Discovering Scuba

On Sunday, my son participated in a Discover SCUBA session at the local swimming pool. The session was held by Kanata Diving Supply and we learned about it through a contact at Scouts. Turns out one of the Scouters is a SCUBA diver and lifetime client of Kanata Diving Supply.

The idea behind the Discover SCUBA session is to introduce individuals to the sport, explain the certification process and allow participants to use the equipment in the safety of a pool -- to test the waters, so to speak.

My son has expressed an interest in SCUBA diving for quite some time. In fact, his goal is to become a marine biologist and, as I found out on Sunday, he needs to be a certified diver to meet the program's entrance requirements. One of the owners of Kanata Diving Supply explained that if the kids got interested early on, they could continue training and become certified dive instructors -- this, she suggested, would be a great way to earn money for college or university. Kanata Diving Supply helps their students find jobs locally or at tropical resorts if that happens to be of interest. Apparently, female dive instructors are in short supply and in high demand - particularly in the Caribbean. Female divers take note.


The session began with an orientation to the equipment -- tank, regulator, buoyancy compensator, pressure gauge, depth indicator, weight belt, fins and mask. The instructor explained the purpose of each piece of equipment and how it works. He explained some of the math and science behind SCUBA diving including dive tables, Archimedes' Principle and Boyle's Law. The most important rule of SCUBA diving? NEVER hold your breath! It's no surprise that children can't participate in the program until they are at least 12 years old. Can you imagine teaching a 10-year old the chemistry and physics associated with diving? Me neither.

After some poolside instruction, the kids put on their fins, masks and weight belts and shuffled over to the shallow end. Once in the pool, they put on the equipment and the instructor came around to review the use of the regulator, buoyancy compensator and pressure gauge. Before putting on their masks, they learned about nature's defogger (saliva) and how to break the seal on their mask without filling it with water. Before submerging, the kids knelt in the water and breathed through their regulator to become familiar with the sound. Once they got comfortable, each child was instructed to lie on his belly on the bottom of the pool. The instructors helped the children adjust their buoyancy compensator until they reached neutral buoyancy which the instructor claimed was the "coolest" part of SCUBA diving.

Once they were comfortable (if they reached that point), the kids paired up with one of the instructors and swam to the deep end of the pool. They stayed submerged there for about 3 minutes swimming the width of the pool before returning to the shallow end.

What an incredible opportunity! We weren't even in the car before he started asking to enroll in the Open Water Diver program. Thing is he's too young to be a buddy, so ideally he should register with two adults. Not that dive buddies are hard to find (Kanata Diving Supply will hook you up with another diver in your area) it's just more convenient to take the course with someone who shares your same level of commitment and interest. Once he turns 15, he's allowed to accompany another diver as a buddy.

We'll have to see. Since it's an entrance requirement for the program he is interested in, it provides a compelling reason for us to comply with his request. Even if he gets his certification and then changes his career path, I can't help but think that it would be a great opportunity to build confidence and acquire new skills and knowledge.

Get a Job!

Well I did it!

I bowed to the pressure of security and economics and got myself a job. The company is called Equator Coffee and I picked up an office position working there from 9-1 each day. OK, OK, it's part time, but it still counts as employment. My creditors will be pleased, as will Revenue Canada. Self-employment I've learned, is not unlike unemployment to banks (at least initially); it makes them skittish and they express that through ludicrous lending rates.

My sister-in-law was trying to help facilitate my return to the workforce (she works with a placement agency). I think I drove her away with my unreasonable demands. Thing is, I have other goals I want to accomplish in my life and right now, a job is a necessary means to a critical end. This realization has come at the end of much reflection, introspection and many visits to the library. I finally get it though and I'm not going to forget it.

This opportunity, I hope, will provide me with a chance to learn the coffee business. I always envisioned myself owning/operating a coffee shop in my golden years. I love coffee and the atmosphere of coffee shops. Not the big chains, but quiet coffee shops where good music is playing in the background and where people are tapping away at the keys of their portable computers. The air is thick with the smell of roasting coffee. Today's newspaper is disassembled; its sections are littered across a half-dozen small bistro tables. The barista is carefully stacking biscotti and croissants in the glass display case. That's my vision.

Equator Coffee purchases its product from fair trade certified coffee cooperatives. Why is this important? Well, first of all it's socially responsible and secondly, it's important to me to work for a company that has goals other than the accumulation of wealth. I figure that I have been blessed with skills and I choose not to waste them by helping the greedy line their own pockets. The first real position I held was working for a very wealthy, very mean man who owned a franchise of food stores. In short, he was an ass, but he did help me arrive at my decision to establish criteria for prospective employers. It's one of the few good things that ever came of that job. Since then, I have been more discriminating in choosing my employment. So far, so good.

If you're not familiar with fair trade coffee, here's the link to Equator Coffee's web site:

http://www.equator.ca/aboutus/fairtrade.asp

I'll keep you updated on my progress. Learning a new job is always fun and exciting and stressful so I'm sure I'll have lots to write about. Wish me luck!

