A dive leader

United we sail, divided we snorkel...

If you are running any kind of business (even if you are just a CEO at insurance company, doing nothing all day long), you are considered to be the boss of the certain outfit.
And you are supposed to receive:

a) all the glory your subordinates deserve
b) admiration of your clients because your staff work their asses off
c) worshiping of your employees
d) a lollipop every morning

If you are not able to take credit also for occasional blunder your people do, well, then even lollipop is in question...

As one of my Chinese students nicely put: “Business is like war, you need solid strategy, you need flexible tactical solutions...”. And if we want to lead our “warriors” successfully we have to educate them and train and train and train them.
Their adequacy is our responsibility. If you are a role model just for greediness and stupidity, and you offer poor education and shitty training – what will you expect from them?
As slightly megalomaniac French diver (or was he just an emperor?) on a rare bright moment said: “There are no shitty troops, there are only shitty commanders.”

My brave brothers in arms in the holy war of good leadership, simply give your best to your troops and you will receive the best from them.
You may demand a lot from them. Sometimes even more. But when push comes to shove – then you, yes you, will stand between them and pissed off client.
You fucked up either with organization of work, preparation of your guys – whatever, you take the heat and prevent shit from happening again.
When they praise you from here to next galaxy, never, ever forget to share praises with your team.

If your people take you as a strict but fair boss (if you have genes of Genghis Kan and Mother Teresa it helps), if they rely on you, if they respect you for your knowledge and experience (and not your bitching) you will always achieve your goals with their support.
If you allow some humor to brighten dull working chores, well, this is like a cherry on a delicious cake.

In a nutshell, we are again back to “You reap what you sow...”

We live only once

Learn from us.

As each and every life we live, we live only once, we should make a good use of it. What would be the key-points leading to full, happy life?

a) surfing on the net for the essence of life
b) attending crash courses “How to live”
c) bitching about the jobs
d) passionately enjoying in the boredom of everyday life

If you are a representative of a group “What most people do, I'll do”, you'll probably find most (if not all) of the answers above accurate.

However, if you find yourself a little left from the field declared by herd as “Bordering to normal”, you'll try to find some different answers.
Minor problem with these answers is, more you look, search for them, more elusive they are.
Rather similar to chasing love, cat, happiness... More wild is your chase, less chances to catch it.
Stop chasing the cat and she will come into your lap.
Answers, success, happiness, love..., they tend to behave very much the same.

Allow good things to happen to you.

And there is some difference in waiting and expecting for good things to happen and allowing them to happen.
First principle is from the category “searching, hunting, chasing” with all the consequences.
Second one simply happens.

If your mind is still impatiently uttering words as When?! Where?!, well, maybe you do not want to encounter things that make our lives a stardust covered rainbow...

Bali businesses going bananas

Abandon hope all ye enter here...

As our village is turning from a rather poor, remote settlement into economically blooming paradise, number of smiling, happy people is proportionally going down.
What is going wrong?

a) as in most places in the world – many things
b) creativity and fresh minds are gone with the wind
c) business ideas and solutions are becoming slightly weird
d) number of bankrupt businesses is heading towards stratosphere

Through the years some change in mindsets started.
Old idea of doing what you are good at, what you like to do, what you are nicely paid for – this is passe!
Doing a business, even if you don't know what the word means, is the thing!

How this started and what is going on?
Probably they collectively attended a workshop “Stop working – do business”.
Guidelines from this workshop are simple:

"Having a good job with a nice salary is for losers. For success you must have your own business. If you don't have funds to start it and not a slightest clue how to do it is not an issue. Look at it as a challenge and your advantage.
You take a look what business your neighbor has. Then borrow heavily. As you have to stand out, you don't copy blindly from your neighbor – you have to use your creativity. If neighbor is offering fried noodles, you put on your menu fried noodles special... And after a short while you have dozens of same rundown businesses all struggling to survive and from time to time going belly up...
As (just in order to keep your business above the water) you desperately and unscrupulously try to steal staff and guests from your neighbors your relationship with neighbors becomes a touch sour..."

