TwoTribez is coming – check it out at the events page.
If you’re wondering what IDC, IE or PADI stands for, then you’re obviously not a SCUBA diver about to achieve a professional diving qualification.
The PADI IDC is a big deal, because it’s where recreational SCUBA diving ends and professional SCUBA diver training starts. Professional as in do-it-for-a-living. Because you will be transferring knowledge to others, it’s important you are held against stringent standards and achieve important objectives.
Taking part in a PADI Instructor Development Course will teach you those standards and help you achieve those objectives and ultimately help you get certified as a PADI Diving Instructor.
Asia’s next SCUBA diving PADI Instructor Development Course is being held here in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia and will be conducted by Downbelow Marine & Wildlife Adventures.
Downbelow have classrooms located in Kota Kinabalu’s KK Times Square, and a dive station tucked away in a secluded cove on the nearby Gaya Island surrounded by pristine rainforest and the ever vibrant coral reefs of the Tunku Abdul Rahman Park.
The PADI Instructor Development Course in Sabah will start on 27 August 2010 and conclude with the end of the 2-day Instructor Exam on 12 September 2010.
You can also choose to do the PADI IDC as part of an internship program with Downbelow.
An internship program allows you to get to know every aspect of the dive industry from dealing with daily divers, through to replenishing the coffee, tea and biscuits. Oh yes, diving. It also allows you to log the many and different dives that you require to achieve certain certifications.
All said, if going out to a beautiful tropical island every day where you are surrounded by nature above, below and to the sides of you, where you hang out with other people passionate about diving every day and you get to meet and teach diving to people from many different countries and cultures, if that is what you call work – then yes, a diving internship is lots of work.
SCUBA diving internships around Asia are plentiful. Where you ultimately decided to your diving internship will largely depend on how serious you are about becoming a dive instructor, how highly you value the quality of your instructor education and how focussed you want to be on your dive training.
Choosing to do your SCUBA diving internship in Sabah, Malaysia makes sense for the diver serious about becoming a quality instructor themselves following tuition by those passionate about diving and maintaining high standards not just in their own business, but that of the diving industry in general.
If you choose Sabah, Malaysia for your SCUBA Diving Internship, you choose:
To find out more about Asian SCUBA Diving Internships in Sabah, Malaysia, simply fill out the contact form below. Or, if you’re interested in the SCUBA diving PADI Instructor Development Course, surf on over to the PADI IDC Events Page.
The Kota Kinabalu Jazz Festival (KKJF) is on this 18 & 19 June 2010 Sutera Harbour Resort right here in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah.
“One of the striking differences of KK Jazz Festival”, mused Jack Ong, this year’s Organising Chairman, “when compared to the other jazz festivals in the region, is that the KK Jazz Fesitval has more local bands performing”.
If you doubt whether or not that’s a good thing, head on down to the KK Jazz Festival this weekend and judge for yourself. Aside from promoting jazz as a popular music genre in KK, the festival is also a fine opportunity for up and coming young musicians to get exposure to national and international artists.
Two-day passes to the event are RM80 and this year there is no reserved seating, so it’s on a first come first served basis. You can grab your ticket from any Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf outlet in Sabah & Sarawak until 17 June, otherwise buy them at the gate.
Tweet about cans of Carlsberg for less than RM10 and other exciting KK Jazz Festival news by using the hashtag #kkjf – then visitors to the Official KK Jazz Festival page on SabahBah.com can follow the excitement.
At the start of the last decade Kota Kinabalu was but a blip on the cinema entertainment map. Back then it featured the already old, but not so dilapidated 3 screens of the Golden Screen Cinema complex in the centre of town.
Today, as we enter the new decade, Kota Kinabalu has cinema screens galore. There’s the Cathay Cineplex in the town centre, Growball in Centrepoint and the newest of them all, the GSC in 1Borneo. Another GSC is taking shape in the freshly completed Suria KK Shopping Centre near Jessleton Point and will be coming online in a month or so.
With all this competition the old city GSC just couldn’t attract enough of a crowd with it’s run-down facilities to sustain it, and were closed down.
The fact that a cinema was closed down at all should really make operators of other cinema’s sit up and take notice. If there were no competition, that old GSC would have been able to do business in perpetuity.
Where’s the Movie Magic?
Growball’s no.8 theatre is arguably the best in Kota Kinabalu. Huge auditorium, big screen, every seat a winner and state-of-the-art sound.
