Latest / Adventure Sports Podcast / Ep. 1186: From Hungary to Avatar - Building a Life on Adventure with Szilvia Gogh

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Ep. 1186: From Hungary to Avatar - Building a Life on Adventure with Szilvia Gogh · Adventure Sports Podcast

0:06
[SPEAKER_00]: You're listening to the Adventure Sports podcast.
0:08
[SPEAKER_00]: We talk with adventurers from around the globe to bring you the inspiration and motivation you need to get started in the outdoors or to keep you moving if you're already there.
0:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Now here's your host, Kurt Lindville.
0:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey friends, happy Monday to you, it is.
0:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, by the time you hear this, it's March 2nd.
0:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Today is March 1st.
0:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Something very strange happened yesterday.
0:31
[SPEAKER_01]: In addition to being my birthday, I found myself remounting my ski bindings to accommodate my new ski boots, which was really fun and getting those skis ready for the... are you ready for this?
0:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Opening day of the ski season for me,
0:48
[SPEAKER_01]: At the same time, I installed a new clutch cable for my DRZ 400 motorcycle and I charged up the battery and I tuned up everything getting it ready for a happy season of riding outside and I suddenly realized I was pulling my motorcycle and my snow skis out of storage on the same day.
1:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Very, very strange occurrence.
1:14
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a reason for that.
1:16
[SPEAKER_01]: first, I decided I probably wouldn't need to ski until the snow is excellent, and the snow's been mediocre this year, and I climbed Kilimanjaro, which also made no sense in risking getting hurt before Killie, right?
1:31
[SPEAKER_01]: But we had abnormally warm weather this weekend, which of course meant that I needed to get the motorcycle going.
1:39
[SPEAKER_01]: We live at 7,700 feet,
1:42
[SPEAKER_01]: in the town, which is the coldest town from fall till spring in the whole United States lower 48 states I should say Alaska does beat us and I was writing my motorcycle on March 1st.
1:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Took it out today, had a lovely ride, it's just very, very, very strange.
2:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, life is full of surprises sometimes, but sometimes life is what we make of it.
2:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And today's guest, I think, epitomizes what that means more than perhaps anyone we've ever had on the show.
2:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Sylvia grew up in Communist Hungary, in very, very challenging conditions, her father died young because of radiation poisoning from Chernobyl, and other members of our family have also suffered from cancers and early demise because of Chernobyl.
2:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Sylvia wasn't willing to stay put.
2:38
[SPEAKER_01]: She ended up in the Mediterranean.
2:40
[SPEAKER_01]: She ended up in the Pacific.
2:42
[SPEAKER_01]: She ended up in San Diego.
2:44
[SPEAKER_01]: She loves scuba diving and she built an amazing, adventurous life filled with water sports, filled with adventure travel, filled with grabbing life by the horns and wrestling it to the ground, to make something glorious out of it.
3:03
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so amazing.
3:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So I've been reading her book and it's
3:07
[SPEAKER_01]: It's fascinating.
3:09
[SPEAKER_01]: It's one part inspiration, one part confession, one part, just an explanation on how we don't have to take what life gives us.
3:19
[SPEAKER_01]: But we can make something of our own, and Sylvia has done that in space.
3:24
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to love today's program Sylvia Goge.
3:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, and I should mention, you know those crazy blue monkey figures from Pandora?
3:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, we're talking about Avatar.
3:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Sylvia was the safety coordinator for the stunt crew for the underwater scenes that made avatar what it is.
3:47
[SPEAKER_01]: But enough of that, let's hear directly from Sylvia as we enjoy today's episode.
3:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Boy, every now and then we have a guest on the Adventure Sports podcast and there's so many varied things to cover from a lifetime of living large and living Adventurously and I really don't know where to start.
4:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Today's guest is one of these people.
4:10
[SPEAKER_01]: This is Sylvia Gogg, and Sylvia is a professional scuba diver, a stunt woman.
4:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And she is a jewelry designer.
4:20
[SPEAKER_01]: She does a lot of adventure travel.
4:22
[SPEAKER_01]: She lives on the beach in California.
4:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And she works with inner city kids.
4:27
[SPEAKER_01]: She's written a book called Diving Into Dreams.
4:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And it just goes on and on and on and on.
4:33
[SPEAKER_01]: It she has a rich background.
4:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not gonna waste time trying to explain it all when she can tell us herself.
4:39
[SPEAKER_01]: So still, be welcome to the program.
4:41
[SPEAKER_03]: going to be here.
4:43
[SPEAKER_03]: I love connecting with like-minded people and your show is one that I love to listen to get inspired and try new things that I haven't done before.
4:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So I have to start, people are going to say, oh wait a minute, I hear an accent, but I don't know what that is, that's Eastern, but what is it, Cecilia, where are you from?
5:03
[SPEAKER_03]: I know people always guess that I'm from Cuba or Colombia or France.
5:10
[SPEAKER_03]: I have a very mixed-mott accent because I lived around the world, but I was born in a landlord communist country called Hungary, which is the Central Europe.
5:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, everyone's going to want to know why are you living on the beach in California?
5:25
[SPEAKER_01]: How did that happen?
5:27
[SPEAKER_03]: It was never the plan.
5:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Honestly, I came here for a two week vacation 25 years ago and I have to be honest with you before I came here.
5:37
[SPEAKER_03]: I briefly lived in Mediterranean, Thailand and England.
5:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And in England, every people house, the Jerry Springer show is on pretty much all day while they are sipping their mediocre tea.
5:52
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was just convinced all Americans are like,
5:55
[SPEAKER_03]: the people in the Jerry Springer show.
5:57
[SPEAKER_03]: So I honestly never wanted to come here.
5:59
[SPEAKER_03]: I came to visit my cousin just briefly for a two week vacation, 25 years ago.
6:06
[SPEAKER_03]: And when I landed in Los Angeles, I realized that it's not reality.
6:12
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, the reality shows don't always reflect reality.
6:16
[SPEAKER_03]: People here in America actually are very diverse, just everywhere in the world.
6:20
[SPEAKER_03]: There are nice people, normal people, crazy people.
6:23
[SPEAKER_03]: And California has everything I ever wanted.
6:26
[SPEAKER_03]: The weather, the pond trees, the no winter, and the ocean.
6:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And I have to say it has the greatest opportunities.
6:34
[SPEAKER_03]: If you want to do something in America, you really can start a company in and afternoon.
6:40
[SPEAKER_03]: So I then I started like two three different companies.
6:43
[SPEAKER_03]: I do the jury The professional scuba diving teaching diving for like the past 30 some years and Honestly if you can't make it in America.
6:54
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know where else can you do it in the world?
6:58
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think it's easy, especially for people in the U.S. to not realize the opportunity that we have.
7:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And you mentioned diversity.
7:07
[SPEAKER_01]: The United States was settled from people from all countries all over the world.
7:11
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not a people group.
7:13
[SPEAKER_01]: We're a mixture of humanity from around the globe.
7:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's so exciting to meet so many wonderful people from so many wonderful places, just like yourself.
7:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Humdry, that's fantastic.
7:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, especially Los Angeles is a melting pot for my kids, classmates are all over from India, the Philippines, China, I want, I just love talking with people from around the world, I love trying their food, their costumes, it's just so eye-opening and I think everybody needs to have a little bit wider vision of what the word is to be a more tolerant.
7:55
[SPEAKER_03]: because it's very easy to just see things through how everything you do and your family do want.
8:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Then think everybody else is doing something strange.
8:04
[SPEAKER_03]: But in reality, I think that's the beauty in the world that we are all different.
8:09
[SPEAKER_03]: It would be boring if it would be all the same, wouldn't it be?
8:12
[SPEAKER_03]: If everybody would think the same, agree with you on politics, religion, whatever.
8:17
[SPEAKER_03]: It would be so boring.
8:19
[SPEAKER_03]: You couldn't have conversations, and I love questioning everything and everybody.
8:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's great.
8:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And how would you learn if everyone was just like you?
8:31
[SPEAKER_03]: It would be so boring.
8:32
[SPEAKER_03]: It really would be.
8:33
[SPEAKER_01]: It would.
8:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think sometimes it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that people that think differently somehow are on the other side, where the enemy or the enemy
8:44
[SPEAKER_01]: wrong or but the reality is when you meet people with differing ideas and approaches to life it's a great opportunity to find the common humanity and to learn from each other and to grow and to stretch and it's it's lovely.
9:01
[SPEAKER_03]: I lived on a Muslim country, I mean, I live in Thailand, which is mostly Buddhist, but I lived in an island that's majority in Muslim, and so much
9:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Negativity, I heard when I told people I lived there that, oh my god, that single woman, 25 years old, by herself in the word in a muslim place, oh my god, what's gonna happen to you?
9:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know what happened to me?
9:29
[SPEAKER_03]: I was invited by all the locals to their dinner table.
9:33
[SPEAKER_03]: I was taken care of.
9:35
[SPEAKER_03]: I was offered shelter at a very good local price.
9:39
[SPEAKER_03]: And I lived there for two years without anything happening to me.
9:44
[SPEAKER_01]: right and almost always that's what I hear on our podcast when I talk to people that have done adventure travel around the globe it all the things that people fear that that it's just like that the extreme minority of what happens in the world what really happens is people find out that people are people and love is king.
10:06
[SPEAKER_03]: 100%.
10:07
[SPEAKER_03]: And if you think about what is the strongest feeling that motivate people, it's not love, it's not curiosity, it's fear.
10:17
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think fear stops people from living a most fulfilling, colorful, interesting life.
10:25
[SPEAKER_03]: They fear of
10:26
[SPEAKER_03]: taking off by themselves because what will happen, they are afraid of leaving a job because somebody will take it by the time they come back.
10:35
[SPEAKER_03]: They are afraid of trying new interesting food with crunchy cockroaches or anything because oh they're gonna die.
10:44
[SPEAKER_03]: I think fear stops people from living life to the fullest, and then it's just the silliest thing.
10:52
[SPEAKER_03]: If we could only just put that aside and be a little bit more
10:58
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, just ask yourself, what's the worst that can happen?
11:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Right?
11:01
[SPEAKER_03]: You can always go home.
11:02
[SPEAKER_03]: You can always pick the food app.
11:04
[SPEAKER_03]: You can always try a different thing if you don't like whatever you are trying or a country.
11:12
[SPEAKER_03]: If you don't like it there, you know the three, you can pack up and move to another country.
11:16
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that's what I did in my life.
11:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you're not a child.
11:20
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, that's great.
11:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So Sylvia, what does, you've done so many adventurous things in your life?
11:28
[SPEAKER_01]: What does an adventurous year in Sylvia's life look like?
11:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Describe to us if you could live your perfect year, what would that be?
11:39
[SPEAKER_03]: I think my perfect year, wait, am I looking back of a perfect year of my life or I'm planning a new perfect year?
11:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I had both, I had the perfect year when I was 25.
11:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's hear that one first.
11:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Alright, so I was teaching scribodiving in England where I moved for a guy that seemed like a good idea at the time.
12:02
[SPEAKER_03]: We were outside of Manchester running a dive shop and in about an eight-month stretch, the entire summer was three hours long, meaning the sunshine.
12:13
[SPEAKER_03]: I can't do this anymore.
12:14
[SPEAKER_03]: That's not why I became a scuba instructor and started traveling the word.
12:19
[SPEAKER_03]: And the boy kind of turned out totally different than when I met him and decided to move with him from the Mediterranean to England.
12:26
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm like enough enough is enough.
12:29
[SPEAKER_03]: I can't go home and listen to my mom saying oh, I told you so So I I got the global, you know the the one that's yeah, but he has in their house So I decided to spin it and where my finger stops is where I gonna go next
12:44
[SPEAKER_03]: My finger stopped in Thailand.
12:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Quick weather check, the season is just starting there.
12:49
[SPEAKER_03]: So I booked a one-way ticket to Thailand Bangkok and just had it south until I hit the C-shore and decided to get on the first boat that left Puket and it ended up on Copi P Island.
13:04
[SPEAKER_03]: If you've seen the movie The Beach with Leonardo DiCaprio,
13:08
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the island 20 years ago before it became touristy actually by an ice 25 years ago.
13:14
[SPEAKER_03]: It was just whites and the beach
13:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Only dive shops, little cafes, restaurants with pirate movies, time assages, and that's it.
13:25
[SPEAKER_03]: So my perfect day every day on the island was waking up, getting on a dive boat, working teaching, diving, swimming with whale sharks, turtles, dolphins, sharks, meet new people from around the world.
13:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Have amazing conversations eat fresh bananas, watermelons,
13:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Have lunch, take a nap, play a little beach volleyball, get a time-assage, and meet up in the bar with young people from around the world, listen to good music, have great conversations, make friendships that's still last.
14:03
[SPEAKER_03]: And I can go anywhere in the world, and I will have friends who say, hey, come and save it us, that I met through diving.
14:09
[SPEAKER_03]: So for me, that year was the best year of my life.
14:13
[SPEAKER_03]: being 25 on an island with really nothing to worry about.
14:19
[SPEAKER_03]: We didn't really have internet, we didn't have cell phones.
14:22
[SPEAKER_03]: There was one internet cafe where if you really wanted to see what's going on in the world, you could check the BBC or the CNN while you're having your coffee.
14:32
[SPEAKER_03]: But if you wanted, which I did, you could live blissfully ignorant and just enjoy nature and the muiti, the waterfalls, the diving, oh my god, that was one of the best years of my life.
14:49
[SPEAKER_01]: That sounds fantastic.
14:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And I love the idea that you spun the globe and your finger came down and you went.
14:56
[SPEAKER_01]: That doesn't always work out.
14:58
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think it really can.
15:00
[SPEAKER_01]: You're always going to have an experience.
15:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I quick story.
