Surface Time with Stephanie

Adriana Basques, a corporate executive turned wildlife photographer. She has been using her camera to document moments of her encounters of beautiful creatures both on land and underwater. In fact, her photography specialty is split landscape photo – where top part is the land and bottom part is underwater. This allows her to share with everyone the wonders and beauties of this fragile blue planet. Through her work, she gives people a greater understanding and appreciation for the conservation.

Perhaps it’s her Brazilian gene plus many other charms. Her passion for life is highly contagious. She is living her life fully and creating transferrable life experiences.

A passionate campaigner in raising conservation awareness through her photography and teasing everyone’s curiosity with the wonders and beauties of this blue planet. And as a passionate advocate and mentor for women empowerment, she is influencing the new standard of behaviour, inside and outside the corporate world.

On the note of women leadership, I have observed that the mentality has been shifting constructively. There is still a huge gap to close. And to narrow or even close this gap, it is down to each of us to raise the quality of our own self-awareness, self-confidence and self-compassion.  This is part of the journey of creating transferrable life experiences. So what would you say to these questions:

From there, you should be able to start connecting the dots from the past to present and from present to future.

Connect with Adriana Basques

W: https://adrianabasques.com

FB: https://www.facebook.com/AdrianaBasquesPhotography

IG: https://www.instagram.com/basques/

E: [email protected]

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Recently, I went diving in Coron, Philippines. This place is famous for wreck diving where you get to explore some Japanese ships that were sunk by US Task Force during World War II in 1944.

We dived with Pirate Divers for a week. I think on the second or third day after we finished diving for the day and on the way back to the resort, the lady crew members of Pirate Divers – Michiko and Sherrie - were making some concoction that is made mostly with Tanduay, Filipino national pride rum.

Our DM Flora Camiros told me that they are making jungle juice. Then handed me a cup to try.

After a few more rounds of jungle juice, I told them about Surface Time and asked if they would take part in Women who Scuba series. So after we wrapped up our last dive, we went to Black Island for BBQ…and this time some Jungle Juice made with Filipino Gin.

This was an impromptu recording with Flora Camiros, Michiko Fusato and Sherrie Garcia from Pirate Divers on the beach of Black Island. By impromptu, all I had was my iPhone and the Voice Memo app and hope that the software will edit out some background noise.

I love that they were spontaneous and generous in sharing their stories. We definitely have 3 intelligent women. Each holds a deep well of inner strength, resilience and big heart. Driven by their own passion. They are distinctively different from each other; yet we can find them relatable. And it further validates the beauty of having scuba diving as the common language.

Speaking of spontaneity, have you ever acted on an impulse? What did you do when you were last being spontaneous? What did you gain or lose for being spontaneous?

Connect with Pirate Divers

W: https://piratediverscoron.com/

FB: https://www.facebook.com/piratediversbusuanga/

IG: @pirate.divers.busuanga

E: [email protected]

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Carrie Miller, Storyteller, Author, Traveller. You may recognise her name from the previous episode with her and her husband, Chris Taylor, sharing their stories behind the book, A Diver’s Guide to the World. By the way, I was particularly delighted to find  my birth country, Taiwan with Kenting National Park as one of the 50 destinations in the book.

Anyhoo, so Carrie is back and be part of the Women Who Scuba series. This time we chatted more on her journey of becoming a writer for National Geographic, her experiences of solo travelling and how those life experiences have shaped her as a person and as a woman.

She certainly is the living expression of “tenacity”. Being is a gifted storyteller, she generously shared her stories and stories of people, places and culture that she encountered.

In essence, stories are expressions of different life experiences. So through her words, we get to experience these vicariously. Also we may resonate with the stories and even identify the similarities and differences when comparing to our own. In that process, this is when inspiration, imagination and new perspective happen. And often we would refine our life narrative as a result.

So, think of a time when something happened – whether it’s reading a quote from a book, a movie or an incident, anything – but this something may be small and yet so significant that it changed your perception about life. What is your story there? What details would you like to share with your audience? And why is that?

Connect with Carrie Miller

W: https://beneaththesurface.media/

IG: @beneaththesurfacemedia | @carrimiller_writer

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Hester was the person who got me off my procrastinating mode and started to produce Surface Time. When we did the recording, she has been on the “mummy’s break” from scuba diving for some time. I am sure that all mums who happen to be scuba divers can relate.

