the great turtle race…

The Great Turtle Race of 2007 is off and running, as 11 satellite-tracked giant leatherback turtles begin their migration from Costa Rica to the Galapalagos Islands. I have made many sharp wagers with some friends, and my pick to win the race is the awesome Purple Lightning Turtle (widget above). My baby currently sitting in 4th place and looking strong.

This race has had lots of drama already, with two turtles not even kicking off their trip this year, choosing to stay on a Costa Rica beach, and one of the early leaders has changed direction and is heading out to sea and maybe Ecuador in time.

You can follow the progress of your favourite turtle here (satellite tracking updated every 10 min):

Great Turtle Race Tracking

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good start to bangkok holiday…

Flew to Bangkok tonight to meet some friends for a bit of a holiday and was running late as I hurried down the long flat escalator going down from immigration to the lower level for a taxi. I heard a lady yell out “oh no watch out” and I was turning around to the left and to the right to see what was going on. Nothing seemed to be happening when I saw a security guard on the lower level yell at me with a very concerned look on his face. I was about to turn around when I felt the impact of a trolley loaded with suitcases crash into my right foot. I went down like a $2 hooker.

After the shock subsided and I stopped crying, I tentatively got to my feet, knowing my ankle was almost certainly broken. Much to my surprise, and also evidence that I am a bit of a princess when it comes to injuries, I found my ankle was not broken. Thankfully, there was a substantial amount of blood from a large cut, so I didn’t appear to be a total drama-queen. The lady who was responsible for the runaway trolley burst into tears at the blood, almost certainly seeing countless hours of litigation ahead of her.

The new airport in Bangkok is easily one of the hottest airports in the world, but I can testify that their accident control team is retarded. With a young foreigner drifting in and out of conciousness (not from any medical reason - blood just freaks me out), and a screaming hysterical lady yelling for medics, after 20min, a nurse finally arrived with, get this, a bandaid and a hankerchief, assuring us a doctor would be along shortly. Another 15 min later, no doctor had arrived, and the lady who attacked me with her trolley was at wit’s end, and had resorted to calling personal friends at 3am in the morning in an attempt to get a doctor to come look at my foot.

By this stage, much of the blood had dried, and fearful that the crowd would begin to wonder what all the fuss was about, and fearful I would outlast their sympathy, I began the heroic effort of thanking everyone for their concern, assuring the lady I would be fine, and making my own way to hospital, where I hoped I would at least have some stiches to show for my crowd-assembling dramatic injury.

Unfortunately for me, the story gets embarassing at this point, as when I hobble into the emergency room at Bumrungrad, the doctors tell me I don’t need stiches. I ask them if they are sure about that, and the doctor looks at me and tells me he can find a way to put some stiches in if I really want him to, and I tell him, “Yes, that would be nice, thank you.” He then tells me he was just joking and that I don’t need them. Damn it.

On another note, the Bumrungrad Hospital is surreal. The most amazing hospital I have ever seen. I read somewhere the plastic surgeons there do more operations in that single hospital than are done in the whole of Australia every year. All that booby money means the hospital itself is almost unbelievably modern and beautiful. You think you are walking into a hotel when you head to the emergency room. The sight of a drunken tourist being carried in on a stretcher and babbling away in what I suspect was German almost ruined my awesome experience though, especially when he got preferential treatment from the cute nurse, even though I had a sick cut that almost needed stiches.

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Scotty’s modelling career takes off…

My mate Scotty J hit the big time this week, scoring a coveted gig modelling for a advertisement for his university, the prestigious University of Queensland (UQ).

This is not the first time Scotty has entered the modelling world however. Here is a cheeky little photo shoot Scotty did for the ForeverAKid clothing label, and I think you’ll agree they show his photographic versatility…

Scotty is a great poker player and currently in his last year of Law at UQ, but I think even his parents will agree his future lies in modelling….

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loving manila and running good…

Still a little bit down after hearing the news the love of my life is shacking up with Orlando Bloom, who is basically a…

I’m loving Manila so far despite a couple downers like incredible non-stop bad traffic and occasional confusingly bad service (spent a few painful hours trying to post my old mobile phone + simcard back home to my little sister - pure frustration dealing with various courier shops all morning) - but overall the city is awesome and I really love it here.

