Disco diving karaoke

A highly poisonous blue-ring octopus poses for its picture

My lip was swollen for some reason when I woke up today; probably got bit by a mosquito while sleeping. Rene, Patrick, Jana, Ramona, and I did 3 dives today at Arco, Kalipayan, and Sanctuary. The first two dives were nice and overall it was a nice, warm, sunny day. The best dive though was at the Sanctuary because there, Rene found a hard to find blue-ringed octopus. Fortunately for us, the octopus didn’t mind its picture taken so we were able to get a lot of pictures of it; it must have felt like a celebrity. After diving, Noel asked me to have a rum and coke with him at 6 pm, I told him "sure, I’ll be there."

To me, it looks like a diver is jumping off the rock

Nudibranch

I bought us a liter of Sprite and a half liter of Tanduay rum at a local vender behind Oops Bar for only 65 pesos ($1.60 USD). A few other friends of Noel dropped by and we all had a few shots of rum and Sprite. Afterwards, Noel asked me if I wanted to hang out with the rest of the boat crew and sing karaoke. I was excited to be a part of their crew and so I agreed to go to. We walked to one place, but there was already a drunk foreigner singing really bad. We left that place and walked to another one where only two locals were singing.

Karaoke with the crew of Genesis

Singing karaoke in the Philippines is not what I expected it to be like. In the US, you either sing in a private room with friends or on a public stage in front of strangers. Here in Philippines, karaoke is a jukebox like machine with a TV monitor that is usually outdoors at a small family owned shop. It’s 5 pesos per song, locals don’t care if you’re off key, and at the end of each song the machine randomly “rates” how well you sang; I sang Creep by Radiohead and was lucky enough to get a score of “96 - You are a perfect artist!”. The boat captain and Noels singing was very impressive.

Singing karaoke and hanging with the boat crew of Genesis was fun and I felt I was now part of the locals; I could hang with them. During the time, everyone was quite happy as we sang, danced, and drank the local concoction of rum, beer and soda (beer mixed in because cheaper than rum). I forgot how many of these drinks I had, but I do remember it was a lot and on an empty stomach. During the time, the crew tried to set me up with a girl they knew. I wasn't too interested in her but played along with it. Afterwards we left and got more beer and drank it in front of Genesis. If that wasn’t enough, we then joined the disco night dancing at Oops Bar!.

Oops was fun and surprisingly I wasn’t as drunk as it sounds (or so I thought). Rene, Patrick, Ramona, and Jana were sitting at a table and so I joined them. The girl I was with went off to the side to hang out with one of the friends that came with us. Everyone at the table and I decided to dance and at one point, Lisa, some crazy girl I met somewhere else, pulled me off and wanted to take a picture of her, me, and some Filipino celebrities.

Me, Lisa the crazy girl, and actor Cesar Motano

The two celebrities we took pictures with are actors -- Jake Wanker (really?), and the other, Cesar Motano, is a big time actor “equivalent to Bruce Willis”. At the time, I had no idea who they were and so casually introduced myself to them and asked what their name was. It was great having no clue who these guys were while all the girls around us were drooling over them, getting their autographs.

Jos joined me, took pictures with the celebrities too, and then we teased Lisa by telling her we were brothers, and that he designed my "Local Motion" t-shirt. She mostly believed us, with skepticism, which helped me to evade her from her confusion. Kind of like when an octopus inks you -- you're confused, and in the cloud of confusion, the octopus leaves. The rest of the night I hung out with Rene's group where we created a dance that included doing underwater dive signs to the rhythm of the music. Then, I made it to bed.

- jason