Want to try something new? Tech Asia is going full speed ahead into 2012 with a packed program of Wreck diving activities, Scooter courses and dives, and all levels of Trimix training. One or two spots still exist on trips overseas to fantastic wrecks such as the HMS repulse in the South China Sea, and HMS Hermes in Sri Lanka. Have a look at their calendar here
El Galleon finished off 2011 with great food, fine wine, and fantastic friends. A spectacular fireworks display topped it all off as we rang in the New Year in The Point. It’s been a great year for us and we are looking forward to this year especially because 2012 is Asia Divers 25th Anniversary year!! We’ll have all sorts of things going on over the year and we’ll keep you posted on it all right here in our blog.
The photo is of the gang all done up for our recent 60’s Night Celebration on the Platform. It was a great turn out and everyone rocked the platform. Watch out for more exciting events coming up soon.
El Galleon / Asia Divers will participate at the Salon de la Plongee Sous-marine in Paris January 13-16. Tommy will be there with help from Carole Pither. January 21-29 Tommy and Rudy Schmiedel will again be at the BOOT show in Düsseldorf. At both shows we are joining Philippine Department of Tourism DIVE Philippines stand so we will be easy to find.
Last week some doctors visited Provincial Hospital in Calapan to carry out
Surgery on children with Harelip. Though the actual surgery is free it is always expenses around such transport cost for parent and the child, food and others. Tommy & Lina Soderstrom, Göran Ritter and Rudy Schmiedel decide to chip in some money to help some of the kids who’s parent can’t afford these expenses. Giving 5,000 pesos each we thought it would be good for 3 kids including medicine but Lina managed the money so it was good enough for 4 children! Two got the operation to close the gap in the gum so they can speak properly and two children got their lips rebuilt. Angie Robles from our accounting office and our Instructor Allison Manis also helped by donating milk for these children as they obviously only could take fluid after the operation.
The start of December always brings excitement of the upcoming holiday. The resort is all decked out for the festivities and preparations are in the works for what will be a wonderful Christmas in paradise! We are looking forward to seeing many old friends and ringing in the New Year with you all. It all kicked off with our staff Christmas party at Talipanan beach yesterday. You can read more about those escapades in next weeks’ Monday newsletter. Check out the photos above and below: The waitresses and Point bar staff are all decked out in new uniforms. Don’t they look great?!
All work and no play?…not for this group! A team of 15 visited Puerto Galera for the Intercept Technology annual resource summit. They came from Australia, Phillippines, South Africa, United States and Germany. In the group were five first time divers, and few who were already certified. Congratulations to Neal Duffy, David Mckenna, Frank Boardward, and Keith Donaldson for taking the plunge and to Matt Hill who went on to become a PADI Scuba Diver. You have to admit, El Galleon is the perfect place to hold a conference on company money and get in some great diving too!
On November 22nd, the European Commission announced the long awaited proposal for closing the loopholes in the European Union’s ban on shark finning. And the European Union has become a signatory to the United Nations Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for Sharks.
These are important steps forward in Project AWARE’s work to protect threatened and vulnerable shark species.
After much huffing and puffing though the problem has been found and we can publish again.
Work on our new pontoon is going well and when in place will conciderably ease congestion at the end of our pier. Rumor has it this will be in place for Christmas. Fingers crossed.
DEMA 2011, was another great opportunity to see what was new in the dive industry and to catch up with many of the good friends we have in the USA, this year was Orlando. This was Alli’s first time to attend and she spent lots of time running around with Allan and Tommy getting introduced to many of our wholesalers that we work with. There were several exciting seminars to attend that we all attended and have walked away with a few new ideas to bring back to the beach. It was especially good to meet up with the PADI team and as always they had a lot of great ideas they were busting to share with us. We also had some fun times with the Waterproof gang and a very nice dinner hosted by David from Cressi. As always, we look forward to the next dive show where again we will be able to spread the word and meet up with new and old friends
DEMA 2011, was another great opportunity to see what was new in the dive industry and to catch up with many of the good friends we have in the USA, this year was Orlando. This was Alli’s first time to attend and she spent lots of time running around with Allan and Tommy getting introduced to many of our wholesalers that we work with. There were several exciting seminars to attend that we all attended and have walked away with a few new ideas to bring back to the beach. It was especially good to meet up with the PADI team and as always they had a lot of great ideas they were busting to share with us. We also had some fun times with the Waterproof gang and a very nice dinner hosted by David from Cressi. As always, we look forward to the next dive show where again we will be able to spread the word and meet up with new and old friends.
October 14
Today was another early start with a ride out to Parramatta and then to Val Clues to pick up our travel bags before heading to PADI to finish off our ride at PADI Sydney who had invited us to a BBQ and to have us give a presentation on the ride and what the ride was all about. [more]
October 13
It was a great morning, sunshine, clam sea and we decided on a breakfast to wait for the dive centres to open before we could visit them. We took a leisurely ride around town, up to the lighthouse and after we visited who we had to see it was time to head off to New Castle and down to Sydney, stopping along the way and taking in the last of our ride. It was [more]
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