My Water Moments

All booked and confirmed, I texted my sister.

Me : Hey, guess what, your big sis had just booked a shark cage diving session in Cape Town!

Sis : What??! Are you nuts? Tau tak sharks in Africa are all ganas? They’re the type yang lompat2 you know. No need to do it lah..Scary lah sis!

Me : No turning back already lah, all confirmed and paid for Joe and me! No worries, should be ok. The guy from the diving company told me a 65-year old granny pun once did this.

Sis : Ayo! I rest my case lah sis. Can never stop an adrenaline junkie like you! Just promise that you’ll take care and take lotsa pics!

Determined to try this at least once, hubby and me proceeded with the plan and before dawn on the fourth day we were in Cape Town, we headed to Gansbaai, a town located about 2 hours from the Mother City. Btw, Cape Town is affectionately known as Mother City, believed due to the fact that it takes approximately 9 months to do anything in this slow-paced city ;)

Upon reaching the dive centre famously known as Shark Diving Unlimited, we saw around 10 other folks whom we believe came from all over the world already waiting. After a cup of coffee and a bowl of cereals, we were told that we were ready to go and the owner of the dive centre, Mike Rutzman gave us a briefing on the do’s and don’ts. Mike “Sharkman” Rutzman is one of the great white sharks experts who had gone free diving with the great whites and had produced numerous documentaries with Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Animal Planet etc. Wait! Free diving with the sharks? Whoa! That should be reassuring right? If he had survived free diving with the sharks, what more for us who’ll be going into the sea in a cage! Oh yeah, few celebs had gone shark cage diving with him and that includes Brad Pitt, Leonardo de Caprio and Matt Damon ! Here are the evidences that they had been there and done that ;) - Photos of them hung on Shark Unlimited’s ‘Wall of Fame’ ;)

We went onboard the boat after that and started moving towards the middle of the sea. Boyyy, it sure was a bumpy ride! The sea was choppy and with the speedboat we were taken into, I felt like we were almost flying! After about 20 mins, the engine died off, we could feel the chill sinking in and the wind got stronger. Almost too chilly for us to bear. “We’re here. It’s the home of the great whites!” shouted one of the skippers. “Get ready to become fresh meats!” Erkkk..

The skippers told us to change into our wetsuits. They also started throwing big chopped tuna fishes tied to a rope into the sea. This was to lure the sharks to come near the boat. Well, we sure didn’t have to wait for long. A big shark came near the boat and I screamed out of excitement, having witnessed such big creature in the clear water for the first time. The cage was then slowly dropped into the sea right next to the boat.

After getting the greenlight from the skipper, I went down into the cage into the 5◦ C water with the goggle on. Brrr...Thanks to the wetsuit, the chilly sea was quite bearable. The cage was big enough to fit the 5 of us – Mr Hubs, me and 3 French, Dutch and American men. Hey, I was the only girl ;) !(Girl power) It wasn’t easy trying to stabilise myself in the cage because the sea was still pretty choppy at that time. “Divers, down!” the skipper shouted. That meant there were sharks coming near the boat and we had to take deep breaths and dive into the cage. I could only sea clear blue waters and the cage’s steel bars that I was in until I turned to my right, Whoa! There it was, almost 2 metres, with gaping jaws and protruding teeth right next to the cage. I was overwhelmed with awe thinking of the fact that I was very near with the magnificent creatures of the sea. Measuring between 2 to 3.5 metres (!) more and more sharks came to the cage. There was once when a Mama Shark came too near that it hit the cage with its body. “I touched it!” said the Dutch man when we all came up for breaths. Seriously? Lucky man! At that time I couldn’t help thinking what if the cage broke and we became the sharks’ feasts? It was really terrifying but definitely exciting at the same time. After two hours in the sea, we left the sharks’ nest. For me, I felt a sense of pride for having done this and grateful at the same time for having the chance to witness the Almighty’s amazing creatures.

I had one of the Englishmen, Percy, who decided not to dive to take pictures and videos of what we were doing from the boat’s upper deck. But having witnessed the great white sharks almost face-to-face from the cage, how I wish I had bought an underwater cover for my camera or better still a camera that could be used in the water! I would be able to show you dear readers how fierce but at the same time, ‘sexy’ the sharks were.

Note: Images onwards are from Sony

You guys know what? Sony had launched a new water-proof Sony TX5 camera quite recently and how I wish I had it with me along at that time. Well, the camera is not only water-proof apparently. Now claimed the World’s Slimmest Water-Proof Camera; it is also shock, temperature and dust- proof. To top it all, it looks good; I would say it’s sleek and sexxxxxy! Choose yours from these gorgeous colours.

You can go underwater up to 3m deep for 60 seconds, shoot in freezing temperature as low as -10◦C, capture image in a dusty environment (imagine the Sahara desert!) and in your clumsier days, you’ll still be able to salvage the camera even if it’s dropped from a 1.5m height (while bungee jumping, perhaps?)

Definitely a suitcase essential for travelbugs and adrenaline junkies; the camera also :

Allows effortless panaromic image capture with its Intelligent Sweep Panorama Mode. How? As easy as sweeping your camera horizontally for landscape objects and vertically for tall objects.

Captures clear and sharp images in low-light environment. Do you realise how a flash can just wash out the scene? With its back-illuminated Exmos R CMOS sensor, shots in the dark, never looked better!

Enables capture of continuous shots i.e. 10 continuous frames per second!This feature is ideal for capturing fast action images. For your tennis or futsal sessions perhaps?

And last but not the least, it records and uploads HD videos too!

Regardless of where you are and what you do, you’ll still be able to bring out the style! Wanna know more about it? Check out this link http://www.sony.com.my/product/dsc-tx5. Love, love it!