Haircut fun

Well, I seem to have bad luck with haircuts when away, and this trip has been no exception. I asked Alice to do my hair with the clippers: number 5 on top and 3 round the sides. We set up a chair in the sand with a 5m extension cord and got things going. There was a small hand mirror, which I checked for the first few passes just to make sure that she knew what she was doing. Seemingly, she did. Things went swimmingly, with the sides done to the appropriate lengths, and all that was left was to even up the top. And then the comb fell off. Alice failed to notice and kept the ciippers pressed close to my scalp, thus leaving a 3 inch by 2 inch bald patch in an otherwise pretty good hairdo. I suppose that's all you could expect when you ask a complete novice to do your hair! Thankfully I've got 4 weeks until my interview in NYC.

You'll also note from the photo that it seems holding up two fingers behind someone's head in pictures is a global phenomenon. Oh joy. That's Arturo, mi amigo Mexicano, by the way.

What else has happened... Playa over the weekend was great, but I didn't manage to do any kiteboarding. But the cenote dives were awesome: the water was incredibly clear (the visibility was at least 50m) but really, really cold. In some places, the passage was only large enough for a single diver to pass while at other points, the cavern extended to maybe 50m wide, with stalactites and stalagmites punching up and down all over the roof and floor. There wasn't too much in the way of life, but there were shrimp, and lots of bogie eating Tetras.

I did my first Divemaster Trainee (DMT) dive today, which meant going on a deep dive with the 4 new 5 weekers. I had a few responsibilities: buy eggs for an underwater demonstration (more on that in a bit), make sure that everyone kitted up properly, lead the buddy check, make sure there no problems with descents/ascents with the group, make sure that there were no wanderers, lead a mental acuity test at depth test and crack an egg and float the yolk around to people. The mental acuity test is to show people that at depth, motor skills are slightly impaired because nitrogen blocks neurons. The egg yolk demo was just to show that pressure acts upon an object at depth from all around it, so that the yolk is spherical and you can bat it around like a ball. Kind of fun, actually. Anyway, the main part was to make sure that the other divers didn't have any problems. But right off the bat, as soon as we started the descent, one girl had equalising problems (pain in the ears) and one girl had a mask full of snot and seawater and she had mask squeeze. Anyway, all problems were sorted out, and I felt like a real, proper diving dude!