Green Season

I never thought the day would come when I'd switch on the air-condition voluntarily. Trust me: it gets warm down here. Really warm. Scandinavia had snow at Easter - well, here green season (much nicer and more tourist-friendly term for rainy season) seems to have started two months early this year.

Temperatures are around 36 (yes, celsius) and I believe the device still remains to be invented that can actually measure this level of humidity. All good.

Apart from the thunderstorm last night, which was the loudest and longest-lasting I have ever experienced. Following the storm, the surge was so bad today that our diveboat (and all other speedboats) had to turn around after 10 minutes and go back to the harbour. The guests were not exstatic - but would have been less so, if they'd been stuck on a 26 ft speedboat for three hours in 2 meter waves. Trust me on that one too.

Easter was peak season here and again business went far better than expected for us. Which meant another three weeks without a day off. Supposedly it's really quiet this week, but we still have full boats both for diving and snorkeling. Maybe next week.

The plan is to close the operation here end of next week. My first action will be going to Phuket for two days of shopping with one of my friends. Khao Lak has absolutely nothing in terms of shopping - unless you're looking for a tailor or an optician. After that, I'll be going on a liveaboard or two for some diving. NOT working, just diving. I can go practically for free, so it's not as decadent as it sounds.

Then I'll be packing all the equipment and office stuff here and get it to our office on Phuket.

Beginning May I'm likely to go to Koh Tao to visit Debbie and Beto. One of our friends from Saba comes to Thailand on holiday, so it would be nice to catch up and do some diving together.

After Koh Tao it's decision time........what am I going to do this green season, what am I going to do next high season (why is it not called brown season?). I have several options....Right now I'm extremely tired of working these ridiculous hours in the office. Sick & tired & frustrated actually. Which is why I am not making any important decisions right now - not the right state of mind. Right now I'd go for any job that involves diving.

Even life in Paradise is not always perfect ;)

The friend and Goddess who named me "qow" asked me whether people in general know, what the origin of that is. I'm sure some of you do. For all the rest of you, I'll give the explanation in my next blog update (now THAT's a cliffhanger).....

Take care lovely people
xxx from the QoW

Life in Khao Lak

So, what's it like to be an office worker in Thailand? Pretty much the same as in Europe, just a lot warmer. And possibly a bit more challenging logistically. One must never forget that time is even more relative in Thailand - tomorrow in Thai time is probably/possibly sometime this week. Or next. But not more than two weeks; generally.

Apart from that, the issues are the same: trying to get customers to sign and then making and keeping them happy, trying to motivate colleagues, trying not to throw the desktop out of the window, when it's painfully slow, trying to cope with the fact that the day only has 24 hours. And in between all of that it's a matter of being flexible and improvising as we go along.

Today, I've finally managed to take a day off. Well, obviously not an entire day - but 3-4 hours of time for myself. Went to the gym and then decided that it's about time I update you.

My life these days consists mainly of work, no fun. I do go out from time to time, but it's a bit tricky, cause I'm the office every day from 9:00-21:00 (just decided that we're closing at 21 "already"). That doesn't leave much time for social activities - especially since restaurants here close at 22. But yeah, we do manage to create a bit of a want-to-be-vortex feeling on a weekly basis ;))

In the meantime, Beto (former colleague from Saba and Debs' boyfriend) has arrived in Khaolak - and has had work pretty much every day since. Sarah has left for Malaysia, where she's working for the company I was supposed to work for. She does not sound overwhelmingly happy, but suggests that I go there as well in low season.

That's not the plan though: I'm supposed to work for Scandinavian Divers in Patong (Phuket). My job description there seems to have changed a bit though - from being on the boats every day (which I really want) to being part-time office as well. We'll see about that...

