New Years Resolutions.

As I managed to complete last years new years resolutions which was, pay off my loans and stop having sugar in my coffee I've decided to be a little more ambitious this year. #4 might be a little difficult but I'm up to the challenge.


#1 Run 5km without stopping or walking at all.

#2 Stop being so damn competitive and mean especially in Beach Volleyball. count to 10 seconds every time I feel like getting angry at my teammates.

#3 Save $25,000 extra.

#4 Make Martina a baking extroidaniare.

#5 Complete my Uni.

#6 Make smarter life choices, choices that point more to my future and not to distracting myself. Such as drinking less, spending more time with the important people in my life & being a better person all round.

2014 is going to be my year.

a wild dragon appears

My ex Couchsurfer Mike from USA was a mad reptile/bug enthusiast. Like me only more. He could spend hours watching and waiting for the perfect spotting of whatever the jungle would provide. When he stayed at my house there was a particular Lophognathus temporalis, a Northern Water Dragon that used to run the exact same loop at the exact same time for every morning. Mike pointed him out to me and sometimes we would just sit there watching the lizard on its route. He was so predictable. When Mike left me I saw the little fella sporadically. He was becoming part of the furniture now so I didn’t sit there and watch him like I used to. And the times were inconvenient to my schedule. But when I caught him occasionally just chillin on his favourite palm tree I smiled always remembering my past surfer and the shared moments on the balcony. The little dragon was growing bigger and bigger.

The tree got cut down a month ago. I didn’t really think about it. My life has grown so chaotic that I kind of forgot about that little dragon and the times when we used to just sit there and watch the life in my garden move around us. I forgot about the entire ecosystem that exists under my feet. The unseen. For the first time in ages I was awake on a Sunday morning at 6:30am. Not only was I awake I was active and productive. I was walking around downstairs when I saw him. He was sitting on the trunk of the sawn off tree just waiting. He is huge now. Fully grown and despite his favourite palm tree being cut down he found it and still he sits there as he makes his predictable loop through my garden.

And life goes on around me. It never stopped, I just stopped watching. Sometimes you need to slow down and breathe the air, smell the flowers, listen to the birds and open your eyes. It’s a pretty incredible world out there don’t miss out on it.

dreaming of the ocean

I’m a technician both in career and life, I look at my work in a factual step by step logical way to resolve issues complex or not. And I look at life the same way. I analyse, I pick apart, I find the truth between the lines and I approach with a level head.

When I dive, when I slip the regulator into my mouth and lower my head below water I am transported to a place where logic and reason stop. I slow down and breathe at a regular pace. A parrot fish taunts me with its vivid colours as it flits about the ocean floor, a star fish lays silently and motionless, not motionless just not moving at the pace the naked eye can see. A small reef shark pops out from rocks it was hiding its grey flawless body glides beneath my fins oblivious to my motionless perfectly buoyant body. A different world is beneath, beside, above me and I am a just an observer. 

Some of my best thoughts come to me 30 metres deep below the surface. Life above the ocean is busy. When all the chaos is removed your mind becomes empty you can stop and think. Logic and reason floats away with the seaweed and I immerse myself into the new reality. I love to dive there is not many things in this world which bring me as much peace and pleasure as diving. Its hard to explain sometimes to people who have never experienced it just how life changing it is. Under the water is when I am at my most spiritual. You can’t help but question when your world is not your own.

Who could have predicted how life changing that trip to Vietnam would turn out to be. And now a week from Today I will be once again heading for the ocean. Travelling with my good friend Diane we are off to Coron, Palawan, Philippines for a week. I can’t wait.

All I can think about is and I quote myself from an entry I wrote one year ago “Being underwater actually gives an immense sense of freedom that cannot be found above the surface.”