What's Your Sign

Another Blogger, The Patient Flosser, wrote that she had thought (among other things) about putting a nasty poster on her neighbour's door that reads, I AM AN INCONSIDERATE F***. She calls him Stompy and you'll have to read the entire post to decide whether he is deserving of the label or not. Here's the link (it's a quick read):

http://patientflosser.blogspot.com/2007/01/stompy.html

She described this act as "stooping" to his level and dismissed it outright. I, on the other hand, found it to be a very compelling idea. Now, I don't want to get into a discussion about Stompy, because it's easy to rationalize behaviour when we have the luxury of guessing about people's motives, but I am interested in the premise. What if this was one of our social norms? What if we were permitted or encouraged to place posters on the doors of our neighbours? What would the poster on your door say? What sign would you leave for your neighbours?

If you've been reading my entries you would probably guess, as I would, that my signs would say "dirty bathrooms," or "sharp tongue" or "flabby abs" or even "quiet, blogger blogging." The neighbour across the street might leave a poster on my door that says "yummy brownies," or "needs bedroom curtains."

I'd be all over this idea. I'm sure I would mostly use it as an opportunity to reinforce good behaviour through positive reinforcement - that, of course, would be the right thing to do. You know, "nice lawn," "world's best neighbours," "great kids live here," things that convey sweet, warm sentiments. That said, I have been known to have some pretty bad days during which I must harness all my will just to hold my tongue. I'm not sure I'd be as successful at self-restraint if I knew that I had this option available to me. An almost anonymous offensive directed at unsuspecting, but deserving people who push my buttons might be far too convenient an opportunity to pass up. On such a day, I could be lured to the dark side with as little as a sideways glance. Most often I just entertain thoughts of retaliation and am rarely compelled to act, but there have been a few regrettable incidents.

Consider this though; how would we behave if we knew that we were going to wake up the next day to a door full of posters? Would we try to be "cute & cuddly" or "strong but silent" or would we just wake up, pull the signs off the door and shout out defenses to our neighbours? Would we be more kind or more irritable? Would we be more tolerant or less judgmental? Would we concern ourselves more with the actions of others (the posters we're going to make), or pay closer attention to our own behaviours (the posters we find on our own doors)?
Let's ask Stompy.

Stompy, if you knew that your insensitive behaviour was going to result in a socially-acceptable method of public and personal defamation, would you be a little quieter? What's that? Go to hell, you say?

Well, there you have it. It's going to take much more than a sign on the door to curb the enthusiastic shenanigans of Stompy. Maybe a poster fastened to a brick with an elastic....

So tell me, what's your sign?

Thanks, Patient Flosser, for opening up this idea for me. It was a fun one to explore.

Tick, Tick, Ticking of the Doomsday Clock

As I was enjoying my morning coffee yesterday, Canada AM host Seamus O'Reagan told me that the Doomsday Clock has been set two minutes closer to midnight. As of January 17, 2007, the big hand is on the 11 and the small hand is on the 12. Do you know what that means kids? It means that there are only five more minutes until midnight. That's right, five minutes 'til doomsday. Grab your hats and coats and head to the nearest exit. No pushing and shoving please, and don't forget to tip the hat check girl on your way out the door.

"What is the Doomsday Clock?" you ask. Good question. I asked the same one myself.

Seems that back in the late 1940's some pessimistic atomic scientists got together to commiserate about how the whole world was going to hell and I'm guessing that Jack Daniels facilitated the meeting. Somewhere around midnight, I'm betting, one gloomy fellow pitched the idea of a doomsday clock to count down to the end of the world. Of course, back in the 40's they all thought the world would end in a puffy mushroom cloud compliments of the Soviet Union. Lately though, weather anomalies and natural catastrophes have this same group of scientists thinking that mother nature may get us before the nukes do. They are so convinced of this, in fact, that they decided to go ahead and advance the clock a couple of minutes. How bad is it?

Well, since the clock was arbitrarily set at 7 minutes to midnight in 1947, the minute hand has been as far away as 19 minutes to midnight and as close as two minutes to midnight. The chart here illustrates the roller coaster ride of the Doomsday Clock's second hand since 1947 (from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists compliments of Wikimedia Commons).

As you can see, we came awfully close in 1953 when the US and Soviet Union were actively engaged in nuclear testing with only two minutes left before the end of the world. We managed to beat a hasty retreat, turning back the clock over a ten year period until 1968 when France and China pinned on their pennants and joined the nuclear arms race. Since 1968 we've been up and then down, down, down, nearly hitting bottom in 1984 with President Reagan. The furthest we have ever been from total destruction appears to have been in 1991 when the US and Soviet Union signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

Tick, tick, tick and here we are in 2007. Iran is interested in nuclear weapons and North Korea continues testing their weapons in spite of admonishments from their neighbours in the global community. While weapons-grade plutonium cannot yet be purchased with the flash of an age of majority card at your local corner store, it seems to be much more available than it was in the past. As if worrying about Iran and North Korea isn't enough, we now have to be concerned about terrorist groups acquiring and deploying nuclear weapons. In the meantime, environmental stewards of planet earth are trying to control their fossil fuel consumption to avoid punching holes in the ozone layer as glaciers disappear from our northern landscapes. Even as I push my thermostat down to 62 degrees, I am wondering how this one small act can possibly compensate for years of nuclear testing. Surely nuclear tests are more destructive to the environment than a 13-year old, inefficient oil furnace.