Last Monday I actually went diving! First time in about 5 weeks. And it was almost perfect: gentle current, fantastic visibility, ok divers. The "almost" bit refers to the only underwater creature I actually hate: Titan Triggerfish! Nondivers among you will not appreciate how horrible they are. First of all, nesting season has obviously started and secondly I obviously must have come a bit too close to a nest..........so this huge, mean-looking trigger decided to attack me, coming up from behind and biting my upper arm! Interestingly enough, the (quite painful) bite didn't go through my wetsuit (another reason not to wear shorties), but I now have a very impressive purple-yellow-black bruise. The bastard continued his attempts to kill me - but was unsuccessful as you may have guessed. My fins show the scars including a 3 cm long hole, where he managed to bite all the way through. Damn, I hate Titan Trigger!

Enough for now, I'll go back to enjoying my day off (still have an hour until I have to work)

Lotsa xxx

So you want to see my office?

No problem, this is my office most days:

And this is me - with a bad hangover - in the office:

Sometimes - but rarely these days - I get to see this view from my other office:

And of course there is a beach in Khao Lak too:

Business is going better than expected - or even hoped, but it's taking blood, sweat, tears and a lot of time. Luckily some of my staff members are really great - Debbie is one of them, she didn't go to Malaysia after all :D

I wasn't too impressed with Khao Lak when I first got here, but I am actually starting to like this place a lot - it is not at all like Phuket.

We're closing down end April and I am planning to take the entire month of May off - travel a bit around Thailand.

Hopefully I'll find the time to write a bit more soon-ish - but at least you got some of the requested pictures

Lotsa xx

I wonder why these things always happen to me??

Would life be boring if everything went according to plan?? I don't think I'll ever know ;)

Today I'm writing from Penang, Malaysia. Wasn't Karin supposed to be in Thailand, you ask? Well, I had to go out of the country to find a Thai embassy, so that I can get a 3-month non-immigrant B visa, which I need to get my work permit. I can't get the visa unless I've applied for a work permit though. Theoretically, with the 3-month visa in my passport I can get my 1-year work permit with which I can then get a 1-year visa. Let's see about that...

Everything was actually planned rather nicely: Saturday evening, the owner of "my" company had a big house-warming party on Phuket, so I combined business with pleasure: went to the party and stayed in Kata, where I met up with Debs on Sunday for a great day of catching up. Sunday evening I flew to Penang, where my visa would be fixed within a day in time for me to return to Khao Lak Monday evening together with the Debs, before she's off to the Perhentians Thursday.

Believe it or not: things were going just fine and according to plan, until a Thai citizen got arrested for murder and the ambassador had to leave immediately - before my visa was done...

Luckily I've booked a visa run package. First of all it saves me going to the embassy and stand in line 2-3 hours. Secondly, the visa run operator has good connections, so they actually delayed the plane for me. Unfortunately, the ambassador still didn't make it back in time, so I'm now stuck in Penang, while Debs is in Khao Lak :( Which brings us to the third reason, it was a lucky decision to book a package: they are paying for the new flight and two nights in a nice hotel.

Now, I'm sitting here instead of drinking Vodka&Tonic in the Happy Snapper with Debs :(

Work-wise it's a good test of the things I've done in the office: we'll see if the system works without my presence - which has been my goal anyway. And who said you can't manage a company through MSN and hotmail??

Not much I can do about it except go out and buy some new clothes and finally unwrap my Thai language course ;)

Laters
xxx

One has a plan until one makes a new plan ;)

Hello happy people :D

I know, I know......I promised to update the blog a bit more frequently than every two months.....

Better late than never - and now I'm here. Thanks for your patience ;)





Soooooo, I left Saba on the 6th December after a fantastic last night in the true Vortex spirit :D Ken left same time as I (pure coincidence), so we took the ferry to St. Maarten and met up with Bruno and Juliska there. It was an amazing feeling of relief to see Saba disappearing, the water was flat, the weather nice and we were both quite happy to be off the rock. At the same time, I was sad though: I met some really nice and quite a few fantastic people on that little island; people I'll hopefully meet somewhere someday.



46 hours later I arrived in Khao Lak (Thailand, north of Phuket) trying to convince my body to ignore the 11-hour time difference.


