Bill’s Reals Blog - Scuba, Travel & Gadgets

Now that Tax Season finally over, it’s time for my annual dive trip with my dive buddies. Last year we dove the USS Wilkes-Barre in Key West, Florida, it was a blast.
This year, we are doing a cave diving trip in Akumal, 5 days of diving the shallow fresh water centoes in the Yucatan Peninsula. This is going to be my 4th vacation and 3rd cave diving trip to the Rivera Maya. I love the place, if I could I would buy a nice vacation home and spend a month a year down there.

Anyway, I plan on taking my still camera this year and getting some good shots of the cavern zone and some of the interesting cave formations. John is shooting HD video, so we should be able to put together a nice little DVD of movies and still pictures when we are done.

I leave the last week of June.

I’ve known a core group of friends, since high school, in fact we all went to college together. Now this wasn’t the plan but we all ended up at Chico State and graduated around the same time. Most of us have moved around a bunch, started families and changed careers but we still keep in touch and try to get together.

This weekend we are converging on Las Vegas…god help us…..

A big Welcome to visitors coming here after news of Divester’s retirement.

What a long strange trip it’s been at Divester. I was there when it was a small, little, and private company and also through the transition to AOL. I’m sorry to see it retire but the old posts will still be around and you may see some of us on other blogs in the Weblogs family. Willy is posting on Gadling and is doing his usual bang up job.

There is no all in one dive blog and I’m still kicking around the idea of starting one.

In the meantime, my personal blog is primarily dive related, but also includes personal travel stories/pictures and other topics that I’m interested in. I plan on restarting my postings shortly.

If you just want to see the diving posts, then head on over to the “Scuba” category on the right side, or just click on this link: http://www.reals.net/category/scuba/

Wow.

We did 7 out of 7 planned dives on the Wilkes Barre in Key West, FL. The ship is amazing in its size, animal life, visibility and WARMTH of the water.

I’m shooting video this year and the footage that I am showing the fisherman back at the marina has them salivating. Some of these guys have been fishing this wreck for 20 years and were amazed at the activity on the wreck and the size and numbers of pelagic fish that are on this artificial reef.

The logistics to diving this wreck are impressive, their isn’t a tech diving scene out here, so we had to find a dive shop with a compressor, dive boat and crew. We ended up putting together ourselves as there wasn’t a shop that had everything.

We shipped our double tanks out to Cudjoe Key, Florida, along with a Haskel gas booster and we ordered 12 helium storage bottles and 12 O2 bottles from a local gas supplier. All of this gear arrived at the marina/diveshop before we arrived. We are using the marina’s compressor and fill-station to drive the booster, air tops and as our base of operations. This wreck requires trimix and two deco gases, 50% and 100%. We use enough of each to allow us to decompress on either, should we lose bottles, and we also have an extra 50 bottle with the safety diver.

We are doing two 25 min BT dives @ 230, one in the morning and then another in the afternoon. After each dive, we come back to the marina and refill bottles for the next dive. It makes for a very long day. We typically started at 530am and ended at 10pm.

We have two safety divers in the water during our lengthy decompression, it’s about an hour and they are there to watch us, and provide comic relief, during our blue water hang. The safety divers meet us at 90 feet and stay with us to the surface. In addition they take cameras and empty deco bottles.

Because of current, we are doing a drifting deco with a surface marker and a live boat to follow it. We secured a line and temporary mooring ball to the wreck itself, which we removed after our last dive.

The water is 83F degrees at deco and maybe 76F at depth, but we are wearing drysuits, yes, we are the dumb tourists, in plastic suits who are diving a warm water wreck; it makes for a very comfortable dive but you roast on the surface.

The wreck was put down as an artificial reef in 1971 and is a favorite of local fisherman but due to depth, its not a wreck that is dove very often. Basically, to dive it takes a lot of planning and coordination but its well worth it, I don’t know any other wreck that offers as much as this one.