Remember when man's biggest enemy was the bubonic plague. Kind of makes you long for simpler days huh?

Here's where I wonder if the clock isn't wrong. Isn't it more like 2 minutes past midnight? Haven't we already demonstrated, through years and years of reckless misuse of power and planet, that we are treating Earth in much the way an irresponsible teenager treats a house when his or her parents are away for the weekend?

Iran and North Korea are like the high school stoners gathered around a bong in the corner of the kitchen smoking up the place; it's unnerving, but it could get worse if they decide to pick a fight with the other kids so everybody leaves the room to talk about them behind their back. Like the high school football team, the United Nations is dancing with all the pretty girls in the living room but some of the players have had too much to drink; they start popping holes in the drywall and the quarterback initiates a game of keep away in the dining room running too fast for such close quarters, stepping on feet and jumping on the furniture. The terrorists are the unexpected party crashers from the rival high school who spray paint graffiti on the white aluminum siding, toilet paper the trees in the front yard and set the doghouse on fire. These unwelcome guests unwittingly unite the kids who agree that its time to call the cops and break up the party...until next time. The kids apologize, pull the Charmin out of the apple trees, and cross their fingers as they swear never to do it again. What happens? They re-offend. Why? Because they have not learned. They have not lost. Not enough. Not yet.

Is the clock wrong? I suppose not. In fact, as long as the minute hand is on this side of midnight, it suggests that we still have time to act. Like a final exam, as the minute hand approaches the appointed hour, both our pulse and our pace quickens. We gather up our things and head to the exam centre because for the next little while, nothing matters except passing that exam. In most cases, the rest of the world all but disappears as the door to the exam room closes. So no, I guess the clock isn't wrong.

My Two New Friends

Let me introduce my two new friends. Cute couple don't you think? I met them in a body sculpting class. I really enjoyed their company so I asked them to move in with me. Here they are getting acquainted with my sneakers.

I have decided to work on strengthening my core and toning my muscles over the next few months. I'm on a budget that doesn't include gym fees, so I'm on my own. I am, as of today, my own personal trainer. I'm already annoying me so I think it's going to be a success.

The exercise ball looks fun sitting there all shiny and purple but it's really quite dangerous to people like me; that is to say, the masses of uncoordinated, balance-free klutzes. The first time I used an exercise ball, I nearly split my head open. I remember observing the posture of the instructor and my body sculpting classmates, placing my ball firmly on the floor and then easing myself onto it's rubbery, rounded top. As I began to fall into the group's synchronized leg-extensions, I promptly lost control of my position and tumbled off the ball onto my mat, inches from my dumbbell. If the instructor knew how close I came to hitting my head on my weight, I think she might not have laughed. I did better with the wall squats and, after a few classes, eventually got the hang of it though she would not allow me to try the walkout so I had to stay on my mat and do push-ups. I consistently held the class trophy for "most wobbly" participant.

The instructor actually squatted on her exercise ball; both feet, knees bent, squatted on her ball. I was mesmerized. It was like watching Cirque de Soleil. OK, so maybe not exactly like that, but I was totally impressed. People stand on these things, I know, but until you try it, you just have no idea how difficult this is. It was the first time I remember wanting to have balance and recognizing what I would need to do to achieve that goal. I need to strengthen my core.

I took to the resistance tubing with much less embarrassment and much more confidence -- lateral raises, tricep extensions, hip extensions and inner thigh stretches. All you have to do is maintain a straight spine and tight tummy while slowly resisting the tubes. Toning is a good goal, I think. I don't want to bend bars of steel but I'd be happy to open a new jar of pickles by myself.

My biggest obstacle, I think, is that I can find just about anything to do besides exercise. I can vacuum, do laundry, read, organize or even blog and lately, I've spent loads of time looking for ways to earn money. What I need, I think, is my old routine which began by waking up at 5:00 (I've been sleeping past 6 since Christmas). Truth be told, I've been procrastinating living lately, and I need to stop which is why I added this entry to my blog.

I attended a workshop a couple of years ago with Robin Sharma (check him out at robinsharma.com) and one of the many valuable things he suggested, was to make our goals public. By announcing our intent to the world (whether that's the whole world, or just our world) it raises our level of commitment. It forces us to action. So here it is friends - my commitment.

No going back now. No sir. I'm just going to finish this blog, vacuum the living room, throw on a load of laundry, finish my book and do up a cover letter for that job over in Almonte. I'll start just as soon I'm done.