My new boss, Heinz, was nice enough to let me relax 19 hours before starting work and I moved into my new home. Well, "home": an empty room with a bathroom. Brand new, but no furniture and no warm water - and it's about a kilometer up a very dark unpaved mountain road. It's quiet though - except all the jungle noises ;)


I worked 14 hours per day on average, mainly teaching courses, so I earned quite good money in December. I was also very, very tired all the time. Finally, there was light at the end of the tunnel: I had a day off on 1st January. Party-time till 5 am. Yah mahn :D


The atmosphere in the company has been really, really bad. People leaving every day. Yep, actually worse than my last employer. I only stayed because I knew it was for a limited period of time, having a job waiting for me in Malaysia.


And then things changed rapidly this week.....Heinz was fired and I was offerered the position as operations manager. Earlier in my diving career than I'd expected, but I've been doing the majority of office work here the past two weeks anyway, so I'm pretty sure I've got it covered. The employees/freelancers who refused to work for us last week are all back again and everyone is happy. At least he's not such a tough act to follow ;)

So yeah, no Malaysia for me this time. I'd really been looking forward to a chilled year down there and to work together with the Debs again, but I felt that this opportunity was too good to let go.

I'll be in Khao Lak until the end of season (mid-April) and then I'll spend low season on Phuket, instructing and guiding. Mid-October I'm going back to Khao Lak to start up for the next season. Next week I'm going on a visa run to KL to get the work permit sorted.

All of this is the plan anyway. But as you all know (by now), my plans do occassionally change ;))

Apart from work, I haven't done much here. I've met some nice people, but haven't gotten into that Vortex feeling (yet)

I've invited the staff out for dinner etc on Friday night though - and told the office manager she has to fill in for me till noon on Saturday; it's good to be the boss *lol*

Another good thing about this job is that I'll be spending a lot of time in the office, which should (!) give me more time to update the blog and possibly even post a couple of pix ;)

Debbie is coming to Thailand next week on her way to the Perhentians, that's something I really, really look forward to. Quite a few things we need to talk about, quite a bit of vodka we need to dispose of.....

Oh, and I'm going to move to a place with furniture and (gee such luxury) warm water. And a fridge. Which means I can keep the tonic for the vodka cold ;)

Enough for now, must work a bit again - just had to take care of my bad conscience first

Laters (sooner)

xxx

It's Saba maaahhhhnnnnn

Saba is truly a unique place. And many weird things happen here. Many! On a daily basis. So (spoken with the typical Jamaica-like Caribbean accent) "it's Saba man" is one of the comments you'll hear very frequently here. That's the excuse, explanation and justification for practically everything.

For instance the rubbish situation. Rubbish is collected 6 days a week to avoid smells, rats etc. A couple of weeks ago, the rubbish stayed in the bins for 5 days! It started smelling badly (cause it is rather warm here) and finally, finally, the rubbish lorry passed by again and everyone was happy. What happened?

Well, the rubbish director (or whatever his title is) had decided that it's dangerous to let drunk people drive around in a huge big lorry on very narrow and steep roads, so he banned alcohol during work hours. The rubbish workers were understandably shocked, since tradition bids that they have their first Heineken around 8 in the morning. So they went on strike!

The director tried hard as he could to get other people to work for him, but with bad work conditions AND no alcohol, nobody was willing to do the job. The workers would not compromise, so the director had to give in.

And once again, peace is restored on Saba. The rubbish lorry just passed by one of my favourite watering holes, Tropic's, where I was having breakfast. And yes, the workers came in to exchange their empty green bottles for full ones. It's Saba man ;)

Now, the attentive reader may ask why I was having breakfast at 9 o'clock on a normal work day.....Thing is, I caught "it": The Saba Flu. It starts as any average flu with high fever and pain everywhere. But thanks to the climate here, it soon turns into a proper bronchitis! Bronchitis and diving don't mix well, so I've been on sick leave for a week and don't expect to be working for several days yet. Unfortunately for Sea Saba, two further colleagues are down with the same (as is approx. half of the population on the rock), so daily logistics are a complete nightmare. Vicious tongues may say they deserve this for treating their employees poorly, but of cause I would never say that.