15:04
[SPEAKER_01]: My wife and I when we went on our honeymoon 31 years ago, we were in Europe and I hadn't planned a lot for the honeymoon.
15:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I just wanted to explore.
15:15
[SPEAKER_01]: But we were exhausted.
15:17
[SPEAKER_01]: The hotels we were staying in were too expensive.
15:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And my wife looked at me one morning and she just said, this is not honeymoon.
15:24
[SPEAKER_01]: We need to slow down.
15:25
[SPEAKER_01]: We need to, and so I said, okay, so we pulled out the map.
15:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, we're going to go and I close my eyes and drop my finger on the map.
15:32
[SPEAKER_01]: and it was a village in Austria that was on a lake in the mountains.
15:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, that's where we're going.
15:40
[SPEAKER_01]: So we packed up, we jumped on a train, we got there, got off the train, there was no village, no nothing.
15:46
[SPEAKER_01]: No taxis, we're just standing in the middle of the woods, where the train stopped.
15:51
[SPEAKER_01]: But a lady walks up to us.
15:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And Sylvia, she was from the U.S., she heard a speaking English.
15:58
[SPEAKER_01]: She invited us to come and stay in some apartments that she had.
16:02
[SPEAKER_01]: She actually taught semesters overseas for barvard college.
16:06
[SPEAKER_01]: We stayed there for several days.
16:08
[SPEAKER_01]: We skied with an Austrian ski champion, Heliputz.
16:11
[SPEAKER_01]: We had amazing adventures all over that part of Austria, exploring such beautiful, just wonderful places.
16:19
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like our honeymoon was completely restored.
16:22
[SPEAKER_01]: because we dropped a finger on a map.
16:26
[SPEAKER_03]: I honestly, everything in my life that turned out the most amazing was unplanned.
16:33
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm actually putting a trip together.
16:35
[SPEAKER_03]: My sister still lives in Europe, and once a year we decided to meet up at random places around the world and spend a week to two weeks together, so we can actually have conversations without our husbands, our kids,
16:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, you know, when you really can just connect and focus because we're on different time zones, so we can't really talk when it's morning for me, it's already dinner time for her, so it's really hard to have a conversation when you live on the like nine hours away from nine hours of time change.
17:08
[SPEAKER_03]: So we're gonna go to Sri Lanka this January and of the month and my sister and I have the same travel styles What we do we book the first two nights when we get into Colombo the Capital where we both land and meet up and then after that, which is gonna go with the wind My theory if I can find it online to book it on Agoda or bookings It's already too crowded and too popular.
17:35
[SPEAKER_03]: So we love traveling
17:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Just going with the wind off the beaten path and talking with the locals or fellow travelers, find out what's the cool under the radar destinations to do.
17:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's how we travel.
17:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Last year we did the country Georgia,
17:58
[SPEAKER_03]: That's like an adventure paradise.
18:00
[SPEAKER_03]: You have seven different climates there from the forever snow, up in the Caucus, which mountains.
18:08
[SPEAKER_03]: And then you have the summer beaches, it has the mountains, it has the tundra,
18:15
[SPEAKER_03]: In one tiny country, you can experience so much and what we did, same, we didn't plan anything.
18:22
[SPEAKER_03]: We found a local driver, we were just going to hire him for the first day to take us up to the mountain where otherwise we couldn't really drive up ourselves.
18:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And then we ended up hiring him to take us for the rest of the week everywhere.
18:35
[SPEAKER_03]: He took us to his mother's house, who taught us how to make cheese from the cows milk that cows that were outside the garden, I mean these are the things you can't pre-plan.
18:46
[SPEAKER_03]: You just have to go with the flow.
18:48
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's not everybody who can do that.
18:52
[SPEAKER_03]: And I can do this with everybody.
18:54
[SPEAKER_03]: When I travel with my husband and son, we prep and things, we prep booked the hotel, the transport, the activities mostly.
19:03
[SPEAKER_03]: But there are a few people, and even if there are no people, I honestly had the most adventures traveling solo.
19:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Because when you buy yourself, you are open to meet people.
19:15
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, when it's two people talking, talking in a bar or anywhere in the restaurant, you kind of closing yourself off to meeting new people because you are in your bubble.
19:24
[SPEAKER_03]: But when you travel by yourself,
19:27
[SPEAKER_03]: You are really a magnet to meet people and start conversation whether if you just sit next to somebody in a bus stop or on the train and that's how you can hear about all these hidden gems.
19:40
[SPEAKER_03]: I love traveling and just going with the flow that's what I did for the first 10, 15 years of my life after leaving a finishing college and starting to travel as a professional screwdriver.
19:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Sylvia, so many people right now are thinking, oh, she is so brave.
19:56
[SPEAKER_01]: That sounds terrifying.
19:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Were you always that brave, or did you learn it by experience?
20:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Say that I'm brave.
20:04
[SPEAKER_03]: I just know what I want, and I just know what I don't want.
20:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I did not want to live in Hungary that is landlocked.
20:12
[SPEAKER_03]: It has really depressing winter weather that comes from Siberia.
20:18
[SPEAKER_03]: It has very structured,
20:23
[SPEAKER_03]: way of living with a lot of bureaucracy and I'm more of a free-spirited girl ever since I was born.
20:30
[SPEAKER_03]: So I knew that I did not want that.
20:33
[SPEAKER_03]: I didn't know what I want, but I just started to take off after college.
20:38
[SPEAKER_03]: before getting the job, the husband, the mortgage.
20:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And I said, I'm just going to travel for three months, okay?
20:44
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm just going to go to the Mediterranean, do my instructor training, become a scuba instructor and just spend the summer there.
20:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Then I come back and I'm going to start, you know, whatever the everybody's expecting from me, the normal life.
20:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Then the three months turned into six months to a year.
21:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Then I moved to England with that guy.
21:03
[SPEAKER_03]: I like I said that seemed like a great idea at the time until it turned out he had six children from four different women he had to mention.
21:12
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, the Manchester weather and I'm not the type who likes to go back and hear my mom say I told you so so I just kept going and I always had in my mind that I'm just going to do one more place maybe I go to Thailand then maybe I go to Cambodia and I go home okay maybe I just going to go and see Indonesia because that looks really cool all right if I'm already in the nation maybe I just going to see Malaysia and
21:40
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, the years started stacking up and my mom still had the belief that maybe one day I still gonna go home, but it all changed when I got married and had a child in California.
21:52
[SPEAKER_03]: So
21:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I wasn't brave, I just, I think it's like a breakfast buffet, right?
21:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Some people know what they want exactly and it's easy.
22:03
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm someone who needs to sample a lot of things to figure out what it is that I don't like until I can narrow down what I do like.
22:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, so we could do an entire show on travel.
22:16
[SPEAKER_01]: We could do an entire show on your scuba diving.
22:20
[SPEAKER_01]: We could do an entire show on being a stunt woman.
22:24
[SPEAKER_01]: We haven't even talked about that yet.
22:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how we can cover it all, but I wanna hear about the stunt woman bit.
22:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Guess we've not even touched it.
22:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, that's another thing that's entirely because of fate.
22:36
[SPEAKER_03]: So when I came to America for that two weeks to see my cousin in Florida,
22:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, it was right after 9.11.
22:43
[SPEAKER_03]: So from Bangkok, I could not fly to Florida, but I could find a flight to Los Angeles at California.
22:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And I figured once I'm in America, it's going to be easy to just hop over to Florida.
22:55
[SPEAKER_03]: So I called up one of my students from Thailand and said, hey, do you remember offering me a couch when I ever come to America?
23:05
[SPEAKER_03]: So I stayed in his apartment and his family is from San Diego.
23:11
[SPEAKER_03]: If you have been there, it's the most beautiful ocean side with the most perfect weather in the planet.
23:18
[SPEAKER_03]: It's actually proven scientifically that if you look at one year's weather, the most ideal place with the best weather to live is San Diego.
23:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, it's always sunny around 20 so as you use like 70, 80 far and height.
23:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Partly ever rains, it's very lush palm trees, it has the ocean perfect for surfing and skybidiving with the underwater forest and on on land, there are horses, there's a bunch of really, really cool adventure hikes.
23:53
[SPEAKER_03]: So I stayed there with my friend and I'm like,
23:58
[SPEAKER_03]: it here.
23:59
[SPEAKER_03]: If fate wants me to stay here, I will gonna job at the first place where I ask for it.
24:04
[SPEAKER_03]: I opened up the yellow pages back in the day we didn't really Google things.
24:08
[SPEAKER_03]: We just looked through that phone book and I called up the first Dive Center, called Aquadventures and this Captain Hook tied guy in his 50s picks up the foreign gives me a lecture about how girls cannot scuba die.
24:23
[SPEAKER_03]: But if I
24:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, my resume has eye-stiving, rep-diving, cave-diving, living in England, teaching in the Mediterranean.
24:35
[SPEAKER_03]: By that time, I had about 2,000 Skipper Dives under my belt.
24:41
[SPEAKER_03]: experience in marketing because that's my college degree is marketing management and I really thought this is like a dead end and I was just ready to look for flights to Florida when he calls me back and says do you want to start on Monday?
24:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Nice.
24:56
[SPEAKER_03]: I did.
24:57
[SPEAKER_03]: I worked for the same guy for seven years managing his dive center in Burbank which is conveniently right next to all the studios
25:10
[SPEAKER_03]: So we had a lot of stunt coordinators, directors, actors coming for training, renting equipment, fixing equipment, needing water, safety, and it was only a matter of time for me to get into the stunts because it's just not that many women who is the size of an average leading actress and can do the ice diving, the precision diving that the movie is required.
25:37
[SPEAKER_03]: But getting into stunts is not as easy as just being in the right time in the right place, right?
25:43
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a it's a touch-22 to work on a Hollywood production.
25:47
[SPEAKER_03]: You need to be in the screen actor's guilds sag.
25:49
[SPEAKER_03]: But to get into the screen actor's guild, you had to work three days on a Hollywood production, a major Hollywood production.
25:57
[SPEAKER_03]: So you see it's kind of hard.
25:59
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's only either incredible lock or talent that can get you in.
26:05
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was lucky enough to get casted for a commercial, where I had to swim in freezing cold February in bikini for all day along jumping off a boat.
26:16
[SPEAKER_03]: It was a commercial for X-D-Ordernd.
26:19
[SPEAKER_03]: A skinny dude puts this deodorant on himself on the beach and armies of women come to tear him apart because he's so attracted.
26:28
[SPEAKER_03]: The red bikini women, like the Baywatch type,
26:34
[SPEAKER_03]: the green bikini women are climbing over the mountains and the hills running towards to get him and the blue bikini quad is swimming through the Pacific to try and get on shore and get him.
26:48
[SPEAKER_03]: And the first time we did it it was like 50 women jumping into the ocean and swimming ferociously.
26:54
[SPEAKER_03]: The second time it was theory and by like take 10 hypotermia and sea sickness started
27:04
[SPEAKER_03]: a life card, junior life card go and myself on the deck of the bow and I overheard her asking the stunt coordinator.
27:12
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's definitely going to get me into seg, right?
27:14
[SPEAKER_03]: It's going to give me the toughed heartly and I get inside.
27:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And the stunt coordinator said, yes, I don't know quite a way.
27:22
[SPEAKER_03]: If she's getting in, does it mean that I'm getting my set card?
27:26
[SPEAKER_03]: And the stunt coordinator
27:35
[SPEAKER_03]: You bet, so basically that got me into the screen actor's guild, and after that, all the stunt coordinators could hire me whose families I trained.
27:46
[SPEAKER_03]: I got to double Drew Barrymore for a big miracle up in Alaska, saving the whales who got stuck on their eyes.
27:54
[SPEAKER_03]: I did all the eyes diving double for Drew Barrymore.
27:57
[SPEAKER_03]: I got eaten by piranhas in piranhas 3D in a cave on their water.
28:03
[SPEAKER_03]: I got to work a lot on Daxtar, all the
28:08
[SPEAKER_03]: and CSI, Miami, and all those kind of shows.
28:13
[SPEAKER_03]: And of course, the highlight, everybody wants to hear about is Avatar.
28:17
[SPEAKER_03]: I got a call to work on the water safety and teaching the actors scuba diving for the Avatar way of water.
28:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And the one that just came out, the fire and ash.
28:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm, that had to be interesting.
28:38
[SPEAKER_03]: which sure was, I mean, it started off as a two-month project, which is a really, really long project for a movie, for a water job.
28:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Usually we work one to two days a week.
28:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Of two weeks, it's a long, long water work, but two months is like a really long, like, pirates of the Caribbean type, long job.
28:59
[SPEAKER_03]: This job ended up being two years.
29:01
[SPEAKER_03]: We just have good James Cameron has so many amazing ideas
29:08
[SPEAKER_03]: and we just kept doing more and more water stuff and exploring with creatures on their water, with the cdus on their water, he built a 650,000 gallon tank in Manhattan beaches studios, which is an eight minute drive from my house.
29:26
[SPEAKER_03]: So I got so lucky.
29:28
[SPEAKER_03]: This is a sturt or a billing, it's like a hundred feet by I want to say 60 feet by 30 feet deep and we could change the depth of the tank so we could make it shallow water or really deep oceans we could turn it into a beach so like 30 45 degrees
29:47
[SPEAKER_03]: where a lot of times they land on the beaches so we could do that, we could create waves like really big stormy waves, ten foot waves that you could serve.
29:59
[SPEAKER_03]: We had a current machine that could swipe your way.
30:04
[SPEAKER_03]: It's really strong.
30:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, we could do anything.
30:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Jim called it his Swiss army knife.
30:10
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, with a push of the button, we could change the terrain into anything from a calm shallow water into deep sea to violent oceans like crossing to Antarctica type,
30:28
[SPEAKER_03]: anything and it was so much fun because we were doing things that never been done before, right?
30:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Nice.
