My parents sometimes wonder why I’ve fallen in love with diving. Mum worries a little, diving isn’t the safest of hobbies and she seems to have this lingering paranoia a tsunami will some day strike while I am breathing compressed air in the middle of the ocean.
Inadvertently my parents raised me to one day become a diver. Born in Sabah, my weekend playground was Tanjung Aru Beach. I’d spent the day building sandcastles with different size pails, collect helpless hermit crabs and pour seawater into sand burrows hoping a big crab would scurry out. My dad used to windsurf, so if he was in the right mood to defy my mum’s nagging, I got to tag along and hence never had a fear of deep open water. I love marine life- it was a treat when friends and family came from the peninsula because it meant a day of snorkeling with the reef fishes at Manukan or Mamutik island.
But at a family trip to Sipadan more than 17 years ago I knew snorkeling would not let me get close or deep enough for long enough to the wonders that lied in the deep blue beyond the island’s steep drop off point. From then on I always knew I wanted to dive.
Although it’s taken me longer than expected, as of 24th July 2011, I am a certified diver and have logged in 30 dives in under 6 months. Some say that’s a lot but I feel it’s too little… For I am making up for lost time 
