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

What did we do in the good old days?

For all you weirdo's out there, who think we cannot live without the internet: we can! It's not easy, it's not nice, but it is possible. And reduces my bad conscience for not updating the blog, sending birthday greetings etc.

So yes, after 4 weeks on the internet waggon, I'm back on the www and in touch with the world again. Just heard that Pavarotti died last month; wonder what other news I didn't hear. Ignorance can be bliss, hey?

Quite unexpectedly, bathroom renovation works started today as scheduled.....they've taken out the bathtub, so I cannot shower this week. Which is btw a bigger and rather unpleasantly smelling problem, when you have a physically demanding job in extreme temperatures......Fortunately, I have a colleague, who is both nice, lives next door AND has a cistern, which is big enough for me to have a daily shower (water supply is a big problem over here).

Remains to be seen whether works continue as planned or convert to Saba schedule...

Simon is arriving in just two weeks, yippie :) Looks like we managed to get through another long separation without visible scars or traumas.

Wheather here is still really good, with comparably calm seas most days. It will get rough in winter, but at least I'll have more experience as boat crew by then (picking up mooring lines is not as easy as it may sound to some).

Lotsa greetings to all you nice people out there. Hope it's not too cold, rainy and miserable where you are ;)

xxx

Just another day in the office

In the meantime I have moved into White Rose Cottage here in Windwardside and have got some sort of everyday life consisting of working, eating, sleeping and some socializing. I must admit that most evenings I am too tired to do anything.

Work here is physically hard and I still get at least one new bruise every day. On the other hand, it saves money for the gym and ensures that my clothes don't get too small. Oh, and I'm turning blonder each day as well ;)

I thought you'd like to see some pictures of my new home, so here they are:

The internet is still not up and running in the house, but the phone is working, so if you want to give me a call it's +599 416 2565. Please remember the time difference!! We are 6 hours behind main Europe.

I'm obviously still counting days towards Simon's arrival - still one month to go and we're not even halfway through our time apart. Sigh. Big sigh.

Since I have a day off today, I'll continue the process of making this house a home. Today's project: getting all the things that are stored in boxes out of the kitchen cabinets and clean everything. Maybe that way, I'll finally reduce the number of cockroach sightings to a reasonable level. I hope ;)

Take care you all
xxx

Quick remark on the diving

Well, I am currently having my second day off!! Things are going well that way ;)

Work here is hard, meaning I probably won't gain any weight and I won't need a gym subscription after all.

Diving here is good: ridiculously clear blue water, pristine corals and sponges and the fish life is different from Thailand and the Philippines. Not as many different species, but some nice pelagics in addition to the smaller "stuff".

I have some nice and some very nice colleagues. We're having lots of fun in addition to some good team work.

Most of the "old" staff is leaving within the coming weeks, so we are all relatively new - which probably makes it easier to get integrated. Once Travis moves, I'll be moving into our home here: from the outside the house looks absolutely beautiful, with a really nice outdoor area and stunning views. But then again, you have stunning views everywhere on this island.

The new home also features a guest room, which my niece, Bodil and her boyfriend, Jon, will inaugurate end October, when they come to visit :) I really look forward to their visit!

All in all: if I wouldn't miss Simon so much, I'd be having a fantastic time.