30:34
[SPEAKER_03]: We were experimenting with underwater creatures, we'd see those, the jadevator, you know that the things that they use in Florida with the jet skis and super high pressure water puts the people up.
30:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
30:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Go super high.
30:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
30:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Now we did that underwater.
30:52
[SPEAKER_03]: We did that all those breakneck chases that you see in Avatar 2 and 3, were done with those.
31:00
[SPEAKER_03]: And my job as a water safety, you can only imagine.
31:04
[SPEAKER_03]: I have two guys using the jadewaters chasing each other.
31:08
[SPEAKER_03]: A bunch of other ones are using cdus to chase each other.
31:11
[SPEAKER_03]: We have the obstacles that they have to overgo in a 650,000
31:22
[SPEAKER_01]: How did nothing go wrong?
31:24
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, how on earth is that's like a catastrophe because I have to say we had the best water safety team I've never worked on a movie set where safety was as paramount as an avatar our team had
31:39
[SPEAKER_03]: a plan for everything, if somebody has a spinal injury, we had a whole lift practice with a crane setup.
31:47
[SPEAKER_03]: And we had time to actually practice it.
31:50
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I've never worked on movies where you have time for the safety team to work together, go to every scenarios that can happen and practice over and over.
32:03
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't even know how to tell you how good it feels to have Jim being so safety conscious because there were a lot of Hazard these things in the tank that could have injured people.
32:20
[SPEAKER_01]: So here's the big picture I'm getting.
32:22
[SPEAKER_01]: You decided to leave home for a brief period.
32:25
[SPEAKER_01]: You spun the globe.
32:27
[SPEAKER_01]: You had experiences.
32:28
[SPEAKER_01]: You tried things.
32:30
[SPEAKER_01]: You went places.
32:32
[SPEAKER_01]: You made decisions like, if I don't get a job on the first person I reach out to, then I'll go to Florida.
32:39
[SPEAKER_01]: and it's like serendepity.
32:42
[SPEAKER_01]: All these things grew into bigger things and other things and ultimately, I mean, you're working with James Cameron on one of the biggest films ever.
32:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, wait a minute.
32:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's a, here's a gal from Hungary who didn't want to spend the winter at home.
32:58
[SPEAKER_03]: My thinking has always been dream big, work hard, and never give up.
33:04
[SPEAKER_03]: And yes, through my life, I had a lot of obstacles, a lot of dead ends, but the way I look at life is, if something is not meant to work out, it's not meant for me.
33:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's try something else.
33:17
[SPEAKER_03]: That's actually what my book is about.
33:19
[SPEAKER_03]: I wrote, uh, now that I'm turning 50 years old next year.
33:22
[SPEAKER_03]: I figured it's it's a good time to recount
33:28
[SPEAKER_03]: That happened to me.
33:29
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, starting with my father dying, at when I was 13 years old, we had Chernobyl happen.
33:36
[SPEAKER_03]: And at first, it, everybody was saying, oh, it's all okay, you can go outside, but the next year my father died because of cancer.
33:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Boy, yes.
33:46
[SPEAKER_03]: And so my book basically starts when I'm 13 years old and I,
33:52
[SPEAKER_03]: I start thinking about what makes me happy.
33:58
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's when I actually started scuba diving.
34:01
[SPEAKER_03]: I did a sport called Orientarian Diving in Lakes and Courays that it's very much like Orientarian running in the forest.
34:09
[SPEAKER_03]: You have to find objects on their water using a compass and the distance accounting device.
34:15
[SPEAKER_03]: And once I went underwater for that very first time,
34:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Where do you feel you belong to somewhere?
34:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Where do you find your shangrila?
34:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Where, oh my god, I can close up that chatter.
34:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Everybody talking to me, telling me what to do, what should I wear, what should I think, what should I eat?
34:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Underwater, I was so...
34:40
[SPEAKER_03]: at ease, at peace, and I was happy.
34:44
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's where my life really started to alter or open up, or I don't know, but basically that's where my story starts.
34:52
[SPEAKER_03]: And in this book takes you through my awakening to what I really want to do, being a scuba instructor and travel to the world.
35:00
[SPEAKER_03]: That my entire family was super skeptical to hear because, you know,
35:05
[SPEAKER_03]: a girl, being a scuba instructor, that's a hobby, right?
35:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Scuba diving is not how you make a living.
35:11
[SPEAKER_03]: But when you know deep inside, what you want, I think.
35:16
[SPEAKER_03]: You just have to find a way and don't listen to everybody, telling you why you shouldn't be doing that and why can't you do that.
35:23
[SPEAKER_03]: So I learned early on saying, when they say, you can't do that, just watch me.
35:29
[SPEAKER_03]: And just don't listen to people who tell no, but you can, because they are in my mind very shallow mind, it closed, never trying fearful people.
35:39
[SPEAKER_03]: I think I totally say it all from your question.
35:43
[SPEAKER_01]: No, that was beautiful.
35:44
[SPEAKER_01]: You started talking about the idea behind recounting your life's adventures in a book for people and all the things that have happened because of your attitude of just leaning into what makes you happy.
35:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And one thing I want to highlight there is you did a lot of pivots.
36:02
[SPEAKER_01]: There were a lot of times you said, nope, this is not it.
36:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm moving on and I think that led you places.
36:09
[SPEAKER_03]: It sure did, you know, I come from a family that is not rich by enemies.
36:16
[SPEAKER_03]: So I never had parents who could pay those vacations that my classmates did jetting off to Paris and doing stuff.
36:25
[SPEAKER_03]: So I was very early on starting to make my own money and own opportunities.
36:29
[SPEAKER_03]: I was tie-dying t-shirts, tutoring math,
36:33
[SPEAKER_03]: working in an ice cream shop because I didn't want other people telling me what I can and can't do.
36:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And I found nobody will hand me anything on a silver platter.
36:46
[SPEAKER_03]: If I want something I have to take the chances and the opportunities.
36:51
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's all started in the Mediterranean when a friend of
37:02
[SPEAKER_03]: That was right after the Iron Curtain fell, and we could start traveling to the West.
37:08
[SPEAKER_03]: As I mentioned, I grew up in Communist Hungary until 1990, when I was 14 years old.
37:13
[SPEAKER_03]: The Berlin Wall fell, and a couple years later, I had this opportunity to spend the summer in the Mediterranean and work as a waitress.
37:23
[SPEAKER_03]: And I walked by a dive shop every day to the restaurant from my friend's apartment.
37:29
[SPEAKER_03]: And I always was just, oh my God, I want to try that, but it's so expensive, it's a hundred dollars a day to go scuba diving, and I don't have a hundred dollars.
37:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And after about a week or two, I worked up the courage to walk into the dive center, and with my very broken English, I asked to see the owner.
37:52
[SPEAKER_03]: It was the middle-aged woman.
37:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I looked her in there and I said, do you do internships?
37:58
[SPEAKER_03]: And she's like, what?
38:00
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't have the money to go scuba diving, but I have a lot of experience.
38:04
[SPEAKER_03]: I have about 500 dives under my bat by at that time.
