I am writing here while sitting at New York Airport. This is officially the start of the scholarship year as last night I attended a reception at the Explorers Club in NYC after an amazing week of meeting people from my new family; the Our World -Underwater Scholarship Society.
Now I will go back to the start of one of the craziest weeks of my life! On Tuesday 8th April, Jayne Jenkins, the Australasian VP of the Our World – Underwater Scholarship Society, Mat Kertesz, the first Australasian Rolex scholar and Sue Crowe from Tabata Australia, that supplied me head to toe with all my diving gear from TUSA, met at Sydney Airport for my first overseas travel experience.
We were soon checked in and on route for our 21 hr trip of New York. Stopped in LA and checked into the USA and got my first passport stamp! Then we were soon back on the plane for another 6 hrs to New York. This leg of the flight was great as the once full plane was now practically empty and I had a window seat and whole row to myself. So once I had enough of looking out the window, I got to stretch out and have some well needed sleep. Once we got into the city and checked into our large 2 room hotel apartment, we walked down the road to an Italian restaurant for dinner and some drinks.
It was not till the next morning that Mat and I got to experience New York City, and I must say it is a crazy place, the tallest buildings I have ever seen, traffic that is not only cars and cabs but people everywhere! We spent almost the whole day walking around the streets and central park taking in the sites and sounds of such a busy place.
The next day we met up with Brenna, the North American Rolex Scholar, and caught a bus to a massive hole in the ground that was once the Twin Towers, quite a humbling experience. That evening I started meeting some new faces that will be a big part of the year. Eline Feenstra, the new European Rolex Scholar and Elvin Leech, the European coordinator and the newly elected Chairman of the Society who are both awesome people! A few drinks got us acquainted and a late night feed of Chinese before Mat and I got a cab through the city to go to a Jazz club, we sat and watched these guys play while looking out the window on the 40 something’th floor at the lights of the city and other massive buildings such as the Empire State.
The next day after a bus ride to see the rest of the city, I was on my way to the Rolex Building with Jamie Brisbin, the new North American Rolex Scholar, and Eline. That was pretty cool, as we had our watches sized for our wrist. It was hard to give them back but they assured us we will see them again on Saturday night.
At this stage it was important for the three new scholars to get to know each other, we walked down to a nice little pub for a meal and drinks and chatted about the upcoming year and previous experiences. As it turns out they are both really cool people and although quite different in background there are many similarities and I am safe to say we will enjoy each others company when we meet up later in the year.
That evening we were all invited to a Broadway show, so the majority of the scholarship society walked through the city on dusk and saw the city change colour from a dull grey to full of lights in every colour. The Broadway show was about Martin Luther King and we were sitting quite close to the action. We then went to a pub where the cast and crew had invited us back for some drinks.
On Friday we attended the board of directors meeting and were introduced to the society and the outgoing scholars talked about their incredible year. That evening was to be a great night. We went a local restaurant for a casual and social get together with great food and drinks. We were introduced again and given statue of liberty hats and sashes for our region; we gave Jim Corry (the now previous Chairman of the Society) an Aussi hat complete with corks on strings, while he entertained the crowed and told some great stories from the scholarship society.
After a fairly late night we then attended the morning lecture series, where the past scholars presented a seminar of their year, along with Donna from Divers Alert Network, Karl Huggins from the USC Hyperbaric Chamber, and two scholarship interns. All us scholars then went to lunch and met with Anya Watson, the 2005 North American scholar, she showed her video and give us some tips for the upcoming year.
It was then time to get ready for the big event. Formal presentations at the Explorers club NYC, for those who don’t know about the Explorers club check the website (www.explorers.org). So many great explorers have been here and the history really shines. This evening was great and many photos were taken during the evening, we all were getting sore cheeks from smiling and sore eyes from the camera flashes! The previous scholars presented their end of year videos which I must say were awesome! Then it was time for Jamie, Eline and myself to get up and be presented our Rolex submariner watches, we also received gifts from 4th Element and a Cobra 2 dive computer from Suunto. We received our flag that will travel with us for the year and we were inducted as members of the Explorers club. That night extended into the early hours of Sunday morning where we kicked on at a local Irish pub with an open bar tab to the society.
As you can imagine we were a little under the weather on Sunday morning where we all met at Mike Emmerman’s beautiful townhouse in NYC. We discussed plans for the year and we have planned a trip with all us scholars to Europe and Scandinavia in August and to California in October. We then departed that afternoon for our journey back to Australia and caught up with some much needed sleep!
I am now about to head off to Lord Howe Island on Friday 18th to stay with Tas and Lauren from Prodive LHI and do my Divemaster course. I could not think of a better place to go and stay for a month diving, so I give more updates while I am there…..
Steve
