2007-03-31 Brand New World

Once again, I've been watching too much TV for the last few days. Westworld, for example: Yul Brynner plays a killer robot eleven years before Arnold Schwarzenegger became famous for doing the same thing. Not bad for the early seventies, but some scenes look rather funny nowadays, not to mention the background music. Also, there's not much talking going on. At least it's in color.
Next on my list was Notting Hill. I kinda like that one. I'm no huge fan of either Julia Robert or Hughes Grant, but this particular movie rocks. Where else can you find pearls such as "Happiness isn't happiness unless there's a violin-playing goat"? At the time it came out I visited London with a friend. We even went to the Portobello Road Market, so watching Notting Hill once in a while makes me remember the time. And a good time it was.
By the way: The company that paid for the movie is called Working Title Films. But that is not the reason I chose this name for my blog. I just didn't have a catchy name, so I chose something that could easily be changed at some later point. Working Title offered itself. If one sweet day my blog will be famous and the guys from the filming company want me to change the name, I will totally do it. It's no such a great name after all ]:->

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This morning I almost overslept. I woke up at 7:30 AM and closed my eyes for just a few seconds. When I opened them again, it was 9:30 AM. I got ready at the speed of light and jetted to the scuba diving training.
What a cool experience! Whenever somebody tells you what scuba diving is like: don't listen! Try for yourself, because it simply cannot be explained. There seems to be no gravity outside your body. Sound propagates more than four times faster, so you cannot make out the direction it's coming from, although you can hear the beeping alarm clock of a diver at the other end of the pool. Everything seems to be closer and bigger than it actually is (it's got something to do with refraction and stuff). Deeper down, red, orange and even green light will be absorbed and you see your surrounding in shades of blue. To sum it up in three simple words: Brand New World. And I'm going to explore it!
Today we practiced to get rid of the "water-nose-reflex" (at least that's what I think it's called in English, it's not in my dictionary). It's a strange thing I didn't know before: you cannot breath through your mouth when you have water in your nose! Luckily, it's the only reflex that can be suppressed by training. I also learned how to get the water out of my goggles (what a strange feeling!) and how to grab the mouthpiece if I lost it. That must come in pretty handy when you're 40 meters under water and somebody in front of you accidentally smashes his fins into your face. So training is kind of important here...

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Here's a funny little Google gimmick that's been around in the Internet for some time now. Note instruction 20.