F@%$

After managing to finish my skill circuit and pass my equipment exchange I had a pleasant evening with Keith, James, Rich, and Andy ordering pizza and watching movies. At about midnight we hit up the bar and I was there for about an hour (2 drinks). When getting up to leave I discover... my backpack has been snagged. Yes. Crap. It had my IPOD, bank card, credit card, house keys, and driver's lisence in it (but not my passport or much cash). Double crap. $%^#!
A skill circuit is basically all the things open water students have to learn, except we have to be able to do them demonstration quality. These are skills like taking your mask off underwater, taking your regulator out underwater, taking your scuba gear off underwater and surfacing with no air (there are 20 skills in all).
The equipment exchange is just plain scary. The idea is to trade all your gear with another person underwater - BCD, weight belt, fins, and mask. BUT, you have to do this while the two people share one regulator (the thing in your mouth that the air comes through) AND the instructor is purposely making your life hell by ripping your mask off and filling it with sand or undoing your weight belt and blowing air from his Octopus (the bright yellow back-up thingy for your mouth) in your face. It took three tries, but we managed it. Thank you lord. I will never have to do that again, not even to become an instructor.
Ah yes, and the tv at James/Rich's house... we watched Layer Cake.. good movie.. before switching over to the tv and channel surfing. Well, on Fashion tv we found "hot hour" which basically consisted of swimsuit models getting their picture taken on a beach for an hour. The boys were in heaven.
The bar was good fun (except for the whole all-my-stuff-was-stolen bit. We were dancing and downing Jack and Coke and the Greenpeace boat had left (good riddance. One of the Greenpeace guys came on land and offended a whole bunch of Thai guys. The Thai are actually quite violent and he received the beating of his life. He's laid up on his boat with two broken ribs, a broken nose and a concussion now) so we're all glad to have our bar back.
I was supposed to do the Nitrox course today but I had to withdraw. I *may* barely have enough cash to make it back to the US so I can't afford the 5000 baht course fee with all my stuff gone ;( I'm really bummed about that. Maybe I can do it in Cali over the holidays. Another thing to look into: surf camp. Apparently there's a really good one near my folks in SoCal - how cool would it be to learn to surf?!