Swimming has always been a very relaxing and fun activity for me - almost meditative. I've never seen it as a competitive activity, although I highly respect those that can and do.

PB & Thalassamania: as for contacting the dude-in-charge at PADI re: the CD-course, I think that would be a moot point now as they have already moved on to the eLearning curriculum - that is, unless it's the exact same thing on a different format. I'm not an instructor and have no access to the material so I'm hoping for future students' sake that it's not the same one I had. It really wasn't flexible in any way which was my main problem with it. Thanks guys for offering to give me the contact info for PADI.

Computers are cool, but they should really make them in cooler colours. Why all the black? Besides if you drop it, day-glow colours are easier to locate underwater.