My brother in law used to dive. When I was around 10-12 years old, I used to see a lot of diving gears he used to dive including a spear gun.
My eagerness for diving was prompted after a trip with my sister to Bali, in January 2006. She and her friend were working to renovate a hotel in Bali. I was invited to join since I have nothing to do during my field break. While they are working to buy some materials, talking to workers, I took the liberty to snorkel around blue lagoon. After seeing beautiful fish, I want to go deeper and have a diving certificate.
At the office there is a diver who extensively diving almost everywhere. He is Henry Simanjuntak. Upon asking him the way to earn the diving certificate, he organized a class of four students. The instructor was Parvita Siregar, a seconded from Owner Company, working also at Jakarta office. Zul who was working in field with me at that time was also registered to join the training. Zaenal who is working at Jakarta office also joins the training. Chrala, the Corporate secretary join but did not continue due to some reasons.
After passing the Open water, we are looking for friends to dive together. Zaenal, soon called by nick name Zen, have a new channel obtaining friend that can dive together. Then we agreed to join the trip to thousands island. The so called cost sharing trip was organized by Adolf. After first trip with Adolf, Zen and others, I continue to follow the second trip with Adolf again while Zen cannot participate due to some reasons.
The second trip was then gave a birth to a mailing list called Alfa Dolfin. At the boat during surface interval, we agreed to make a mailing list. Promoted by Sani, a lecturer in University Indonesia, the mailing list was created. Pak Edy, a relatively new diver that always participate in diving with Adolf, mentioned that the Alfa Dolfin actual means Adolf, in short for Adolf. I participated in several trip organized by Adolf. The trip was quite relaxing, some of us commented in Monday using email saying they are fresh and gaining new spirit in working. The cost sharing trip was very efficient way to increase dive log as a subsidized trip such as National Geographic trip requires minimum 50 dives.
The Alfa Dolfin trip was getting bigger and bigger in participants; also the mailing list member was now surpassed 300 members with participant vary from newbie to expert, from amateur to commercial divers. There were also several dive centers selling various products.
To broaden the network, Zen asked me to get Advanced Open Water certificate using Ody Dive. Besides Alfa Dolfin, we used to dive with Immersion Quest as Parvita used their training facilities during open water course. We went to Bunaken with Alfa Dolfin friends organized by Immersion Quest. I and Zen also went to Bali, stayed in hotel renovated by my sister and dive at Blue Lagoon. I took Zen picture while diving at Tulamben wreck as depicted above as he swim close to schooling fish. I also participated in National Geographic Indonesia to Wakatobi last year.