38:09
[SPEAKER_03]: I did a lot of search and rescue type diving.
38:12
[SPEAKER_03]: I did a lot of team diving.
38:14
[SPEAKER_03]: And I offer the lady, hey, I will sweep the floor.
38:18
[SPEAKER_03]: I will wash the PD wet suits.
38:20
[SPEAKER_03]: I fill the tanks in exchange that I can go scuba diving in the Mediterranean
38:29
[SPEAKER_03]: She looked me up and down and she gave me a chance.
38:33
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, she gave me detents that started something that just led from one adventure to one country to another.
38:41
[SPEAKER_03]: One thing was always constant from that moment on is scuba diving in my life.
38:47
[SPEAKER_03]: That is my deepest passion is to be on their water where I feel the most free, the most
38:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Some people call it a religious experience, or a meditative experience.
39:01
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
39:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Have you been scuba diving?
39:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I love scuba diving.
39:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And I agree with you.
39:08
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the experience.
39:10
[SPEAKER_01]: You're flying.
39:10
[SPEAKER_03]: You are a side of space can only feel that experience of total weightlessness underwater.
39:20
[SPEAKER_03]: When you can just walk, for example, at the edge of a drop-off and there is the big blue, there's nothing when you see out.
39:30
[SPEAKER_03]: If you put your buoyancy to slightly negative at that point, you can just jump off.
39:36
[SPEAKER_03]: that underwater cliff and fly through the water and see the fish swim by you, the dolphins buzz by, maybe hear the whales singing and you do nothing about your chores, your homeworks, who pissed you off, what you need to do, nothing.
39:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Your brain becomes totally blank empty and this is where you can really live in the here and now.
40:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm, we need to describe that.
40:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought again, I've avatar.
40:09
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, oh, this is the real deal.
40:11
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, it's like what you see on avatar, but for real, you know, to be real.
40:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Everything you've seen, avatar is real.
40:18
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, all the, the underwater forest that where they do the chase scenes, that's based on the California cap forest.
40:26
[SPEAKER_03]: or that crazy looking underwater creatures.
40:29
[SPEAKER_03]: If you scuba-dive, you notice you have seen those muck-diving in the Philippines all over the world.
40:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Like all these like really crazy out of this world creatures that Jim has in the movie.
40:44
[SPEAKER_03]: are really inspired by a scuba diving.
40:46
[SPEAKER_03]: He's a huge scuba diver, and I feel that his movie is undoing what just did to the diving industry.
40:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel because of Josh, so many people are scared of going into the ocean, but because of the scenery that Avatar has, I really noticed a shift how people are intrigued and interested again to go and see what's below the surface.
41:11
[SPEAKER_01]: That's fantastic.
41:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, jaws was extraordinarily scary and entertaining, but I think it, it's scared of generation at least, you know, maybe maybe more than a generation.
41:23
[SPEAKER_01]: People just are like, oh, I can't go near the water.
41:27
[SPEAKER_01]: That's, that's really regretful.
41:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Really regretful.
41:30
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, if you think about it,
41:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Most of your body is made of water.
41:36
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's only natural that you feel this pool, at least that I feel this pool to be the water.
41:41
[SPEAKER_03]: In any form, whether it's rafting, kayaking, spend the send up paddleboarding, swimming, snorkeling, free diving, scoop it out of any form of the water just makes me happy.
41:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I gotta tell you something that I just think is hilarious.
41:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And we actually have an episode coming up soon, Sylvia.
42:02
[SPEAKER_01]: actually by the time this one is posted will have already aired so we had an episode that recently aired where a friend and I went river snorkeling so we did a float trip down the river but with snorkels and wetsuits instead of a raft.
42:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And we had the greatest time, but people in our local area were laughing about it.
42:20
[SPEAKER_01]: They found out about it and it kind of became a meme.
42:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, you're the guy that snorkels in the rivers, you know, it just so for Christmas, which just happened.
42:30
[SPEAKER_01]: My wife actually made everyone in the family t-shirts that say rivers snorkeling in a bunch of stickers.
42:36
[SPEAKER_01]: So we have a stickers that now say adventurous sports podcast, rivers snorkeling.
42:40
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a crazy fun event, but one thing I love about scuba diving or snorkeling in rivers is that not only are you waitless, but the current takes you places.
42:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So you fly soar with the current and the things you see in the experiences you have, but I have to admit we went down the river
43:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I was just all discombobulated.
43:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I felt car sick.
43:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I had been soaring through the rapids, you know?
43:15
[SPEAKER_01]: For so, anyway, that's a total aside, but it kind of illustrates another way to enjoy the water.
43:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Like this guy, but it's amazing.
43:25
[SPEAKER_03]: So, water to me is medicine.
43:28
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if you knew, but I went through breast cancer at age 39.
43:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Which is like, oh, it's like the, you know, Jim Morrison, Jimmy Hendrix, Chinese job plane, they all died at 27.
43:41
[SPEAKER_03]: In my family, 39 is that magic number.
43:45
[SPEAKER_03]: My father died of cancer at his age 39.
43:49
[SPEAKER_03]: My cousin died of cancer at age 39, breast cancer, who's just an older than me.
43:56
[SPEAKER_03]: And at age 39, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
44:00
[SPEAKER_02]: No.
44:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, and I'm like, I'm not gonna die.
44:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I just had a two year old baby.
44:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I finally have a husband, a home, a cool job, and a kid.
44:13
[SPEAKER_03]: I am not going to die.
44:15
[SPEAKER_03]: So I went to see my oncologist and because I had a very aggressive cancer, I ended up having what Angelina Jolie had, the double mastectomy where they take both your breasts off.
44:30
[SPEAKER_03]: I had a total hysteractomy basically taking your ovaries, your warm everything and it was a two years ordeal of recovering going to chemotherapy.
44:42
[SPEAKER_03]: I lost my hair.
44:43
[SPEAKER_03]: I had after the surgery, like tubes hanging out of me.
44:48
[SPEAKER_03]: I did everything my doctor told me, I took the pills, the chemo, everything but what really
44:57
[SPEAKER_03]: and giving me my life back is the water.
45:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Even when I couldn't swim or scoop it out because of the surgeries I had, I was out paddle boarding, just sitting on my paddle board or standing on better days and paddling in the marina where the water is common for sure I won't fall in.
45:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And once my wounds healed up enough, I went back swimming.
45:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, that first day in the pool, I felt like someone was holding me down with metal arms and their rubber ring, and it was hard and painful, but lap after lap, I started to feel my whole body stretching again, moving again, and the water carrying my weight, it was the best
45:49
[SPEAKER_03]: I could go out to the ocean and do snorkeling and free diving again and once I got my strength back, I could go scuba diving again and I have to tell you that just being in the water to me is not just the meditative experience that I explained earlier, but it's also the best medicine.
46:11
[SPEAKER_03]: I anytime I feel hurt, pain, sorrow, I just head out either swimming, or surfing, or diving, and I come back as a a change person.
46:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Have you ever experienced that?
46:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm.
46:28
[SPEAKER_01]: So many times in so many ways, not always water, sometimes water, but that's what adventure sports are for me.
46:35
[SPEAKER_01]: They're healing.
46:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
46:37
[SPEAKER_01]: they're healing just to connect.
46:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I can say last summer, I had a really, really rough day and I was just undone.
46:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought, man, I do not know what to do with myself.
46:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I was in such a pickle.
46:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And I jumped on my motorcycle and I wanted to a back road and I just rode the motorcycle and saw the scenery and I shook my fist at the heavens.
47:03
[SPEAKER_01]: By the time I got back home again, I was a new man.
47:06
[SPEAKER_03]: It's amazing how fresh air or the water can just cleanse your soul, your mind, your lungs, and I really find myself being happiest when I'm in nature.
47:18
[SPEAKER_03]: When I'm feeling that I'm one bit nature, you know, you're not.
47:24
[SPEAKER_03]: overtaking it or using it, but when you really feel you can just blend in but being part of nature, whether it's a hike in your sanity or swimming in the ocean or being in my garden and gardening and a hummingbird comes by to say hello, nature to me is so
47:46
[SPEAKER_03]: important and over covid i found that finally everybody at the time to slow down and being a little bit more open to to being in nature that It seems like after covid everybody forgot again.
48:00
[SPEAKER_01]: You know the funniest part of that i i know several people that work in the outdoor industry of course.
48:05
[SPEAKER_01]: and they had the supply chain disruptions and everybody wanted outdoor gear at the same time.
48:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And no one had any.
48:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they ordered all of this gear and when it finally started coming again, then the lockdowns were done and everyone forgot.
48:19
[SPEAKER_01]: It's something everyone had do much inventory and all the, it was a boom and bust cycle for the outdoor industry.
48:26
[SPEAKER_01]: But I wish it wouldn't have been.
48:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I wish that people would just say, there's something there worth spending more time on.
48:33
[SPEAKER_01]: You know?
48:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
48:38
[SPEAKER_03]: It was such a great opportunity that nature gave us.
48:42
[SPEAKER_03]: I really don't understand why people went back to where they are unhappy and putting up on it.
48:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, no, it's for sure not, but I just see very little I go on social media.
48:55
[SPEAKER_03]: I do it for my work, for the jewelry company.
48:59
[SPEAKER_03]: but I really want to live my life in real life.
49:02
[SPEAKER_03]: But when I go social media, I see a lot of these happy pictures and the most stunning places, but then I know in reality those people who take those really happy pictures in those places or their food somewhere, they didn't really enjoy those moments as much as they could have.
49:20
[SPEAKER_03]: I really wish we could go back to
49:23
[SPEAKER_03]: instead of like showing everybody how happy and amazing life we have to really feel that without the spirit of like yeah documenting it.
49:35
[SPEAKER_01]: It's it's it's I want to share this silly I have I've shared this before on the podcast but it's been a while and I think you'll understand when I was 10 years old my family took a trip through the American West and it was the first big trip we'd ever done
49:49
[SPEAKER_01]: and it was a car trip and my parents gave my sister and I just a tiny little bit of money and said go get something for the trip so she bought a tiny little camera and I bought a tiny pair of binoculars we took the trip and when we got home I was saying to my sister oh do you remember when we saw this do you remember when we did that do you remember what this looked like and she said no when our pictures came back from being developed and she goes oh that's what you're
50:18
[SPEAKER_01]: She was documenting, it was experiencing.
50:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Exactly.
50:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
50:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And nothing's wrong with taking a picture, folks.
50:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, hopefully.
50:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Take the time to experience where you are, make it real.
50:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Make that the priority of your trip to be in the moment, rather than documented and put it up on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and everywhere.
50:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
50:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
50:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
50:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Man, it's still there.
50:46
[SPEAKER_01]: You've lived such an amazing life.
50:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Diving into dreams is the name of your book.
50:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would assume that if people want to learn more these amazing stories, that would be a great place to go.
51:00
[SPEAKER_03]: It is if you asked me to describe it in a few sentences, I would say it's a each play love type book and the wild
51:08
[SPEAKER_03]: soul searching to travel.
51:10
[SPEAKER_03]: So you will find me in Africa and Artica.
51:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I travel to 57 countries, worked on 27 Hollywood productions.
51:19
[SPEAKER_03]: So you're going to have a lot of behind the movie scenes of the beaten track travels.
51:25
[SPEAKER_03]: It's going to be a lot of hitting dead ends, lessons learned overcoming obstacles.
51:31
[SPEAKER_03]: The message of my book is
51:33
[SPEAKER_03]: dream big work hard and never give up.
51:37
[SPEAKER_03]: So if you if you want to hear a story of someone coming from less than ideal places and living her best life and feeling that she has enough, I mean it took me 50 years to get to the place where I can say that I
51:53
[SPEAKER_03]: do have enough.
51:54
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't want more of anything.
51:55
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't need more money.
51:56
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't need fame.
51:58
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't need career.
52:00
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm happy where I am with my life, with my family, with the ocean here next to me where I can go surfing, diving.
52:10
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm creative.
52:11
[SPEAKER_03]: I do volunteer work.
52:13
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm present to see my kid grow up.
52:16
[SPEAKER_03]: He's 12 years old in middle school.
52:19
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's only a few more years that I feel that we have this opportunity to bond.
52:23
[SPEAKER_03]: And in this 12 years, he's already been in 22 countries with us.
52:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Nice.
52:30
[SPEAKER_01]: We need to go another hour, but we're not going to be able to.
52:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to touch on a couple of things that I know about, that I just want people to also know about.
52:38
[SPEAKER_01]: You take inner city kids, scuba diving,
52:43
[SPEAKER_03]: I worked with the charity called A Chance for Children, and it was started by the Baywatch creator Greg Bonan and his wife take Collins, and it is all because Greg, who is a real life guard, rescued two kids who were drifted into riptides.
53:04
[SPEAKER_03]: and almost drowned, and that's when he realized that these kids who live in Los Angeles, only 20 minutes from the ocean, can't swim.
53:13
[SPEAKER_03]: So he started this program, the Baywatch camp and the transfer children, where we work with these kids who are in a most vulnerable area in the watts and in the Los Angeles area where gang violence is very prominent, where kids parents
53:31
[SPEAKER_03]: or in gangs, I mean not everybody's but it's it's very much prominent there.
53:37
[SPEAKER_03]: So we started taking that these kids and do activities with them, they go fishing, they learn swimming, they do surfing and I started taking them scuba diving and these kids, I'm telling you, are terrified by the idea of what scuba diving and they can't swim.
53:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Both of them never even had
53:59
[SPEAKER_03]: but they do it anyway.
54:01
[SPEAKER_03]: And when they come up, they have the biggest smile on their face.
54:05
[SPEAKER_03]: And they have their mind open to the possibilities that they can do anything.
54:12
[SPEAKER_03]: And everything, they don't have to do what they see in their neighborhood.
