This foto was taken in 1996 or 1997 during my 1 year stay on Sipadan, Malaysia.
The original is a print from which I created this picture with my mobile.
I had a wonderful time there, working as a diving instructor,
diving three times a day in worldclass dive spots and meeting lots of interesting people.
And always so much fun with my Malaysian and Japanese colleagues.
Cousteau ranked Sipadan among the 10 best diving spots in the world.
Being an oceanic island, rising up 600m from the seafloor to the surface,
there is loads of big marine life, beautiful coral and even a cave with some skeletons
(no dead pirates, or divers though, just marine animals).
But in 2000 terror came to paradise and the unthinkable happened.
Suddenly Sipadan made it into the German news because the Abu Sayyaf group
kidnapped a bunch of people, among them the Wallert family from Germany,
at gunpoint and brought them to their base in Jolo, Phillipines.
During my stay I had heard a few stories about pirates from the Philippines
coming over at night to steal the big outboard engines of the dive boats,
but kidnapping people was a first there.
In 2005 the Malaysian government closed all dive ressorts on Sipadan to protect the environment. Nowadays you have to come by dive boat from Mabul, Kapalai etc.
The ressorts have daily quotas to limit the number of divers, which I think is a good thing having witnessed first hand the damage, hordes of divers with bad buoancy control inflicted on the reefs.
as a traveling diving instructor come back to me.
So the best advice I can give young people is:
Waste your youth! Travel, travel,travel!
I am a bit surprised how the format came out. It looked so nice in the preview window and now it looks a bit funny. The last paragraph though is supposed to look like that, I centered it with code I learned from @blueperegrina
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Wenn du alles zentral haben willst, solltest du alle Absätze extra "centern". Leerzeilen akzeptiert er nicht. Aber trotzdem ein schöner Artikel. Mehr interessant als einfach nur ein HD-hochaufgelöstes, schönes Photo vom Strand. Danke fürs teilen!
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Danke für den Hinweis, dann weiß ich das schon mal für später.
Ich wollte diesmal aber auch nur den letzten Absatz zentrieren, das hat ja schon mal geklappt.
Was ich meine, sind diese manchmal komischen Zeilenumbrüche, so mitten in der Zeile, ohne Sinn und Verstand, das sah in der Vorschau besser aus.
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Ah ja, die Erfahrung hab ich auch schon gemacht. Keine Ahnung. Es gibt halt
um einen Zeilenumbruch zu machen, aber das hat bei mir auch schon zu Chaos geführt. Vorallem beim Verse schreiben voll doof.
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Nice, some diving news, i am divemaster myself so i can appreciate this.
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Any good diving in India, apart from Lakshadweep and Andamans?
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Absolutely NOT, i live in grenada, carribean for a few years, that was good :-)
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Ich erinnere mich noch sehr gut an die Wallerts. Da gabs ja praktisch eine Liveübertragung am Gartenzaun der Entführer.
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Und alle ham Renate gedisst, weil sie ein Nervenbündel war und keine Heldin, das fand ich am schlimmsten, diese ganzen Besserwisserjournalisten.
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Stimmt. Muss mal eben googlen ob es da was gibt, wie es denen heute geht.
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... So wie es aussieht, ist es für die ganz gut ausgegangen. Hab ein Interview von2010 gefunden. Freut mich.
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You're so right: travel, travel, travel is the best advice. I like the wasting youth bit, too. Thanks for sharing your sweet memories - that's the way to get some really sweet ones before the terror trashes things.
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"Waste your youth" is a song by DAF, one of the great German Industrial bands of the 80s,
and the phrase itself was also used as an ironic alternative draft to the mainstream career advice of "Study hard, get a degree and a good job."
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Reminds me of the Bauhaus :)
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