Day 66: Another Rider Up in Flames

Vela Luka, Croatia

I didn’t go in to the dive center today. I spent the morning with Adam and David at Nautica Restaurant drinking coffee and Karlovacko while using the internet.

I wrote Marjolein that I quit the internship and explaining the situation. I even pointed out to her what I felt was a reasonable price I had to pay for cutting short the internship and finishing all my courses. We must had written each other an email roughly at the same time since I received one from her right after with the invoice of 950 euros and her issue with me writing about other staff members and divers on my blog.

That email was followed by another saying that she didn’t read my email before sending her previous one and that if it’s the quality of the courses that I had problem with, I should have told them. Duh! That’s what I’d been trying to tell Bobby the past few days!! Either he just didn’t get it or he didn’t care to relay the information to Marjolein. I was pretty sure it’s the latter.

Anyway, I also told Marjolein that my blog was strictly personal. It’s a mean for my friends and families to keep up to date with my day to day life and I had the right to write about my thoughts and feelings. Besides, I had never mentioned the dive center by name nor the full names of any staff members.

As to my concern about our internship and status here being legal, Marjolein insisted that we were students and it’s totally legal. So check this out, if that’s indeed the case, why would Bobby tell the interns to act like tourists whenever there’s Croatian officials around? In fact, I wasn’t diving (I was babysitting) until more than a week into my internship and that was due to two Croatian officials who were at the center. Bobby got nervous and told us to stop working and jump into the water. He even sent us home early the next day because “tourists don’t hang out all day at the dive center.” The most ridiculous part though was that, he had a code phrase to signal us to act like tourist and it’s “Johnny Depp is great” (I believed it came from the fact that Johnny Depp is in the movie The Tourists. I could be wrong though).

I was willing to just call it quit and let the whole issues go and not getting my certifications because the way I saw it, the certifications are mere plastic. I got my experience. However, Adam and David told me the whole situation was unfair. I had paid 600 euro and had worked for two months and ended up with Nada! They thought I should fight for my rights.

After the morning at Nautica, Adam, David and I went trekking up the hill. David was up to his specialty again. On one of the alleyways, we saw a really cool balcony and David straight went up to the door and knocked it. An old lady opened the door and looked confused. David told her that we wanted to go to the balcony and instead of getting gun pointed to his face or police called on him, the lady invited us in. We were given juice and wine and I was sure they would have dine us had we stay till lunch time. We got to meet the whole family and David called the old lady “Mama.”. Weird….

Afterwards we made out way to the part of the hills and chilled on the slope watching the Vela Luka bay. We could see the dive center from where we were and were glad that we no longer had to be there. Even though we had fun hanging around at the hill, there’s a bittersweet feeling to it all. The three of us had to part our ways soon. David would be leaving Vela Luka to Spain in a few hours, Adam the next morning to Poland, and I in a few days to God knows where. It’s strange cos we hadn’t even known one another for too long, but I guess when you worked, grinded and went through the same ordeal together, you felt rather close to one another.

After sending David off at the bus terminal, Adam and I went to a cafe for our internet fix. Later on, I moved my stuffs out of the staff house and into the apartment David was renting for the past couple of days. The owners, an old lady and his son, were really friendly. Same thing going on there, David called this old lady “Mama” as well.

In the evening, we all had a nice dinner at a restaurant for Adam’s last night. Bobby and Billy were there too and we didn’t exchange a single word. A-w-k-w-a-r-d…..

Croatian phrase of the day:

Da li idete na odmor ili poslovno? = Are you on holiday or business?