54:16
[SPEAKER_03]: And I do a lot of public speaking as well in this school, and we talk about, let's say at career days, that I make a living of things I love, like scuba diving, doing crazy adventures, and making jewelry of gemstones I gather to my travels.
54:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And I ask these kids, what are you guys like doing?
54:36
[SPEAKER_03]: video game, taking pictures, doing hairs, and by the time we are finishing the sessions, they realize that you can actually make a living of anything in today's word, right?
54:50
[SPEAKER_03]: You can be a video gamer, you can be a hairstylist, you don't have to follow what your neighborhood and your parents, your brothers are doing, and I find it the most empowering
55:06
[SPEAKER_03]: So I love working with the chance for children and take all ends.
55:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it that you do that.
55:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it that you're giving back that you're using your life experiences to give hope and dreams to the next generation.
55:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
55:22
[SPEAKER_03]: You know someone gave me a chance, the lady in the Mediterranean and I'm in a position now where I feel obligated to give it back, to have others to get started to live out their dreams.
55:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm, I also want to touch on your jewelry.
55:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to comment right now.
55:43
[SPEAKER_01]: You have on these beautiful kind of aqua-green ear rings.
55:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And you have the most beautiful blue eyes, too, that they match, I'm just telling everybody it's amazing.
55:58
[SPEAKER_01]: So you make this jewelry inspired by your travels and inspired by your scuba diving by the ocean, right?
56:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, I basically, when I travel, whether it's tracking through the Himalayas in Nepal or the earrings you see is actually turquoise from Egypt or the Pearl I found when I'm in Indonesia, I buy a lot from local artists to bring it back to California where I turn them into one of
56:33
[SPEAKER_03]: that I sell in my online web shop and the whole message of my jewelry line is to live life to the fullest, to experience, to be open-minded, to be daring, and not only do I make these gemstone pieces from the treasures I find along the way, like shark tutors, so in South Africa, I have a lot of ocean-inspired jewelry, but I also make silver hammered
57:01
[SPEAKER_03]: bracelets and necklaces that say, I am enough.
57:04
[SPEAKER_03]: I am who I am.
57:05
[SPEAKER_03]: She believed she could so she did because every now and then we all need a little reminder that we are braver than we think.
57:14
[SPEAKER_03]: And
57:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Just give a little push.
57:17
[SPEAKER_03]: So my jury has been received really well.
57:20
[SPEAKER_03]: I have a lot of followers in the yoga community, the mindfulness community, the travel ocean community as well as I have a monthly subscription called manifestation box where together we have a story meditation cards.
57:38
[SPEAKER_03]: a bracelet on necklace and the gemstone each month that helps us work with the team for the month.
57:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And each month we either work on open-mindedness, staff confidence, things like that.
57:55
[SPEAKER_03]: So I find that I'm not the only one who finds this beneficial, uplifting and happy me living
58:02
[SPEAKER_03]: an optimistic life, but a lot of other people telling me that it's resonates with them.
58:09
[SPEAKER_01]: So yes, I love it.
58:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I also love the idea that it's not just a decoration.
58:16
[SPEAKER_01]: You have a bit of jewelry.
58:18
[SPEAKER_01]: It becomes reminder for the pursuit of that period of your life.
58:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And by wearing it, it serves as a daily reminder that this is an area where I can I can grow more.
58:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I can become more.
58:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, I used to wear a bracelet made out of swivel hooks for fishing.
58:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that not hooks just the swivels, but I used to wear that.
58:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I wore it for years.
58:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And I reminded me of important things in my life and people would ask questions about it.
58:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you, you could share with people what the inspiration was.
58:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
58:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So fun.
58:55
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a great conversation starter.
58:57
[SPEAKER_03]: I also have a zero waistline where I use a stupid diving equipment parts mixed with gemstones to promote the zero waist lifestyle.
59:09
[SPEAKER_03]: I live that in my life.
59:11
[SPEAKER_03]: I try not to use any single use plastic in my life.
59:18
[SPEAKER_03]: metal things, but I travel to packing, pack out, only take as little as possible.
59:24
[SPEAKER_03]: I try not to buy a lot of things and teach my kid also take his lunch in a reusable lunch bag.
59:31
[SPEAKER_03]: So I figured with my jewelry instead of throwing away some parts that are no longer needed in the scuba equipment where we have to change out.
59:40
[SPEAKER_03]: filters and washers every year.
59:42
[SPEAKER_03]: I turned them into jewelry as well.
59:45
[SPEAKER_03]: I have it both for guys and for women.
59:49
[SPEAKER_03]: We also use a shark suit.
59:51
[SPEAKER_03]: When you dive in with the sharks, we have the chain mill suit that also looks like the night's shiny armor.
59:58
[SPEAKER_03]: I use a lot of the discarded materials that companies who make the shark suits don't use anymore.
1:00:06
[SPEAKER_03]: I combine that with gemstones and make jewelry out of that as well.
1:00:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Nice.
1:00:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
1:00:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
1:00:13
[SPEAKER_01]: What a fun hour we've just had.
1:00:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I enjoyed that so immensely hearing about all the the ways that your life
1:00:22
[SPEAKER_01]: took new directions, found new purpose, new experiences, and it grew into a lifestyle, it grew into a book, it grew into helping inner-city kids, it grew into having a family, it grew into being able to spend a lifetime doing the thing that really seemed to give back to you, which was being in the water, scuba diving, all those things, working on movies, being a stunt woman,
1:00:52
[SPEAKER_01]: fantastic Sylvia.
1:00:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for your time and for sharing the adventure with us.
1:00:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much and I hope that the message that you have a choice to live life happy resonates with your listeners and they all can think of what could they change in their lives to live life happy.
1:01:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, maybe I don't want to overstate this, but maybe a little less should, and a little more could.
1:01:23
[SPEAKER_03]: 100% or a little less of, oh my God, you are so lucky.
1:01:29
[SPEAKER_03]: You're bringing into, I could do that too.
1:01:32
[SPEAKER_03]: That's that's so cool.
1:01:35
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to do that.
1:01:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to do that.
1:01:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Nice.
1:01:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So how can people find you, your book, your jewelry?
1:01:41
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the best way?
1:01:42
[SPEAKER_03]: The easiest way where everything is centralized is SylviaGoog.com.
1:01:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Build that for us.
1:01:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, my name is SylviaGoog.
1:01:51
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's SZ-I-L-V-I-A-G-O-G-H.com.
1:01:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so S-Z-I-L-V-I-A-G-O-G-H.com.
1:02:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, and then from there you can go into look at my stunt work, my scuba diving work, my jewelry, my book.
1:02:14
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a good hub.
1:02:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Very, very good.
1:02:17
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll still be all put that in the show notes, of course.
1:02:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And thank you again for being on the Adventure Sports podcast and sharing all this with us.
1:02:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm inspired tons of fun.
1:02:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for your time.
1:02:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for having me.
1:02:29
[SPEAKER_01]: y'all you bet and everyone out there make sure that you figure out what your thing is pursue it and get out there and have some fun.