The Exam

The pressure of exam became immediate and we did not sleep well. We woke up a bit later than normal, at about 7:10am. M was nervous and needed one piece of toast for breakfast, while I still have my full American one. Somehow M was given 2 pieces of toasts and since I didn't have extremely good appetite, I made a bacon and sandwich with M's extra toast and some of my own food. Ellen gave me a ziploc bag to contain it.

As expected we spent the morning watching videos again, checked the review for chapter 4 and 5 with Eriko. During all these some hotel guests or divers used the balcony to go internet and someone shut the sliding doors opening into the balcony to prevent the noise of our video (and on the other way, those hotel guests' conversation also distracted us). Lacking ventilation from sea breeze, the video room became a bit hot and stuffy. Maybe this and other psycological effect, M developped anxiety syndromes again.

Eriko showed us where we can buy sea-sick pills. There in the store I saw hair conditioner in small foil packs, which my hair desperately wanted. I didn't hesitated a second to buy 2 packs. These and 2 sea-sick pills costed only P50.

We went back to the hotel and had light lunch with ham and cheese sandwich, each taking half of it, and a dressing soaked ceasar salad with hard boiled egg and bacon chip, which hardly resembles the genuine thing. We only finished half the salad, but since I took the bacon and egg sandwich I made on the way to the store I took the bacon and egg sandwich I made, I was feeling a bit stuffed.

M took a sea-sick pill and a dose of panadol after lunch. But soon afterwards M began to throw up and become dizzy. The food should have no problem and I guessed most of the part was caused by M's own anxiety.

We managed to do the swim test and skin diving techniques, but we had to break before M could continue for the scuba part. We asked M to take rest lying on a sun chair of the resort in shade. While I was waiting, I had nothing to do but sitting on the poolside, in my wetsuit, and watching a pair of European taking their review course.

M wanted to quit (again) but finally agreed to continue. We needed to do neutral balancing (hovering in water), releasing and replacing weights, releasing and replacing equipment both under water and at surface. By the time everything finished, it was approaching 4pm and Eriko suggests that we have both the last 2 dives on the day that follows.

After cleaning up, we were allowed to study a bit before taking the exam. I had enough time to go through the technical reviews at the end of each chapter. Both me and M got 3 questions wrong, which is well within the passing rate of 75%.

Dinner was light again, at Coco Vida with Penne al Arrabiata (in a tomato based sauce with chili and paprika, and permesan cheese, or to be exact, something like the Kraft permesan style cheese powder) and Ceasar salad (better but still far from the genuine thing). These plus 2 coke were P410. I paid tips P10. Ice-cream for dessert as usual costed P240 (P120 each).

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