Signed the lease for my new apartment in Makati today (I think great location but don’t fully know my way around yet - but its one block from Greenbelt Park, which I’m told is the centre of Makati). It’s a cute little 1 bedroom on the 18th floor of a very new building, which looks a lot like a hotel when you enter the lobby. The facilities are amazing, with a awesome function area, games room, KTV (kareoke) rooms, pool and a cool gym. The apartment is for sale for around 100k so I might buy it after a couple months if I like it. Real estate is so cheap here compared to Australia, and I was resigned to maybe never owning property in Australia so its an exciting feeling to maybe be close to owning my first ever place. I was looking at awesome funky 2bdm loft-style new apartments the other day that were just incredibly cute and awesome going for around 220k in Makati. The same apartment in Sydney would cost something close to 800k I’m guessing and maybe easily 550k or so in Brisbane.

Here is a photo of what I’m talking about:

I’m really lucky there is some great guys living here who I can hang with: Franco of course, one of the biggest legends ever, Jethro and Marcus from Aust, and a Canadian guy named Mischa who is awesome and very amusing (and a sick good squeeze bacc player). I’m getting Franco’s little sister to do the interior design for my new place in the next couple weeks, and I’ve never done anything like that before, so that will be fun and interesting.

I’ve been a tiny bit sick in the last few days so started playing again online a bit, and have been super lucky running so good. I’m paranoid this upswing will end anytime now, as I’ve been running way too good for almost 2 months now, but just trying to enjoy it while it lasts. Lately its seems like the mid-limits have been much softer than they were in Dec/Jan across all the sites I play, and it seems everyone I know is winning again, which is awesome, after almost everyone I know lost big in Jan along with me. Not sure if the soft games are just an illusion or perhaps (fingers crossed) a permanent thing, but it definitely seems like the games have received a new influx of loose players (at least this is definitely the case on the few sites I play at).

I’m looking forward to playing some decent live games here as I suck at live poker as I hardly ever play it, but looking forward to playing some soft mid/high-limit live games with the rich Koreans that I hear about (who come in on bacc junkets and don’t mind the odd game of NL). If poker ever breaks into places like Macau and Singapore, the games are going to be insanely awesome for big stakes for awhile, so here’s to poker in Asia and possible glory days.

My last 3k hands over last few days (mostly 5/10, some 10/20):

Anyway, Manila is amazing and I hope I still love it in a year’s time as much as I do now - if I do, I doubt I will ever leave. Put it on your schedule for your next holiday destination - you won’t be disappointed.

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March results…

Orlando Bloom - what a wank elf. He’s tapping Miranda Kerr, which is pretty ghey for me, as everyone knows Kerr and I have a bit of history…

Luckily for me, March was ice. Firstly, I ran sik good, but more importantly, I discovered I’m in a PS2 game. The game is Bully aka Camen Edit - I’m in the 3rd level. Ding.

60k for 31k hands in March, which is a lot for me, and my damn rsi wrists are paying the price now, making it almost impossible to play until they calm down some.

I’ve gotten my 5/10nl up to 3.3bb/100 for 2007 which is starting to be somewhat respectable, after being down 15k after 15k hands this year. I’m 4.2bb/100 for 20k hands of 10/20nl in March, so March was fun.

Might not play much this month as have to find an apartment and figure how what the hell I’m doing for the rest of this year.

I made a big mistake selling my PRTY cfds at 41p, for a 35k profit, as I was tired of the sick variance. But they were up around the 54p mark a fortnight later, which stung a little (currently trading at 52p). So that’s looking like a 40k mistake.

Book of the Month: The Good German - Joseph Kanon (movie will probably be excellent too when it comes out)

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Viva Manila…

Well I landed in Manila after a stressful last couple of days in Brisbane, which involved a chaotic couple days around V Festival on the Gold Coast where I bumped into my last ex-g/f from years ago, who I’m probably still a little obsessed with (maybe because I have come to the conclusion I am incapable of ever fooling another girl to go out with me). For an hour or two, I thought I would be staying in Australia, but then she quickly realised that I’m still a moron, so that was that. Onwards to Manila!