It’s crawling with life, huge groupers, barracuda, sharks and African pompano are just a few. Since this was Mike and I’s first dive we spent the first dive getting acquainted with the exterior of the boat. It’s in two pieces, we are diving the stern section, which is upright on its keel. The stern section is approx 300 feet long with 100 feet of relief. The bow section is approx 400 yards away and according to Scott, not worth diving when compared to the stern, so we didn’t dive it. Our future plan is to bring our scooters and lay some line between them.

After the check out dive, we started exploring the interior, mainly the 2nd deck. We ran line as the interior goes to zero vis in an instant, typically after the fist diver goes through it. Cave diver training is highly recommended for these types of penetration dives and I actually think its more dangerous dive than a cave due to the changing nature of the ship wreck.

We did have a set back, the dive shop compressor broke the day before we arrived and wasn’t working the first day. The owner had an employee drive to Miami, on a holiday weekend, to get the new part that alone saved the trip.

Some highlights:
* The last couple of hurricanes changed the ship, it’s a little bit deeper and some hatches have closed while others have opened.
* Getting stalked by numerous 5-foot barracuda on every deco hang
* Swimming behind Kendall in zero vis, of course, he had a great dive.
* Diving Burma road thru the wreck, entering the break section and then exiting behind the super structure
* All of us getting a bad air top, headache underwater, that went away when we switched to our 100% bottle.

The Team:

• Lauren Brancell (Support diver/underwater dancing choreogpher)
• Rachel Chaimsom (Boat owner/Support diver)
• Cpt Billl “Flipper” (Boat cpt and fishing maniac)
• Scott Brooks (diver/Team Mom)
• Kendall Raine (diver/Doppler operator)
• Mike Ready (diver/Head of Gas Blending Operations)
• Bill Reals (diver/video monkey)

Back to Bangalore

We leave Hyderabad behind and go back to Bangalore, we board a low slung prop air airplane, 30 mins late. I have to mention India’s security policies and a little bit about the beaurcracy that is still present. They xray and seal your bags before you check-in, not after like the US, which makes more sense. When you go throught door to board the bus that takes you to the airline, you show your ticket to the airline agent and then r feet later you show it to a government official who checks the same thing.

We landed in Bangalore and were greeted by the next victim, I mean vendor. We were wisked thru traffic (yeah right, its horrible) abd arrived at Cognizants development center. Blah blah blah, the day was done and we agreed to go to dinner.

Now “agreeing” to go to dinner means that they asked and we have to say yes, its business you really don’t have a choice unless you can come up with a really great excuse, like apendisituts.

They said we were going to a traditional Indian restaurant that was just outside of town. This turned into an expedition, the place we were going turned out to be on the middle of nowhere and difficult to locate. We drove around neighborhoods in pitch black darkness utterly confused about where they were taking us, why we had agreed to go in the first place and if we’d every get back to Bangalore. It was comical, we had a caravan of 4 cars all with drivers who individually throughout the journey instited that they knew exactly where this place was located, and kept leapfrogging each other to take the lead.

We finally had to call the restaurant and have them send a car to lead us in, there are no street lights or good roads in the middle of nowhere.

The thudding, thumping and rythmic drumming greets us as we enter the restaurant. A group of 12 half naked men beat violently on half-barrel sized wood drums, strapped around their waist which suggest at any moment that they might tip over. They yell and scream at sporadic moments and finally surround us and escort us into the restaurant. The local Dennys or Red Lobster puts on this show and every early-bird with a pace maker is going to keel over, but this is a cultural center and its all part of the experience.

After the drumming has commenced, we watched some traditional Indian dancing and had some traditional, which no matter how wonderful was just regualr Indian food served on a banana leaf. I feel asleep on the way back home.

We played golf the next day and them flew to Chennai. When we played golf we had caddies, who had 3 or 4 handicaps, its sooo much better playing experience with your own personal coach.

http://www.reals.net/photos. click on India2005.

I’m in Hyderbad now, its about one hour flight north of Bangalore, on the south-east portion of the country.