However, the other Growball theatres are old and creaky with equipment that is starting to fail. Their only attraction seems to be the sheer volume of titles to chose from on any given night.
But more and more regularly a reminder to the projectionist (who switches on the film and goes outside) is required to either fine tune the focus, the aspect ratio or the sound.
Last night, during a showing of Tooth Fairy in Growballs theatre 3 it was obvious that a particular sound channel had something wrong with it. The actors’ voices were distant, shallow and tinny. A complaint to the projectionist uncovered an apology, but at the same time was added that it couldn’t be fix as a hardware part was being awaited from Singapore.
After a visit to the supervisor’s office a refund was offered, but some members of the author’s contingent didn’t mind the imperfect sound and so we all suffered the poor quality movie experience together.
It’s strange that, in light of the growing competition, Growball doesn’t mind running poor quality shows. The part responsible for the sound failure was on order and obviously it wasn’t just this one show that suffered as the problem was known and yet they ignored it.
To add insult to injury, the hammering outside on tiles being replaced could be felt though the whole show and heard during the quieter parts. Thumbs down for Growball on this occasion.
5 Senses
The reason people visit cinemas, as opposed to watching DVDs (pirated or otherwise) at home, is to experience a movie rather than just watch it. You smell the popcorn, you feel the vibrations of the sound in your feat, you see the larger-than-life actors on the big screen, and you taste the anticipation of a good thriller on your tongue.
If any of these senses are compromised, punters will first consider alternative cinemas and then wonder why they should pay RM7 per person to watch a movie instead of buying that pirate DVD with 4 movies for RM10.
Can you really afford for your theatres to smell like urine, Cathay, for your visuals and audio to be less than perfect Growball, or to freeze your customers in their seats, GSC?
Isn’t its time that customers get what they pay for and speak with their feet if businesses don’t deliver?
Join the discussion and share a bit about your highs and lows in the cinemas of Kota Kinabalu…
Craving for a bit of Western food, SabahBah set of to the grill part of Firefly Bar & Grill, hoping to sink our teeth into that Bourbon Glazed Back Ribs everybody’s talking about.
Happy Hour is Beer Hour
Three hungry and thirsty people sat down at about 7pm, in the thick of Happy Hour, and decided to take advantage of Firefly’s generous beer specials. A tower of Becks, which equates to 4.3 litres of beer (3 jugs), costs RM73 during Happy Hour; it’s very hard to say no to such a great deal.
For Starters at Firefly Bar & Grill
For something to nibble on that would complement the beer while we waited for our mains, and keeping in tune with our Pork Mission, we chose the Crispy Pork Belly from the Starter section of the menu. Marinated pork belly, lightly floured and then deep fried to perfection, served with spicy lemon grass vinaigrette is the very accurate description.
Between the 3 of us we agreed it was flavourful, very tasty and overall quite delicious, although 1 thought it was perhaps just a little too crispy and 1 thought it wasn’t fatty enough (although admittedly she likes it very fatty). But otherwise we were well impressed.
In the meantime, our tower of beer was looming large over the table and the beer was flowing steadily. There’s something magical about being able to pour your own beer right at your table.
Firefly Bar & Grill – The Mains Menu
Shortly after, our mains arrived. We had the Honey Brined Pork Chop (pan seared pork chop topped with apple ginger chutney), the Grilled Chicken Club Sandwich (chicken fillet with Swiss cheese) and the Firefly Burger (homemade patty with mushrooms, sauted onions and Swiss and Cheddar cheese).
Having had a couple of hit and misses with burgers around Kota Kinabalu recently, the Firefly Burger was a pleasant surprise.
The homemade patty was aromatic, tasty herbs and spices complimenting the flavour of the thick and juicy meat. The bread bun, although large, didn’t overpower the patty. In this way the meat was the star of the burger, with the buns awesome as backup, making for a great burger show.
The chicken club sandwich was equally delicious, with two large chicken fillets smothered in cheese, overflowing on the burger bun. The buns are not quite as large as they look in the accompanying picture, but they were large enough for our taster to not be able to finish his.
Our critical Foodie gave the Honey Brined Pork Chop a big thumbs up, even though she was quite disappointed no to get the ribs she craved for.
We finished off the substantial amount of beer left in the tower, we called for the bill, which came down to only RM50 per person.
By then the bar part of Firefly Bar & Grill was heaving, the band hard at work getting the packed house moving. As we couldn’t find a table inside, we decided to try the bar part of Firefly on another occasion, perhaps when they have those Burboun Glazed Back Ribs in stock again…
