diving – mouseytong

I am presently trying not to doze off. Been telling myself the last 2 days that I should blog. Between the shop and family (M’s family is here with us) and friends AND gym (yes, I got myself access to a gym here. 🙂 ) I hardly have time to pen any of my thoughts down. The shop is open from 10am – 1pm and 6pm – 1am. Understandably I crash every night almost immediately. Come home to help with lunch and the clean up then laundry. Then some time to myself. About an hour or so before I haul my ass off to the gym.

During these “myself” moments, I watch the Olympics. I watch it so much that my MIL wonders if there is anything else on tv and how long more is the Olympics going to last. She is getting tired of the same channel! hehehehe..

At the same time, I catch up on emails, Twitter, messages, Milo, etc…

What did you think of the Olympics? I wasn’t too impressed with the Opening Ceremony. Except for the dancing number it felt more like just a lot of big names and that was it. All the special effects and props were wonderfully done but if there wasn’t a commentator telling the story, I would have been absolutely lost and wondering what the h*ll was happening the whole time. I am sure many felt that it was really good. To me it was just so-so.

I love the Olympic Stadium torch though! I think it the best thing! I was wondering what the children were holding when each country was coming into the stadium. Also when each child was walking up the flag hill and presenting them to the spectators before fixing it on the torch. So much guessing. I probably won’t be able to watch the closing ceremony. I hope I will be able to catch the replay some other time. Or maybe some highlights of the night, tomorrow.

Now, to the games. Malaysia did really well!! We are not really known for our athletes except in Badminton. A sport I have to explain to everyone in Italy. No one knows what it is! They have never really seen the racquet not the shuttlecock either! So, not so easy for me to boast about our amazing Dato’ Lee Chong Wei’s silver medal which put us on the medal table!!! I search for the medal table and proudly showed M.

Me: “See! See!! We are on the medal table!! Silver!!” *huge dumb-ass grin plastered on face*

M: “uh-huh.”

Me: “See!! Look!! Look!” *finger pointing furiously at Malaysia*

M: *blank stare*

Me: “Yay!!! hehehehe” *oblivious to blank stare*

Then a few days later, we got a bronze!!! Whoot!!! I was watching Pandelela in the finals in the gym. Luckily I was alone in the gym, if not people would have thought me crazy. I clapped and cheered when they introduced her and after each of her dive. I must have been such a sight! LOL!!

I couldn’t finish watching here as I had to go to the shop so I was really surprised and absolutely beaming the next day when I read my Twitter and Facebook updates. Ahhhh….it was a good day. 😀

I did the whole exchange above again with M. hehehehe!!!

Throughout the Olympics, I was very surprised at the amount of athletes we had who were diving. I was also so surprised we had a female 10km marathon swimmer who came in 16 out of 24! Very good effort! I would have died 3km into it, I think. I am really glad too that no Malaysians were involved in the female badminton scandal. All in all, Malaysia, you did well!!

Where there were no Malaysians, I give you one guess who I cheered for?

Forza Italia!! 🙂

Now to wait for the next Olympics in 4 years time. Rio 2016!!

300px-Cristo_degli_abissi — Christ of the Abyss – photo from Wikipedia

I am banned from going to the gym today. Ever heard of it? M says that I am overdoing it. Is there such a thing? I rested on Saturday and Sunday. Well sort of. My body was aching all over in a good ache kind of way so I rested Saturday. But Sunday we went out to sea. My first time out since summer started. I am a little tanned. Ko, if you are reading this, it so freaking hot now, you escaped it by 2 weeks. A week later, and both Sha and you would have fried in the heat. It was about 38˙C with 86% humidity. If I wasn’t out at sea, you would need a crowbar to pry me out of the house. We went out on our jetski and since M was driving, I didn’t want to, being lazy ass and all, I had to hold on to him as we were going like 60 knots. Crazy fast! Which ended with me having sore muscle, tan and a great day! In the end, I actually didn’t rest much. 😛

So, since I am banned from going to the gym or exercise, I am blogging. Yay! My prolific moments shall continue. As expected, I had to break this post to have dinner with the family but now I am back.

I have been living here on the Italian Riviera for years and have heard of this statue of Christ of the Abyss off of San Fruttuoso but I have never seen it in person. You can read more about it here. What’s more, I pass it all the time whenever we are out at sea on our way to Portofino or Sestri Levante. You can only reach San Fruttuoso either by foot from either Camogli or Portofino and from what I have read and heard, it takes about 2-3 hours to get there and the same to get back. Quite a hike. The easiest way would be by boat. There are more information about getting there from here, here and here.

So last Sunday, I decided that it was time I see it for myself. Told M lets go there for a swim since we didn’t want to go all the way to Portofino. On our way into the bay, the place was littered with jellyfish which made me a little nervous swimming there. But as we got closer to the beach it was clearer and free of jellyfish. What a relief! The water was cold at first dip but refreshing.

I set out to look for the statue and heard that it is further out and about 15m down. Water is very clear so I was hoping to be able to photograph it since I had my camera with me. I swam around till I caught sight of the hands of Christ. I tried to dive down closer to it to take a photo. I had on ill fitting goggles that kept letting water in. I possibly managed a paltry 3 metres and kept getting my vision blurred by water entering my mask. In the end, as they say, I anyhow snapped a picture. This is what I managed. You could just about see the outline of the outstretched arms on the left of the picture.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — What I managed to take

After a few failed attempts, I swam back to the jetski and urged M to dive down and take a better picture for me. 😛 He being the sweet man that he is obliged me. This is what he managed. He took a much better picture but still blur.

It should actually look like this when taken from a better position with all the right scuba gear.

Well at least I have seen it in person though not as clearly as I would have liked. Maybe I can rent some scuba gear the next time to see it better or buy better fitting goggles and train my lungs better to withstand the dive down to not only see it but to maybe photograph it better.

I have another post about my Sunday (when I get round to it :P) but this was one of the highlights of that day! 🙂

There are 2 more of these statues in the world. 1 a gift from Genoa to St. George’s, Grenadaand another was presented to the Underwater Society of America in New York and was later placed off Key Largo, Florida. Hopefully some day I can visit them both.