One thing that really rings true to me from our chat is the Big Picture. Always take a step or more steps back and look at the greater version of the picture.

Her trip to Tonga and swim with Humpback Whale while being 6 months pregnant was originally intended as a “baby moon”. However, her narrative changes when she was floating in the water resonating with Humpback singing. It turns out to be the first big adventure of the family together. Her attempt to summit Mount Kilimanjaro became the life changing experience. The takeaway was that when you focus so much on the end-goal and become obsessed with not achieving that end-goal, you are actually depriving yourself from appreciating and enjoying what life is in the present moment.

Here is a little tip that you could try, especially, when you are dealing with any challenges…What would you say in completing this sentence: I don’t like the circumstance that I am in right now. However, if this difficulty did not happen, I would not have….

Connect with Hester Ross

IG: https://www.instagram.com/amasianheroines/

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Kate expresses her creativity through many media, including paintings and upcycling. Water is an element that plays a huge part in her life and how she shapes her own autobiography. I love what she said: we can all be a piece of art ourselves.

Speaking as a woman, when a woman knows herself well and is comfortable in her own skin, she can express her thoughts and visions more effectively. This applies to men as well. The journey of getting to know yourself is part of your life experiences. In that process, as you encounter various people, they can help you to refine your narratives. In Kate’s case, she uses her art and love for fashion as her medium to communicate who she is.

What represents your own self-expression?

Connect with Kate Padget-Koh

W: https://www.katepadgetkoh.com/

IG: https://www.instagram.com/katepadgetkoh/

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Katherine’s passion for photography fuels her, whether it is for underwater, wildlife or otherwise. Let’s listen to her recounting the incredible experience of diving in Anilao, Philippine when Taal Volcano erupted and the spectacular black water dives when she captured the award-winning photo.

When listening to the length that she would go to fine-tune her photography skills and her work, I could feel the joy of being immersed in what she feels passionate for. It reminds me of this quote:

So what fuels your curiosity? What drives your passion?

Connect with Katherine Lu

W: https://katherineluphotography.com/

IG: https://www.instagram.com/katherineluphotography/

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Since money and investment are the two words naturally connected to her profession as a private banker, it is inevitable that we chatted at length about them.

The word “investment” tends to be given a meaning limited monetary terms. When we talk about returns of investment, it tends to be the penny-for-penny calculation on the growth.

If we take a step back and look at a bigger picture, it is important to take into account of the “impact” that the original capital has created.

Say, you are the CEO of the company. When you decide to spend money and time to enhance your physical health and mental wellbeing, you would be able to lead your company more effectively. This is because you have the physical and mental capacity to be present and, therefore, make the sound decisions all the time.

It is fair to make the bold statement that the best investment you can make is on yourself. What have you been investing in yourself lately? What will you invest in yourself next?

Connect with Bei Zhou

W: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beizhou/

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You may recall from the episode with Magnus Akerblom-Wiker, where we spoke about one of his editorial photo of a diver holding a bunch of balloon in the Cenote, Mexico. Oh well, Karolina was that diver. My curiosity had to hear from her side of the story, her personal experience in that place.

In this mind-opening dialogue, we spoken about creativity, power of imagination, being in the state of free-floating attention. If diving is a form of experiential learning, I love the way she has put it “one dive is a symbol of how we approach life in very many ways”. In essence, it is all about being present in the moment, allowing yourself to process and filter information and refining the narrative of your life.

For every dive, we do a safety stop before we surface. Depending on your dive profile, it is normally about 3 minutes in the range of 3-5 metre depth. This is an important transition period. On the one hand, we would be savouring the last moments of the dive. On the other hand, we are getting ready to return to land.

The same ritual can be applied in other aspects of life. When would you take your “safety stop”? What would you do during that safety stop?

Connect with Karolina Isberg:

W: http://www.starfishdesign.se/

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When I first started producing Surface Time, my intention was simply to share the kind of heart-opening dialogues between divers through podcast forum.

After producing a few episodes, I started to think that it would be a good forum to get more women who scuba to share their stories and wisdom. Getting guests to produce the episodes has been straightforward.

My mental block or challenge was to articulate succinctly “Why do I want to produce a series with just women who scuba?” and “What am I looking to achieve?”