I got caught in a seat on the plane next to a lady from China who wanted to practise her English on me, which was ok for the first hour, but then I had to pretend to sleep for most of the flight. What’s with Qantas planes not having entertainment systems? Qantas is a joke.

Landed in Manila and spent the first day wondering what the hell I was doing here. I’m in a hotel in a pretty bad area of greater Manila, and spent a very tilted day considering getting a flight right back out. Every time I leave the hotel, the security guards with various weapons guarding the door looked at me as if I’m crazy. I saw a guy get cracked by a security guard’s baton at the brand new Mall of Asia, which is massive and beautiful, but hopeless for shopping. They do have a huge ice-skating rink in the middle of the mall though, which is pretty amazing. They also have a massive cinema complex, so I got to see the new movie ‘300′ which I’ve been hanging out for - unfortunately, Jethro was right. The movie is a joke - the scriptwriting is so bad and the entire movie is basically retarded and painful - I almost walked out a couple times, which is very rare for me to consider. What’s with the Athenian king talking is a rich Scottish accent the entire movie? Don’t bother with this one…

Already a bit tilted from the crappiness of ‘300′ and a bit panicked from the day’s events so far, and my complete inability to find a phone and computer store despite walking all over the entire Mall of Asia (one of the biggest malls in the world I think), I jump into a taxi to find another shopping centre and, perhaps due to my own bad instructions, we get lost in intense traffic and I end up sitting in the taxi for over an hour before finally pulling the plug and going back to the hotel where the security guards look surprised to see me in one piece, with one guy having a big unexplained grin (I guess he won the side-bet on whether I’d survive the day).

I’ve been reading the local papers to get a feel for the city and the headlines are all like “Police are talking to man wanted for death of local representative” or “Commission established to investigate political killings” or “Representative wins Supreme Court appeal on murder charges” etc etc.

The poverty here outside the city centres is really sad. At the traffic lights in the taxi, this tiny kid runs through the traffic to my taxi holding a baby that could only have been a few months old, so I gave her some money, and another little kid who looks like he hasn’t eaten in the last couple days rapped on the other side so I gave him some money. I might have given them too much though, as these poor little innocent urchins start running from everywhere to surround the taxi, just as the lights turn green and cars start schreeching off. The taxi driver is yelling at me, and he is probably right to do so, as one of them could have very easily gotten hit as the traffic races off. Not sure what to do there - I’m no Mother Theresa, but it’s pretty hard to say no to these poor little kids living below the poverty line, when they are right in front of you looking like they are about to burst into tears poor things.

At this stage, I’m ready to fly out of Manila, but I went down to check out Jethro’s apartment in Makati, which is in the richer business district of Manila, and I felt a bit more inspired that there is a bright future for Manila. There seems to be a lot of money here, with big HSBC etc skyscrapers in the Makati business district and lots of amazing restaurants and clubs - but the gap between rich and poor is just unbelievable. You have people driving luxury cars everywhere that cost in the hundreds of thousands, and they have maids and drivers who work fulltime for $100-150 a month. I will almost certainly be hiring staff if I stay here, but it will be hard to come to terms with the inequality that is everywhere. I think I will need to find compromises with charity, and do a little bit here and there so I can sleep at night, and hope that Arroyo and future governments can eventually close the gap between rich and poor, or at least pull a lot of the population out from below the abject poverty line in time.

I have to say that so many people are incredibly friendly here despite the poverty, and I was saying this to a well-dressed guy I met having a smoke here in the hotel (after telling him about the traffic incident), and he was like, “Yes, they are happy because they don’t know how poor they are. And you don’t want to go upsetting the status quo by handing out money and letting them know that there are people so much better off than they are or else, in time, we won’t be able to hire people to work for almost nothing and our life gets a lot tougher.”

Hmmm, ok thanks for the chat, buddy. I’m not socialist and am likely as selfish as a lot of people but comments like that give me shivers….there is just no need for gaps THIS large between the very rich and the poor.

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