We should be here for two days but may cut it short depending on how one of our meetings go. The days are long, we show up, do meetings all day and go to dinner with the vendor. Indian companies don’t have a line between personal and professional lives and also, they are wining and dining us.

Hyderbad is much drier and warmer than Bangalore. Also, the city is laid out well, is more modern and traffic is much much better. I’m getting ahead of myself so let me bring you up to speed.

We fly from Bangalore to Hyderabad this morning on Sahara air,a domestic Indian carrier. The flight was only an hour but they gave us a full two course breakfast.

We landed in Hyderabad and we’re met by our host, Satyam a NYSE-listed software services company. They picked us up, had cars ready and we drove to their facility 12km outside Hyderabda, I still have no idea what that is in miles but it took awhile.

Cattle, bicycles, people walking and cars share a 30 foot wide strip of asphat/dirt that is called a road. One of the main reasons you need an amusement park is because driving is safe and orderly in the US. I sat in th front seat once and swallowed my tongue a couple of times as cars, people on bikes and autorishaws would pull out in front of us, from every angle and direction, and we would barely miss them. I took the back seat the rest of the time, I sleep better now.

You drive on a combination of roads and back roads and sometimes a road will turn into a dirt road for a 100 yards and then turn back into a road; you don’t drive too fast. India may be well ahead of Mexico on technology and science but at least Mexico has nicer roads.

We arrived at Satyam’s corp headquaters which is more like a resort, with guards, lush landscaping, animal perserves and low slung white buildings over 125 acres.

We were greeted by a half dozen corp VPs, sales folks and handlers. We made our greetings and made our way into the entry way where we were presented with flowers and a photographer; that’s right’s a photographer.

We had presentations all day and then went on a walk of the facility. It included a walk by the 9 hole executive golf course, the club house and thru the indian deer enclosure on the property. Instead of a corporate overview they showed us a movie set in a series of movies screens and finally a theater with 5 screens, fiber-optic lighting and leather chairs. It was a well coordinated commerical that was meant to convey the sophication of the company and impart on the viewer a feel good attitude about the company. I thought it was a bit over the top.

We meet with the chairman of the company, a very nice justure and had a nice 20 min conversation. We also had our picitures taken as we talked with the chairman, toured the facility and walked back to our meeting room. They had a tortoise enclosure but I didn’t get my picture taken with them, maybe next time.

We wrapped up our day and then headed back to the city. We had gone directly from the airport to Satyam so we still had to check-in and then we went to dinner. We got back to the hotel a little after midnight and passed out from exhaustion.

Observations

This place has better cell phone coverage than the US in my opinion, my Blackberry (my cellphone) sends/recieves email everywhere, in fact I am writing all of these emails on it. However, who knows how much its costing me.

India is a world of contrasts, thousand year-old temples and brand-new office parks, modern sophitication and ancient ways, vast wealth and dire poverty, all coohabitating a rapidly changing country.

I fly back to Bangalore tomorrow and I promise more pictures.

Our second day was a Monday, this is where the real work began. We where meeting with WIPRO, who are the India Microsoft, in fatc they do a lot of the development of Microsoft’s products. Starting in the 80s, WIPRO went from making cooking oil to developing software and transformed Bangalore from a military town to the India Silicon valley.

We were picked up at our hotel by Mark, an American based Wipro sales guy. We all packed into a van and we’re driven to “electronci city” on the other side of town. Bangalore also had an electronic manufacturing phase, much like Silicon Valley and the name stuck as the area where all the businesses where based.

Traffic was unbelievably bad, it was far worse than anything I’ve seen. Bangalore exploded about 10 years ago and the single 4 lane highway was soon overwhelmed. It took us an 1 1/2 to go about 12 km and in India, traffic comes from all sides at once with people and animals thrown into the mix.

We left India behind and entered Electronic city. There are about 300 companies here and it looks more like a collection of corporate campuses in the US than it does India. After we went thru security, we entered the college-like campus where EIGHT THOUSAND peoplework everyday. It’s modern, well equipped and bustling with activity.

