Monday 10th
Vicky Divemaster Exams
Tuesday 11th
Alice arrived (15 dive and rescue diver course package)
Did a refresher with her in pool
Alice paid 20,000 baht
Wednesday 12th
Worked for Sea Bees Guiding (very very rough seas) was with Chris’s / Ben’s IDC on the boat – half were sick !
Alice Diving
Thursday 13th
Alice and Vicky Diving (conditions very very rough here at the moment)
Friday 14th
Alice Rescue Diver Course Theory
Website updates (remember the prices on the padi fees that I told you about ? I sorted them all out today English and German) Email queries
Saturday 15th
Open Water Course Cherie / Kate
Meeting with Thomas regarding search engine placements / website changes
Sunday
Open Water Course Cherie / Kate
Allowing Kate to pay in instalments for this course (she paid 4000 initially) he is a school teacher and friend of Cherie
Busy week, got PADI open water / rescue diver / nitrox / divemaster and advanced open water courses going along with booking dive trips and trying to sort out the car.
Monday 17th
Trying to sort out Car repairs, this is not a simple operation, nobody really understands the insurance damage quote or where it should be fixed, complete waste of my time and effort…………..
Tuesday 18th
boring day
Wednesday 19th
Alice Rescue Course (Open Water) took Vicky as part of her DM Course – Racha Noi / Racha Yai 3 dives
Cherie / Kate Open water theory lesson / dvd / quiz / knowledge review
Thursday 20th
Spent another day trying to sort out the Car Repairs, drove all over the place trying to find the approved garage, with the help of a Thai I found the named garage and its booked into be fixed on Tuesday, this repair will take 3 days, lots of hassle / expense and time spent here. Whoever crashed it should compensate us for this. Not sure what I will do for transport yet but hopefully will not inconvenience us much.
Alice and Vicky Diving at Racha Yai with Coral Cruiser
Cherie Open water theory lesson / dvd / quiz / knowledge review and Exam
Friday 21th
Kate Open water theory lesson / dvd / quiz / knowledge review and Exam
Alice Phi Phi overnight with Calypso
Vicky exams
Saturday 22th
Open Water Course Cherie / Kate Open Water Dives 1 and 2 (Racha Yai 2 dives)
Sunday 23rd
Nitrox Course Alice
Vicky Completed all DM criteria , needs to give me final payment and a bit more paperwork and she will be done
Owed to us +92000 (alice / ow courses / DM Courses)
Owed by us -10500 (dive trips)
Still problems with dive community email account
My dive-community email account is working about 1 attempt in 10 it now gets bounced messages so when people send me emails they get their email back !!!1 This is very annoying and stops myself being able to talk to customers / partners about business on the day I want to, not very professional and I think we need to change our service provider if they cannot improve the service.
For your Interest a special Happy Days update ………….
Rob back out of bed (broken leg from motorbike accident)
Another PADI Instructor sent me a text on Saturday night regarding a dive instructor (nobody has found out his name yet but think he is swedish) that needed a- or o- type blood urgenty as there wasnt enough available in the asian blood banks (apparently they all have o- type blood). I forwarded the text to people but found a swedish guy in the bar that had the same blood type and went to hospital with aiden who also had the same type. Apparently the guy had to lose his leg 🙁 too many people getting killed and injured here recently and they all involved drink / motorbikes and speed !!!
Have attempted to do the PADI PIC online but we need PIC online credits that I am trying to sort out with PADI now
Vicky has been an excellent DM candidate but is expressing a bit of concern about the IDC as she will only have 95 ish dives by the start of it, I have assured here that as she is such a great candidate and already more than competant in the water it wont be a problem (I only had 105 dives at my IE). I know the dives she completes on her IDC will take her over the 100 dive requirement. She mentioned she could sit the IE after the August one or do the whole IDC / IE in September. I said I will chat to you for advice but she is ready in every way apart from dive numbers. She knows she will meet minimum requirements but wants more, I guess that is a good sign.
Hoping to get her PADI IDC materials today !
There are some rumors that Calypso have found a new dive site between racha yai and racha noi and will check it out with them on Wednesday.