Before you start laughing at simplicity (some bad characters would say stupidity) of Pemuteran people, just take a look at the newest international enterprise in Pemuteran.
After intensive fact finding mission great business minds gathered information that six hotel restaurants in Pemuteran offer also pizza. All together they manage to sell 12 to 16 pizzas per month.
Voila!
After a heavy brain-storm they rented land, and a bunch of locals from the neighboring village, some French and Swiss “blue sky thinkers” and one Pemuteran businessman are preparing to open a striving business.
Yeah, a pizzeria...

A living, walking proof of a combined Western - Balinese business superiority...

 

Decisions

Decide.

In time spent between the cradle and the grave (in some circles known as a lifetime), we have to cope with zillions of decisions. As time spent deciding and weighing the options can be hardly described as our quality time, what can we do to lessen the waste of the time?

a) hire a gypsy fortune-teller to decide for us
b) flip a coin for dilemmas
c) spend life undecided and frustrated
d) immerse into scuba diving and learn from it

Deciding can be really a pain in the ass. To listen to our ratio? Heart? Intuition? Gut feeling? Wrong? Right?
Maybe it's better not to decide at all. Hmm, not deciding is already a decision itself. Right or wrong...
Or just a brief glance at options and decide. Well, if you decide wrong, sometimes it's difficult to undecide. Jump or not jump? When you jump it's hard to unjump.

Scuba diving requires decisions very often. For some we have ample time, for some seconds. Some not so important, some crucial. More than half of the wrong decisions in diving are result of no deciding at all.
And if I want to continue writing these posts and you reading them, our decisions better be good.

If you approach scuba diving as your passion in which you want to immensely and very safely enjoy, good decision making process becomes your second skin.
Integrating this into teaching scuba is part of any level of diving courses.
Correction. Not “is”, but better “should be”.

If your teacher leads you properly, you will not just master some theoretical and practical things about scuba diving; also your amazing tool; installed somewhere in your subconsciousness, making decisions for you; will become more sharp and more effective.
Major weakness for proper decision making is too much focusing on pure gathering of a multitude of facts (especially in information overburdened society we live), instead of teaching the way how to use relevant, even if scarce, facts properly.

Being capable of installing a fantastic light in your room, connecting all the wires properly, scientifically determining adequate wattage will not make your room any brighter.
Unless you decide to switch the light on.
Decide.
A lifetime spend gathering facts on the meaning of life or some eternal moments devouring the taste of stardust on her lips...

Live, dive, love – as a monk

“Immersion” - as envisioned by Saint Diving Guru

 



Country I live in, is considered open to various religions. Even rather obscure and outdated religions, such as Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist are accepted here. However, religion of SCUBA Blue Church is not yet recognized as a religion.
Are we, dwellers of the depths, true religious leaders?
Let's take a look at the basic elements defining religion.

a) deep faith
b) dedicated places for true believers to worship
c) higher forces to believe in and to ask them for guidance
d) priests that can initiate you and absolve you from your sins

As a high priest of SCUBA Blue Church my faith in my old Dive Rite BC and my trusted Poseidon X-treme deep regulator is solid as a rock.
We, Blue Church members all deeply belief in good SCUBA equipment, pure air in our tanks, in our deserved self confidence and our right to enjoy being free spirits.

In our north western part of Bali we have 33 sacred places from 5 to 40 meters below the surface to worship blue planet.

Without help of divine higher forces we would never survive thousands of hours in habitat not meant for land based creatures.

High priests of Blue Church can not only initiate you and absolve you from your land based sins, much more, we can even lead you on the path of pure levitation to free your mind of everyday evils.

My monastery is simple, rather ascetic, but you can find several holy religious artifacts and persons here. Jacket, Saint Dusan uses for his ceremonies in Blue Church, head cover of the same saint, his quatro plana fins, two Cosmic Priests Mazi and Ficko and so on and so on...

