Quote:
| Originally Posted by liamm quote "You guys are starting to prove my point."
which would be what ??
I'd be interested to hear what your move to DIR involved as i thought you were very much TDI deep air - but maybe i was mistaken. What level of dir are you?
I only ask as the DIR thing intrigues me but i want to get at least another years diving experience in first and then consider it again. |
(In answer to a thred that was closed)
The way I (Marlin Inn Dive Center) morphed to DIR actually opened up the Russian market to Halcyon and GUE. This is not as much to do with my dive skills as much as it has to do with me owning a pretty well "published" dive center, due to OCTOPUS magazine having an article every month about our tech diving achievments (my brother and I).
Basically, I was able to steer opinion in the technical dive market to a small but effective extent.
Since my father owns the hotel where our dive center is located, we where never really pressed for rent
so we had a lot of time and resource to concentrate our efforts on tech diving and later DIR/GUE. All of what we did was pure TDI with all the attachments AND we where Dive Rite dealers.
BUT
We did feel the need for something better or holistic. One of our greatest clients and friends (Dmitry Milutine) told us about GUE and the record cave dives. We read up on them and liked the whole concept a couple of years before joining up ourselves.
With the help of our (then) Russian marketing partner (DecoStop) we organised the first fundies+tech1 in Egypt taught by Jarrod Jablonski.
At that time I was a pretty fat smoker who was heavilly engaged in deep long dives. I was getting bent in my left elbow pretty often and quite a few of the dives I was doing where not as safe as they should have been.
After seeing JJ in the water I was pleased to see that he lived up to my expectations and I started learning from him straight away. I also found him more than willing to show me some of his moves. Also, funny enough, I found myself compelled to quit smoking!!!! Which probably has saved my life in some way apart from diving.
The next event was the GUE ITC that was held at my dive center. We had David, Bob, Mario, Richard and of course JJ.
The ITC was hosted by us so we could capitalise on the media, which is still going till now
Our efforts and investments made it happen. The big clincher was change of attitude. It gave DIR the push that was needed in Russia and we succeeded in installing a new axiom for Russian divers to judge themselves by.
It cost us our business and many a client, but it was worth it! Because I( have the respect of our whole community due to the fact that we gave up the $$$s to bring in a safer way to get yourself killed
My brother Hassan's and my diving skill is legend in the Red Sea with abilities rivaled by no other team and this is known and published in the Red Sea.
It took years of training and hudnreds of deep and sometimes dangerous dives to reach the level, thus I am very proud when talking about it.
But I struggle to express that in the end of the day, GUE and namely JJ made it so.
That is what I mean when talking about it, nothing more. And yes, I do understand that many a reader thinks "who the hell is this clown". But dose it really matter?
In Summery: GUE's approach to diver training is excellent and DIR (if you have to call it that) is probably the best set of standards for the serious tech diver.