To celebrate the unseasonably warm weather, and to entertain the family staying with us, the first snorkelling trip of the season was had yesterday down at Clovelly.
Unfortunately the underwater camera is out to pasture at the moment, having leaked at some point in the past. Not a great amount of fish at the moment, bar a big school out in the deeper section, and a Port Jackson Shark snoozing on the floor.
Elissa made the most of it, having a bit of a kip on the towel back up with Mum.
Calvin reading… check.
Hebrew translation… check.
Greek translation… check (well almost, but will be by tomorrow).
Time for a holiday. See you all in a week.
I got myself a new camera the other day, with a case that allows you to go swimming with it, to a depth of 15 metres. I thought that for snorkelling it would be really nifty to have the ability to take pictures underwater, particularly since my parents are taking the family up to Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef over Christmas.
I was really excited, and despite the (freezing) cold, I thought I would go down for a quick dip to try it out. After all, we have had some decent weather over the last couple of days, as opposed to the raging storms over the last few weeks. Unfortunately, Clovelly was something of a cauldron of white water. I didn’t get to use my new camera - well, not underwater, at least.
Unfortunate. Next time, Gadget, next time.
I’m having a great couple of days.
Today, I met people for coffee not once but twice. Firstly I got together with my boss and fellow student minister, so we could hammer out what we are each doing for our upcoming series through Mark’s gospels. I’m doing two talks, the first on Mark 2-3, entitled “Bigger than Jesus?”. The other is Jesus’ strange-but-true coronation at the cross. Later in the afternoon I caught up with an old friend, whom I’ve known since primary school. He’s finishing up a PhD in the area of ubiquitous computing, and is about to go over to the states for an internship with Google. Sounds like a lot of fun.
Tonight I cooked up a beautiful (if I do say so myself) African lamb stew/casserole type thing, with tomatoes and chickpeas. Had it with a glass of red wine. Yum.
Tomorrow, it’s two of my favourite things: Hebrew, and snorkelling. Both with good friends.
And to cap it off, I leave on Saturday evening to go to Melbourne, where I’ll be playing with my Ultimate Frisbee team Fakulti in the Australian National Championships.
Did I mention I’m also on holidays?
I went down to Clovelly again today for a snorkel, only to find it to be a raging whirl of white water. It seems that high winds, high tide and a large swell sweeping straight in to the bay make for whale-beaching conditions. Who would have thought?
I think I’m like a pied piper for fish.
Kristy bought me a snorkelling set for my birthday at the end of last year, which has been great fun. I went snorkelling yesterday with Mike Allen, down at Clovelly. It was an overcast day, just spitting with rain. We had been planning to go for a couple of days, as my final exam for first year college was that morning. We expected to jump in, swim around for perhaps 20 minutes, then get out absolutely freezing… and find something else to do.
However, it was great. Plenty of visibility, warm water, and no-one else there at all.
And fish.
I’d noticed a little last time I went, but particularly this time, that fish seem to follow me around. We think we worked out what was going on. My flippers are my old bodyboarding fins, some really bright green-and-yellow-swirl Hydro Fins. It turns out that fish think that I’m a really big fish because of my flippers, and follow after me, presumably hoping to pick up scraps of food (a little like wrasse following a groper).
So I think I’m the fish whisperer, or some sort of pied fish piper.
Cool, huh?
