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March 29, 2007

Breathing Underwater Without Gills

First and foremost, congratulations to all the Round 2 London Business School Admits out there! The notification date was last Friday so the tension of uncertainty should have long passed by now.

Sometime in the past couple of weeks, I added labels to many of my posts. I was looking for a simple way to list all my labels in the side navigation using the classic blogger template format. Research has yielded a few complicated ways, none of which I particularly like. Regardless, all the MBA posts have been labeled for anyone interested in my path though the MBA process.

Interestingly, the number of LBS MBA2009 admits on the portal have ballooned from a steady roughly half class after R1 confirmation to over double immediately after R2 notification. I'm sure as the confirmation deadline passes the number will fall, leaving room for R3 and R4 admits. I don't think any applicants should be concerned by not having space at LBS with these numbers.

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As a friend promised, learning to dive was a blast. Another LBS admit and I spent last weekend at a PADI certification course at at Aquarius SCUBA. The classroom sessions were pretty laughable. The facility itself took it reasonably seriously, but there really wasn't much to really learn. The final module in the course book was essentially an extended advertisement for other courses that PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors - Put Another Dollar In - whatever) offers. It wasn't all bad. The safety tips (cardinal rule - never hold your breath, always keep breathing) and the dive table work were useful.

The practical pool skill work was the cool part. The instructor was great, ex-police diver, so he inspired a lot of confidence. One of the first things at the pool he told us was that it's normal at some point to panic underwater during the session. In the event that that happens, our first instincts would be to surface. What he stressed was that whatever you do down there, you're pretty safe. Just calm down and you should be able to think your way out of any problem. It's good advice in general, but me being me, I thought to myself - whatever! As if I'm going to panic. We did our entries into the water and with a quick briefing, we were to deflate our BCDs and descend.

The first breath I took was exhilarating! The sensation of breathing underwater was unreal. By the second breath, I was starting to feel a little less confident in my abilities. My mask started filling with water and, probably by virtue of it being a cheap rental, the regulator didn't fit in my mouth as comfortably as it could have. In fact, with the air pressure on the hose leading up to the regulator, it felt like it was going to be yanked from my mouth at any second. I then accidentally inhaled through my nose, sputtering as the water burned the places where water shouldn't be.

I'm confident enough to admit that, at that point, I was slightly panicked. Just like the instructor said, my first instinct was to want to surface. I fought it though, the rational part of my brain luckily kicking in. I reminded myself that as long as that regulator was in my mouth, I would keep on living. After a few solid deep breaths, I regained some semblance of composure.

Everything else was easy from there on in. The skill that concerned me the most was that of breathing from free flow. Free flow is the state where your regulator fails (or your hose has been cut) and air just streams from the tank. In that case, you are supposed to "sip" the air bubbles coming out and make a controlled ascent. I did not believe this whole sipping air business could be done. Apparently it can though, as my continued existence after breathing from free flow for a minute demonstrates. All without getting any water in my lungs too!

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Posted at 3:24 AM
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