Dive-Monster Rhoody

When I arrived from Dumaguete to Manila, I catch taxi to drive me down to Parola compound Tondo Manila… I had terrible experience down there at the Delpan bridge  going to pier 2 north area…  just at the middle of the street under the bridge, the street going to  Divisoria  public market…

just in the middle of the traffic when the driver had to pull over and I got out from the taxi a young teenager came and grab my shoulder bag…  I was so nervous and shock when I saw his sharp knife when he said “GIVE ME YOUR BAG NOW” STAY CLAM AND DON’T MAKE ANY SCANDAL S  or  ELSE I WILL KILL YOU WITH THIS”  he want to hit me with his knife … I didn’t feel that he already hit and my left arm got slice by his knife, maybe while he was following me,  just right after I went out from the taxi his knife has already hits my left arm…    I was yelling and asking for help…  when I saw my arm bleeding … some motor bike tricycle help me and some pedicab driver hold the young hold-upper …

The taxi driver went out from his car and hit the teenager boy… the police came and hold this teenager hold-upper.. But at that time I got already my wound in my left arm… its not a deep one, but it hurts and bleeding so much at that time…  the police grab this boy and bring him to barangay hall. I file a case for what he did to me even he doesn’t get any of my bags….

This experience, happen to me is just terrible.   This experience can be happen again and again in any of the those people living in this area… lucky for those who haven’t experience it yet..

This situations show that those guys doing bad things like this are desperate and they don’t care of there life’s for what ever happen… its sad that they have to do it just to survive and have food in there plates..

And it makes me more sad, if I think that the money they earn from this way is just  wasted and used to support there bad habit like taking drugs , alcoholic drink and get drunk to death  and more… ect…

It is sad to think that they loose there pride, confidence, good ability in earning clean money  just to have enough  money for their everyday  living…

This happens at any places when young people are desperate and don’t have any options for the future… this guys don’t have dreams, inspirations and chance to improve them self and see the beauty of life to enjoy it…  without hurting somebody else or to enjoy there life with out any victims just for there own interest.

It is a dream of no fear, no limits of being happy in this world…

that way we could do things with out second thought of what would happen … kids are safe and don’t get hurt buy this situations and don’t take revenge for the future… or they just doing this just because  they are not  contented for what  they can do for living.. or its just really not enough money they can earn so they have to force them self to do this terrible way of their business or making money…

WHO IS TO BLAME ?????

The government?
The place where they are in?? or the situations????
The parents  and the families they came from? ???

Or them self that they cant take this kind of life anymore…

That way they waste their life while enjoying the money they earn in bad way???
Is this the life we can be proud of to our kids, to our families, to our government, to out country???

I DON’T THINK SO….
WAKE UP EVERY ONE AND START THE DAY DOING THINGS WITH OUT HURTING ANYBODY AND BE FAIR..
MAKE UP YOUR MIND, LIVE WITH DIGNITY, PRIDE, HONESTY, and DO SOMETHING GOOD for your SELF your kids, family, community, and in our country… even in our small little way…

It’s for the next generations; it’s for our lives and for yourself too…

All the best

Rechel

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This part of the story is about the BIG DIVE, how Dave Shaw and Don Shirley called the try to recover the dead body of the young Deon Dryer. All preparation is done and it was the day to do something no human being did before. What happens down the bottom in Bushmans Hole is documented in a dramatic way… with the Helmet camera of Dave Shaw…

Raising the Dead – Part 5

At 4 A.M. ON SATURDAY, January 8, Shaw and Shirley rose in the dark to prepare for the dive. It had been a rough night for Shirley. The previous evening, as he was changing the battery on his new Hammerhead controller, a wire snapped. Without the unit, he wouldn’t be able to make the dive. Shirley was devastated. Shaw felt deeply for his friend but was prepared to proceed without him. He put Shirley and Peter Herbst in touch with Juergensen Marine, the Hammerhead manufacturer. At 9 p.m.—the cutoff time he had set for himself—Shaw went to bed. With the help of Juergensen, a soldering iron, and some tinfoil, Herbst managed to jury-rig a fix. The Hammerhead powered up, and Shirley was a go again.