WIPRO has a large company in India, currently areound 30,000 people work for them and they are growing rapidly. They are adding campus that will house another 12,000 workers across the street. Oh and this is only one of their offices in Bangalore alone. Traffic is going to get worse.

Our meeting was good, they did the dog an pony show but it wasn’t anything special.

The days are long, we show up, do meetings all day and go to dinner with the vendor. Indian companies don’t have a line between personal and professional lives and also, they are wining and dining us.

Went back to the monument to Imperial British rulers, aka my hotel and passed out.

I check out tomorrow and fly to Hyderabad to meet two more vendors.

And away I go…
I flew from San Diego to Dulles (Washington DC) this morning, worked most
of the flight and then my laptop ran out of juice. This being the intro email, it is kind of long and very self involved.

This is a business trip to India to see some vendors and visit some call centers. I’ve traveled for work before but never international on business before.

The napkins are cloth, the glasses are glass and the seats are wonderful. God, I love first clas travel and Intl Business class is the cat’s ass. For starters, the seat lies almost flat, and they are wide and comfotable, I’d like one of these at the house. You’re greeted with a beverage, water or juice, right as you sit down. Your seat has a personal audio/video entertainment system, with a pop out screen that has a real time GPS map, which shows the planes progress and time remaining to destination.

Frankfurt
Landed in Frankfurt this morning after my 7 hour flight from Washington DC, I did nothing on my flight but eat(two huge meals), watch tv and sleep. Looking out the window on approach, it was beautiful seeing the sun just coming up and seeing the moon above the red sky. It amazing how clearly you can see the moon when you are flying 30000 feet above smog and city lights. The airport is a monument to steel and glass; it’s clean, well designed and secure, very German.

I turned on my cellphone and it connected and started sending me my email just like I was at home. I have a 6 hour layover here and having never been here I wandered through most of the shops and when I tired of that I went to the Red Carpet Club.

A nice thing about being in international business class with United is that you get complimentary access to the Red Carpet club which is a great place to relax on your layover. The club costs about $500 a year and has tv, ticket service, desks, conference rooms,beverages, snacks and a no-host bar in a area littered with comfortable chairs. The clubs are in most of the worlds airports, I used to have a membership when I traveled for a living.

In the US its one lounge for where everyone is equal but in Frankfurt there is a “Business” area and a “First” class area. I’m in Business lounge which is nice but now that I know there is another lounge, I want to see that one as well.

My layover here is long enough where I am considering going into Frankfurt for a quick look around, it’s a 15 min train trip direct from the airport.
I went to the information desk and after talking to them decieded it would cutting it too close to go to downtown frankfurt. Damn, I wanted that pasport stamp.

I then got bored and walked all over the airport, rode the tram and then found out that I could get into the Lufthansa Business Lounge. Much nicer than the Red Carpet club, so here I sit wishing my layover was a little longer so I could see Frankfurt.

At this point, I meet up with Tom Graly my boss and comrade in arms.

Delhi
Flight to Delhi was about 7 hours, lufthansa was not as nice as United but that’s splitting hairs. I slept most of the time and we arrived in Delhi around 115am. The inside of the Airport was foggy and smelled like smoke.

We had a layover of 5 hours and needed to switch to the domestic airport which was across the tarmac. After they woke up the bus driver he drove us across the airport, which took 20 mins to the domestic airport. I’ve seen nicer animal shelters than the Delhi airport but it didn’t smell like smoke as much.

Bangalore
Our flight to Bangalore took about 2 1/2 hours and we arrived at 9am on Sunday. We got to our hotel and finaly after 36 hours of door to door travel we made it.

The Sheraton is nice. I tried to sleep but it wasn’t happening so I grabbed the guide book had the hotel give me a car and driver and went out to see Bangalore.

We meet the rest of the team that night in the hotel. The next day we visit our first vendor, Wipro.

More to come….