I'm leaving Saba on 5th December, so I may actually have had my last dive here! At least that was a memorable one: a night dive with nurse sharks and huge jacks following us throughout the dive, swimming between our legs and trying to hunt in our torch light. Add to that 2 octopus in the open, 2 seahorses (one of them a very pregnant male), lobsters and shrimps everywhere and more bio-luminescense than normal - and you have one of my 5 best night dives ever.

I'm not allowed to bring my camera when I work, but on one of my days off I went fun-diving with one of our repeat guests, Paul - a really fantastic guy (why are all great men gay??) and managed to get a couple of ok shots. Here are Paul and Ken (my colleague) on the fine vessel Sea Dragon (my office):

What's with the picture on top of the post, you ask? Well, it features some key things from the past month: my niece, Bodil, who came two weeks with her fiance, Jon as well as a "Karin Special" and the nice view from Tropic's...

Bodil and Jon were great company and we even went diving together. And then I say no more, cause it's the law that whatever happens on Saba, stays on Saba ;)

The only issue was that I wanted to be a good aunt and give the young couple the opportunity to be alone for a while - which means I had to hang out in the bars every night and practically soak myself in alcohol for two weeks. It sounds tough - and it was! But I now have the respect of even the most hard-core drinkers on the island (which means a lot here - it's Saba man). And a drink got named after me: it consists of about 0,4 l of vodka (any brand) and 0,1 l of Ting (lemon-like soda). Ice cubes may be added liberally. The first times you try it, it's not really a pleasant experience, but one does get used to it ;))


Rumours about me have gone wild lately: everyone had Ken and me practically married - or maybe even already divorced (NO, we are just good friends!), but then I went to the wanna-be disco, Bel la Vita, with aforementioned Paul. After an hour of impressive dirty dancing, rumours were that I left Ken for Paul, who turned straight because of me. There are different variations of course, but they all add up to the same.


It's Saba man :D


Take care all you lovely people
xxx

Guess my life never gets boring.....

Ouch, it's been over a month since my last update.......sorrrrryyyyyyy.........

Before I forget it: Kees, thanks for your comments - I'm afraid I've lost your email address; could you give it to me again please?

Well, a month in my life is a long time and this time there have been a lot of changes; the most significant ones being that I am now single and I have quit my job.

Simon came to Saba and left again three days later. It's a complicated story. He is now staying on St. Maarten, where he is trying to find work. It was not an easy decision and we are both struggling with it, but basically we want different things in life. Luckily, I have found some fantastic friends here, who are doing their best to make me have a good time - if you're on Facebook, you can have a look at the pictures ;)

One of my issues is that I want to do this "dive stuff" all the time, not just during the winter months. That was also one of the main reasons to go to the Caribbean: there is year-round diving here.

Unfortunately, many things about the work and the diving are completely different over here. The work is physically very hard and I spend little time actually doing what I prefer to do (and am good at): diving, teaching and making sure the guests have the best possible time. To make matters worse, the diving here is not nearly as good as in South East Asia.

Life is short and I have made a commitment to myself to make the most of it.......so I have resigned and taken on a new job in the Perhentians (Malaysia), starting 1st February. The season there runs February through October, which leaves three months in the winter where one option would be to do some freelancing in Thailand.

Weather here has been really bad lately: rain, strong wind, big waves and the lots. I have not yet given a departure date, but I am looking seriously at going to Thailand soon to work there a bit before going to the Perhentians.......more to follow.....

I'm really excited about the Perhentians; back to basics :D

My niece, Bodil, and her fiance arrive in two days and are staying two weeks. But first I have to finish our monthly newsletter before tomorrow noon - and I'm not allowed to work on it during working hours, so I'm gonna leave you all again for now

Lotsa xxx

Karin