I was born an able-bodied & loved dancing, rode bikes & threw myself off planes doing free falls but I was always afraid of swimming in the deep ocean.

My fear is that- I can't see the bottom & it also didn’t help that I was exposed to the movie 'Jaws' at a very tender age! Then in 2002 I was involved in a car accident & became a Paraplegic. I made a list of things to do after my operation & one of them believe it or not - was to scuba dive!…..Yes, me who was afraid of the deep! But all that changed when a close friend was sharing about his love for scuba diving & I said…..let's do it!

Believe me he wasn’t the only one who was surprised, I shocked myself too!

The next thing I knew, I was doing the confined water & then off to sea I went. And as I expected it wasn’t as easy as it looked, I was like a balloon in the water, both my Instructors Sanjay Vaghasia & Ilias Yaakop had to help me achieve neutral buoyancy many a times- too much positive buoyancy going on here! But the rest is history - I was like a fish in the sea & the ocean never discriminates! I loved it! I was literally in space, so light & free.

Thank you DDI, Sanjay & Ilias. Life will never be the same again as the ocean is now my official playing ground

by Ras Adiba Radzi  (1^st DDI Level 1 OW Diver in Malaysia)