Spoke to Billy (EFR and Rescue) who is pretty put out that I am not at the dive centre and there is nobody there when he went there (3 times) he hasnt got time to do anything now even if he gets in touch with Simon and wants a refund, he paid 6000 THB and you can pay it to my account and I will see him when he gets back to the UK (or I will transfer it to him if he doesnt come and see me)
Have thought long and hard about the work I am doing for you and the resulting sale of the Dive Centre and believe (as well as others) that I am owed something for my work. I previously refused your offer of 30,000 THB per month as I beleived the work I was doing would benefit Dive Community and therefore myself in the future, as I am not going to benefit I would like you to consider payment for my work over the last year and 1 month ! I believe I added massive value to the dive centre by keeping the certification numbers up, by getting contracts with PhuketDeals and the other smaller hotels and also the massive amount of work I did on the website,which is surely a bit plus for the Dive Centre as we didnt even have an English side before I came, now its one of the better Phuket Dive sites. I am not going to be greedy but only ask you for 15,000 THB a month as I paid myself commission for courses I did (not beachdives / liveaboards / daytrip sales),Therefore I would like a payment for my work which as you know is a small amount of money for 13 months work but I think you got a very good deal out of me
This would show me that you valued my work and would stop me getting bitter and twisted about this whole thing. I have got another contract agreed with another hotel (Karon) how do we go forward with that ? who can deal with it ?
I obviously still have a work permit that is valid for another 2 months plus, what should I do with it ?
The idiot accountant cannot complete the Balance Sheet until 10th February (after all that would be 3 months since I first asked them) !!
I told them I would take all the company paperwork to another accountancy practise and get them to do it and terminate our agreement. Our Thai admin lady claims that they havent been paying our social security tax and told her that we havent been paying for services ? every month I take the invoices and receipts to them and pay them what they ask.
Visited the new accountant and her practise who will look at our paperwork tomorrow 1700 as the old accountants need until 1600 to sort it out and will tell us how long it will take to do the balance sheet which is needed for the TAT licence ./ work permits / visa renewals ! will be glad when this is sorted
We have had a young couple lose a gold wedding ring recently on Kata Beach (North) while fun diving around the reef, if anyone finds it, they would be very grateful for its return, I am sure.
Two German Instructors ask me if we have any work everyday and I obviously havent had anything for them apart from a English (grim) EFR / Rescue course when I phoned them both 5 times over the period of an hour and they didnt answer,so I had to put the course off a day and do them myself, I now think that it would be an unreasonable gamble to let them work for us without a work permit, due to the potential impact it would have on Dive Community if they were found working for us without a work permit. No other company wants them working without a work permit due to the risk it may cause if they get caught by immigration / the police ? if they are caught the company is liable for big fines and the directors could face imprisonment. As a business decision its unreasonable to take that risk isnt it ? I know at least 2 other instructors that are German speaking and with a Work permit that I have seen working and know they could be trusted with our German speaking students.
Leaving the truck uninsured for 3 months was an oversight but retrospecively it was a big mistake / a bad business move as its our biggest asset, and if it was stolen / damaged the company couldnt sustain such a loss. Isnt giving un-insured / non-work permit ‘tourists’ an equally bad decision ?
I am really hoping for an upturn in business as I am starting to worry that the website isn’t bringing us the business we hoped for, I will be chasing up the Aspasia hotel contract tomorrow hopefully
Regarding the website:
This is excactly the reason why I startet to contact all the travel agencies and potential business partners. I do believe that we need to be in catalogs and do at least some print advertising in diver´s magazines like Sea Bees, Dive Asia and all the others. The website is important but I think it is more the information-tool than the booking tool. I am busy with this subject every day and I truly believe that it has to be done right now before it is too late. And I will spend as many time and money as necessary to put our divecenter in the front row.
Good news about internet: a good friend of mine runs an internet company and I talked to him about our current situation. He offered a lot of technical support for us (eg webhosting with unlimited webspace, unlimited number and size of Email-Adresses, mySQL-database, PHP5, daily backup, weekly server update etc) and he will introduce me to his team of website designers – all for free. Maybe this will help us.
Thomas wrote an email about our google ads (PPC) and I think there are some potential changes I can make. At the moment I spend about 120 USD every month for the google PPC campaign, we have many clicks but no bookings.
Tomorrow I will meet my former boss (still a friend) and we will talk about options how he can help me to place some PR in German magazines. I will let you know soon if some ideas are coming up.