When I've been checking with government why we are not yet recognized as a religious entity, one guy mentioned “You never declared a holy war against non divers...”



Journalism

Oh, my benefactor, I'll praise you in my article...

What are major hardships of investigative reporting? Either from fancy spa in Europe, a fantastic ski resort in Switzerland, or an exotic dive destination...

a) frantic emailing, texting, calling for free accommodations, free dinners, free...
b) negotiating with the owners of businesses for more and more benefits
c) twisting serene, leisure activities into attractive wild stories
d) trying to get a fair picture to present it to readers

Type d journalists are a little more rare than dodo.
Type a, b and c journalists are a little more densely populated than rabbits in Australia.

But what's the difference between paid ads and a reportage if journalists are paid by businesses that are willing to pay?
There must be some difference.
I'm just not able to pinpoint it.

For ads you pay to the account of the magazine, for a reportage you pay to journalist directly. With free this, free that... More freebies, better is your business.

Readers can rely on this published articles as every reporter will very carefully and objectively evaluate the value of received free services and his report will be objective to the maximum.
For instance if a journalist receives a free coffee, this coffee will be praised. On the other hand, if he will be asked to pay for a cake, this cake he will mention as a totally overpriced. So, business owners please pay attention for what elements of your business you would like to get high marks.
Journalists' objectivity and integrity you can not fool.

Advice for business owners.
Increase the prices of your mediocre business for 5 to 10%. Use this extra income for supporting investigative journalists. Articles about your fantastic, unique business will attract more and more customers.
Looks like a textbook win win case both for business owners and for journalists.

True, but what about the readers, customers; all these naïve, trusting souls...?

Cookies from Bali

I accept your cookies...

Extremely evil and terrifying cookies are spying on us all around the globe – software generated cookies...
Our benevolent governments reacted fast and efficient, as a lioness protecting her cubs.
OK, it took more than 10 years for reaction.
And reaction is on a par with not so brilliant minds of our beloved legislators.
Every web page baking, consuming, distributing, licking or promoting cookies must put a warning about this horrible activity on their web pages.
What are we supposed to do when we see law enforced warnings on web pages?

a) say no to offered cookies and block ourselves from information
b) say a prayer before every click we do
c) destroy computers, mobile devices and video surveillance cameras
d) learn to automatically click “I accept”

If you count visitors of your web pages you must put a notice about this horrible activity on your web pages – or pay the fine.
No, this is not something from a nearby funny farm, it's the law. When and how the authors of this regulations escaped from funny farms I wouldn't know.

Basic issue is we are monitored and tracked during most of our activities. Sometimes it's annoyance, most of the times we do not care, rather often it's fun.
As for many of our daily activities we use different e-gadgets, it simply means whoever is really interested in our activities, will learn about them.

But is this really so different from living a simple life in a village? In the village I live, nobody uses email and text messages interception and decryption tools, they send me cookies only for religious holidays and yet everybody knows I like chicken with chili, when I go to sleep, when I'm diving...
Shop owner next door knows exactly which brands I like and he orders them to keep stock for me.
Somehow I find this idea that everybody knows everything amusing and not a cause for a paranoia attack.

And on the other hand if you take a look at western e-world, it seems it's very similar to a laid back village in Bali.

Just means of gathering information are different.
Here they ask me when I walk home with a bag “What did you buy?”, in western world I tell them through internet shopping or e-window shopping.

Already old saying “World is becoming a global village”, is now a fact, however, some really brilliant government officials obviously never heard of this.

Fact is also, either we live in a real village or in a global e-village, we can anytime close the doors, draw the curtains, block the tracking on internet – and say “That's none of your business!”. When we feel like doing this.

For a few weeks I'll stare and read at the notices on web pages about their cookies, then I'll take them for something similar to warnings at the ends of medication commercials “You should consult your health care provider before...”; or on a cigarette pack “Smokers die younger...”
And, as a big majority of us, I'll soon learn to automatically, without thinking, click accept to continue my searches...
And so we will all live happily ever after...