In the gray predawn light, Shaw and Shirley began the ten-minute drive to the hole, listening to iPods to relax. Shaw had bought two in Hong Kong, loaded them with mixes he called Deep Cave 1 and Deep Cave 2, and given one to Shirley as a gift. (Shirley’s favorite tune for the ride to the crater was Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love.”) At the water, they started squeezing into their drysuits. Knowing how long he might be underwater, Shirley added an adult diaper to his ensemble. The rest of the team—the support divers, the police divers, the paramedics—assembled as well, and the rocky, uneven ground around the surface pool became crowded, dive equipment spilling over every flat surface. Verna van Schaik, 35, a South African who had set the outright women’s depth record of 725 feet at Bushman’s in October, settled in with a large sheaf of dive tables. Shirley had asked her to run the dive as surface marshal, and van Schaik, who has magenta hair and a dolphin tattoo on her right ankle, was hoping she was going to have an easy day.

At 6:13 a.m., video camera whirring quietly on his head, Shaw shook Shirley’s hand, said, “I’ll see you in 20 minutes,” and ducked into the dark waters of Bushman’s Hole. A few minutes later, Theo and Marie Dreyer made their way to the water’s edge. They had come late so that Shaw wouldn’t feel any additional pressure to bring Deon back.

Shaw dropped quickly, letting the shot line squeak through his fingers. He hit the bottom in just over 11 minutes, more than a minute and a half faster than he had planned, and immediately started swimming along the cave line. As soon as the corpse loomed ahead, he pulled out the body bag. Then he knelt alongside Deon and went to work. He almost certainly could feel the narcosis kicking in. The helium and reduced nitrogen of his trimix would have limited the effect, but it was probably still as if he had downed four or five martinis. He had been on the bottom of Bushman’s Hole, at 886 feet, for just over a minute.

Thirteen minutes after Shaw submerged, Shirley got the go signal from van Schaik and dropped toward his rendezvous point with Shaw, at 725 feet. Approaching 500 feet, he looked down. The water was so clear he could see Shaw’s light almost 400 feet below him. It was about where he expected it would be, in the region of the shot line. There was only one problem: The light wasn’t moving. Shirley knew instantly that something had gone very wrong. By this time, more than 20 minutes into his dive, Shaw should have been ascending. Shirley should have seen bubbles burbling up as Shaw vented the expanding gases in his rebreather and drysuit. But there was no movement. No bubbles. Nothing but a lonely, still light.

Dave Shaw’s last Dive

There is no room for emotion or panic in the bowels of a dark hole. Shirley stayed calm, his actions becoming almost automatic. Shaw hadn’t signaled for help, but Shirley would be going to the bottom. A motionless diver at 886 feet is almost certainly a dead diver, but it was Dave Shaw down there. Shirley had to see if there was anything he could do, or at least clip Shaw to the shot line so his body could be recovered. OK, here we go, then, he said to himself.

At about 800 feet, deeper than he had ever been, Shirley heard the slight, sharp crack of enormous pressure crushing something, and then there was a thud. He looked down: The Hammerhead controller on his left forearm was a wreck. Without it, Shirley would have to constantly monitor the oxygen levels in his rebreather and inject oxygen into his breathing loop manually. It was a full-time occupation, an emergency routine at a life-threatening depth. Shirley was certain that if he went down to Shaw he would join him for eternity. He got his rebreather back under control and started back up the shot line, flipping through the alternate decompression profiles he was carrying with him on slates. He was facing at least another ten hours in the water. After a few minutes, Shaw’s light was swallowed by the darkness below him…

The next 10 hours became a nightmare to Don Shirley and at that depth is no one who can help him

… the drama at Bushmans Hole continues…

Rhoody

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I was so busy in the preparation of my daughters first periodic exam in her school, when I receive a call that my grand father is in the hospital… he had a high blood pressure and got stroke..  a month after he got bitten my wild  street dog, in the slum area… Parola – Tondo, Manila..

