Oh La La is a dive shop on “Small Island” of the Perhentian Islands in Malaysia. It is here where an American, a Frenchman, a Spaniard, and a German decided to go for their open water scuba diving certification… Luckily, Oh La La has instructors that speak French, English, Spanish, and/or Italian, so backpackers from most countries can learn the ins and outs of scuba diving in the comforts of their native tongue, or at least a language they understand.
It is important to feel comfortable when you are descending 18meters (roughly 54 feet) into the blue abyss, where you are warned of all the things that can eat, paralyze, or just plain injury you. During our 4 days of diving and training, Luca, our instructor, was (mostly) able to keep the four of us calm.
Luca was a manager at a respected hotel restaurant, in New Zealand. He was scuba diving in Indonesia, when several of the instructors decided to quit the scuba shop, so the manager of the shop asked him if he wanted to become a dive master and subsequently a dive instructor... He went on a dive to mull it over because after all he was merely on vacation, not searching for a job.
On his dive he saw 3 sharks and 2 sea turtles and said, “This is awesome, I am being offered to this everyday?” When he returned to the dive shop he signed up for the courses, and now several hundred dives later, he was teaching the 4 of us the ways of open water diving.
Luca took a big pay cut to become a dive instructor. He has 2 days off a month. Every 3 months he uses one of those days to travel to the border to exit and re-enter the country on a tourist visa. When the dive season is over, he typically travels to another country to instruct.
He said, “In the restaurant business, people visit because they are hungry. Conversation can be great, but once the food arrives, I eventually have to piss off. With diving, people chooses to take course, and most make it through. People arrive with small anxious smiles of excitement and leave with bigger smiles of joy. They leave significantly happier. That is why I continue as a dive instructor.”
Cheers to that, Luca. Cheers to your passion.