Goodbye to 2008

It's time to look back to this year!

It has been a good year and this is a good time to reflect on it. If you're into to number crunching, read on;

On the teaching front, I conducted 8 IDC's with 31 candidates out of which all passed except for one who I advised not to participate in an IE to start with. This year I certified only one IDCS Instructor, which is a lot less than average. I also taught my 200th IDC candidate this year after becoming a PADI Course Director in April 2003!
I'm also on my 49th IDC that I conduct as a PADI Course Director, the next IDC, in February 2009 will be my 50th IDC.

Out of these 31 IDC candidates 12 found work on Samui, 3 in Thailand and 6 outside of Thailand. Some weren't concerned about getting work and completed their course for other reasons or participated in order to realise long term plans, still in progress or on the drawing table.

24 EFR Instructors and Care for Children instructors were certified by me during 2008 and 140 Specialty Instructor courses were conducted during the year. The most popular Instructor Specialty by far was Nitrox, followed by Deep, DUP, Underwater Navigation and Night.

Dive wise, I enjoyed some good dives at Chaweng Beach where there's lot of excellent muck diving and many small creatures can be spotted there that you don't tend to see on the dive sites around Koh Tao or at Sail Rock.
The whaleshark encounter at Chumpon Pinnacle in August with Richard was also something to remember as were my two trips to Pattaya this year for the Wreck dive Instructor Specialty with some of my IDC candidates!

During this year I logged my 1.500th dive and 1.000 hours underwater and I clocked another few 'dives' as a volunteer tender at the local recompression chamber in Bang Rak!

All right, enough number crunching, I hope you enjoyed 2008 as much as I did, dive wise and hope to see you around next year, for some diving, for the IDC or for any other good reason you can think of!

Good luck in 2009,
Camille

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