He need attentions and care from his family , this grand father is no relative, but we treat him as our own grandfather…  this old man is my mother’s aunties husband, we  respect him so much as our mother treat this old man as her own father… This old guy take care of me since I am  little girl… he treat me as his own daughter…. This old man treat me as his grand daughter and his own daughter too…  he called me “Anak” means  “son for a boy and daughter for a girl”

My love and respect for a father is what I feel for him… because of this emergency situations I have to leave my little princess and  my great papa take caring of my little girl Daisy…  I am so thankful that my boyfriend respect and understand me…  I also thank him that he support me just  to help and see this grand father even in the last time,,, as we both don’t know if he will stay longer here in his critical condition and situation as he is so old seek and so weak…  this old man can’t even move his left arm and help him self to go to the rest room or taking shower by his self… even when he is eating he need somebody to take care of him because he can’t even hold the spoon and focus to his food on his plate ….

“What I can help for this old man?..” is the first question I ask to my self…

“What I should do to help him?”.. is my second question to my self…

That time I’m in the middle of situation that I have to choose what to do and where to go…  I talk to my boyfriend and he understand me … after 4 days of planning and getting ready, he booked my flight to Manila.

Rechel

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Sometimes things are happening where you just don’t calculate with. So it was last week… Due to some family issues Rechel needed to fly to Manila and left me alone with the little one. So here Rhoody sits with a 8 year old Makulit girl in his house in Batinguel and wonders what to do with her. Not that she is a big issue, she is a gorgeous kid and 99% of the time happy.

The week started with a school-holiday on Monday what seems to be great … for her only of course… for me it means I can’t do any work as she needs attention. Fair enough, it was my choice 3 years ago to bring the little one down to Dumaguete.

It is also my choice NOT to have a maid who takes care of the kid. I am the absolute opinion that a mother who can produce kids also should be able to take care of them. Well, here in the Philippines it is different…

As soon as the mama pops the kid out it goes to a Yaya who has the exciting job to sit with the Kid the whole day in front of stupid TV-Programs to make sure the Kid learns nothing during the early years of living on this planet…

It is the tiny stuff what brought me the problems… My diet exists of food based on a strong mix of garlic, onions and chili, well not exactly what is on the top 10 list of an 8 year old kid. The first dinner was easy, we just went to a restaurant… hehe. The second day it was my duty to prepare breakfast…

Pancit, a local noodle dish … boil water, noodles in it, take noodles out after 5 minutes, “ready to eat mix” on top, done ? no problem for Papa Rhoody… To make it special a sunny side up egg on top. The little one loved it… at least when I presented it.

After the first try he said: Papa, it is very salty!!! Hmmm, she eats that a lot and I did not put any additional salt or spices on it. Looking again at the plastic sachet of the “dish” I saw that I did not prepare Pancit, I used a Noodle soup mix, just without water… no wonder that it is salty. Being a smart-ass I had some back-up cup-cakes in the Ref, as I planned in advanced and knew things will not run smoothly.

Messing up the Breakfast, my pride was tickled and I swore myself to prepare a great dinner for her after school. When I picked her up she asked me excited where we go for dinner. I told her that I will cook and the excitement dropped out of her face in lightening speed…

While Daisy was doing her assignment Rhoody was standing desperately in the kitchen, looking at philippine-typical tiny plastics where is nothing written on it and where I have absolutely no clue what is in there… If you look at the picture, you see almost similar powders one is cinnamon, one is pepper and 2 are something which I definitely could not identify… well, I guess there is no law that pancakes have to be sweet … hehe

Backup plan was Pizza delivery from Shakey’s, but HELL NO (I said to myself), Rhoody, give the little one some homemade food, show some creativity and make it yummy … I won’t write what I made but it looked great and she loved it !!!

The week continued with minor Hick-up’s like Rhoody teaches Filipino, Rhoody in the Kids department at Lee Plaza, Rhoody and the laundry and quite some more funny stuff…

All together Daisy and I had a great week, we both worked out as a great team and didn’t burn down the house… But finally we are happy that Mama is back…

cheers

Rhoody

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