Obviously, there are tons of books, speeches and resources about feminism, femininity, female empowerment etc. They can be useful because of new expressions of ideas, principles and practices. They are also useless because there are still some negative connotations embedded in between lines.  

 Then my mental block was made disappeared when I came across a podcast show called The Higher Self by Danny Morel. He described beautifully what women’s true power and value is and what it means when a woman is in her divine feminine.

He said that:

A woman’s true power and value is in her intuition, her wisdom, her womb, her ability to create.

When a woman is in her divine feminine, she is a being that is so powerful. That she can literally just sit there on her throne and just attract anything that she wants. Just sheerly with her energy and her inner power.

If you go back thousands of years, this is probably how women were. Men decided that women are too powerful. So, men make women compete with each other; make them forget how powerful they are; instead of valuing women for what’s inside, women are valued for what’s outside. 

My first reaction was, Wow! That was probably the best expression about women’s power that I have heard to date." I immediately felt a profound resonance with this message. Every now and then I replay in my mind as a reminder to myself.

It also helps me to articulate this new series of “Women who Scuba”. That is: to convey the power and value of women through this collection of dialogues with women who scuba.

The society today is what it is. The existence of the controversies has its own merits because we will only see change of behaviours and mindset when the status quo is challenged or even rebutted. 

So here is a notion: we all have both divine feminine and divine masculine in ourselves, whether you are a woman or a man.  Whatever that means, it is for you to find out for yourself.

 It is universal that intelligent women are perceived as powerful. They are very attractive and sexy. We can choose how we respond to such powerful presence.

We can choose to be intimidated by their magnetism. This means that we start to be judgemental and even discredit their confidence and achievement.

Or we can choose to accept and even embrace such powerful magnetism. Overtime, we will stop being our own worst critique and start appreciating our own power and value. This is for both men and women.

When you listen to each dialogue, ask yourself “what would my life feel like or look like when I am in my divine feminine?”

I hope that these dialogues are providing you with new perspectives about yourself and your life.

Enjoy the confessions from “Women who scuba”. Ciao

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During the Surface Time today, I spoke with Sam Shu Qin (founder of Our Singapore Reefs) and David Jones (from Jackson Square Aviation) about their collaboration in the project, Dive Against Debris in 2022. It started off with David’s shower idea about doing something that can help to protect the coastal underwater environment, by engaging local community and leveraging available resources from his company. Little did he know at the time, there are already some unsung heroes, like Our Singapore Reefs and The Submersibles, doing the dirty work of sea clean-up.

Sam and her co-founding partners are marine biologist, specialising in coral restorations in Singapore Reefs. So they have the first-hand experiences of watching how the health of the reefs, especially corals, is damaged by waste. Waste that cannot be managed because they were created and thrown away into the water mostly by inconsiderate people.

I participated the costal clean-up with them. After we cleaned ourselves up nicely, we sat down to look at the data collected by Sam and her team just in 2022. This is like the end-of year performance review.

There are so many takeaways from this chat. First, although diving in Singapore water is like diving in miso soup, the biodiversity is truly incredible. Yet it is so vulnerable. In order to improve the ecosystem, it requires a lot of resources, especially, manpower, financial support and time. The collaborations between Our Singapore Reefs, The Submersibles and Jackson Square Aviation has started to set the changes on course. It is important to continue the momentum in order to maintain the sustainability.

And the most obvious and powerful force would be the Corporate (especially multinational ones). They have the resources to help drive the changes. When setting the ESG policies and guidelines (ESG standards for environmental, social and governance), the focus and emphasis should be on what we can do to create a positive and sustainable impact. Whether it is on the environment, the community or even the way we conduct our business. A wholistic approach should be taken in order to define your stance. As a company, other than making a donation, make your most valuable assets available. That is: your employees.

Naturally, as an employee, if you too like David tend to sprout ideas during shower, it would be good to explore these shower ideas before writing-off as fleeting thoughts. You’ll never know what the outcome will look like until you take the first step and follow through.

Connect with Our Singapore Reefs

FB: https://www.facebook.com/oursingaporereefs

IG: https://www.instagram.com/oursingaporereefs/

Connect with The Submersibles

W: https://www.thesubmersibles.com

FB: https://www.facebook.com/submersibles

IG: https://www.instagram.com/thesubmersibles/

WhatsApp: +65 8013 8445

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