug from the matrix of the mainstream.
When I am king I will buy a good esspresso machine for the dive centre, upgrade the internet so everyone can access high speed internet and watch those empty tables fill with cashed up tourists just so I can say I told you so.
Or maybe just open up my own dive centre.
I’ll go to all that trouble just to show that I am right.
The human Ego is a funny thing.
Anyways the bad news about coffee at Pesona is that it’s behind the bar, the bar doesn’t open until 10am so only instant coffee is available until 10am in the morning providing the barman is on time, which is rare, but who want’s coffee in the morning anyway.
There’s a bloke called Rupert Sheldrake who is furthering research on positive dissonance which is magnetic fields and the like who purports to have evidence of low level psychic powers (for lack of a better description) which means dogs can sense when their owners are coming home and humans can tell when people are staring at them when they can’t see them.
As part of my scientific research I have put this to the test in Indonesia and can definitely conclude that Indonesians are not affected by this, the amount of time I have spent staring at waiters and bar staff while they are day dreaming with no result has put that theory to rest. Along with my Limbo Theory and research on Thermodynamic Diving I’ve done alot for science in the last few months, hopefully my research will be picked up by someone else now because I am tired of willing waiters to bring me my bill so I’m not late back to instruction sessions at the dive centre anymore.
The coin is running low now so I’ve done the maths to see how much longer I will last out here and it looks like a February departure will be on the cards. I’ve barely looked at my assignments from the Cert 4 in Fitness which I aimed to finish off while I was here (having started it in 2010) so it looks like I’ve carried this 5kg folder around Indonesia for nothing. Whilst the Divemaster training has been great it doesn’t look like the qualification is going to be enough to gain employment overseas and it will require instructor certification to get any work.
So, with that in mind, I booked a flight back to Australia where I plan to finish off all my loose ends and work until the Australian winter. After that it will be back to South East Asia to get some more qualifications under my belt, Scuba Instructor, English Teaching and Underwater Photography being the ones that standout most, but for now I still have the wreck dive to look forward to in a few days.
Earthmans' Walkabout 