too sick to even contemplate.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned how I was going to back Spain heavily. The day after I made that post, I moved to a new apartment and despite doing everything perfectly in the weeks leading up to the move in terms of getting my net setup, everything went to shit and I spent a couple weeks offline and had no cable.

I made 0 bets on Euro 2008 and didn’t watch a single game. Spain won every match. I would have made something around $40,000 because I martingale when running good, especially on sports.

Torres is a god but I’m too disgusted to even think about how sick this is. Spain won 6 matches in a row, and for the last two games, I was hoping Russia or Germany would get up to erase part of the nausea of missing out on all those wins.

I run bad. gg Spain. ffs

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where the f is the silver lining?

I love a good silver lining but I can’t find one at the moment. Contrary to what a lot of you may think, I’m actually pretty positive considering how hilariously bad I run at ‘life’.

But the last few weeks have broken me. If I was playing Wimbledon right now, I’d just conceed every point. I wouldn’t even bother challenging the calls. Speaking of tennis, I can’t even watch Wimbledon because I can’t get anyone to come connect my cable, no matter how much I offer to pay them - Manila is like that most of the time.

I’m pretty OCD so I’m having trouble catching up on mountains of work as my entire apartment looks something like how I imagine Beirut looks like, but without the cute Lebanese girls to make it bearable.

My maid claimed her mother died so I had to send her home for the funeral for a week. Her ship was stalled for a few days due to the typhoon, and she called me to let me know she arrived at her village on the day she was *supposed* to be back here, so now she won’t be back for a long time.

She sounded too nervous and not really sad enough when telling me her mother died, but you can’t really call off bluffs on things like deaths of close relatives. You just have to conceed the point. gg. wp. She’s a maid, not a Hollywood actress, so I can’t be too critical of her performance.

She also sounded way too happy calling from her village to say she’d arrived, and I was about to call shenanigans on this whole funeral business, but I had to consider the possibility that the ’ship’ she was on looked something like this one below and that maybe she was just happy to survive the typhoon and be alive.

If her mother did pass away, of course that is very sad. And very inconsiderate (perhaps even somewhat selfish) in terms of timing. Timing is everything in these things, and when she returns sometime in 2009, I will be gently requesting that future funerals be timed a little better.

But I’ll survive. I always seem to. Don’t cry for me, Australia. Things can only improve from this point, well…from the point in about half an hour when I have to buy my own toilet paper. I’ve pretty much hit rock bottom.

sigh. I have to leave you now dear Blog Friends to go buy the aforementioned toilet paper and also get some new towels because I don’t know how to work the washing machine and dryer. Life can be really ghey sometimes. But what can you do…

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the gheyest week ever.

So I’m finishing up the gheyest week ever. Despite all my work to avoid Manila Tilt, doing everything perfectly in the weeks leading up to my apartment move, everything went sour, and I’ve been spending the first week in my new place fighting and battling with endless morons in a surreal world of pain and retardation.

I have enough stories to fill years of blog entries, but I’ll only share with you my best one:

Day 2 in my apartment. My intercom has broken and I ask the receptionist to send up Building Maintenance to fix it. She says she’ll do it right away. I wait for 3 hours for them with my fury building (no net, no cable, no books, nothing but my thoughts and tilt to keep me company).

I storm down to reception eventually to ask why they’re taking so long. The receptionist says, “But Sir! I’ve been trying to call you for hours.”

zomg. I ask her how she expected to get through to me to send people to fix my intercom. She explains she was calling my intercom. I ask her what I need fixed - she says, “Your intercom, right?”. I ask her how can she expect to get through when the intercom is broken. She just stares at me blankly, not being rude, she just doesn’t get it.

I grab a sheet of paper and draw a diagram, with stick figures representing her and me, and lines between our two intercoms. I patiently explain to her how intercoms work, and explain that when its broken, she can’t call me on it. She doesn’t understand.

My patience is wearing thin. I ask her how long she’s worked at this building. She says she’s just started. I explain to her that me and her are not going to get along in the coming months, I say: “You and I are going to hate each other very shortly.”

She says, “I don’t hate you Sir!”

My tilt is past the point where I can control it. I storm off to calm down. She yells, “I’ll call you when Building Maintenance is ready to come up.”

————

So I spent the whole week in Starbucks on shitty wireless trying desperately to hang onto sanity. I think I now hate Starbucks, and I think I hate people who like Starbucks.

Can someone please explain to me the logic of going to Starbucks, sitting in a corner for 3 hours reading a book with your iPod earphones in? Not eating, not drinking, not talking, just reading. Like wtf, why do they go to Starbucks to do that? And why do they sit in front of my power sockets and stop people who need to do work from doing work. tilt.

Starbucks is pretty ghey. And people who go to Starbucks are pretty weird. I saw so much weird shit in the last week, like people on first dates (wtf), or just the most retarded conversations ever.

My maid and I have been stalking and harassing PLDT to connect the net, calling them every hour. They swear it will be done tomorrow. I think this means 10% chance they’ll do it tomorrow (3 weeks after I requested it). If they don’t connect it tomorrow, I think I’m going to jump. So there’s like 90% chance of self-inflicted injury tomorrow. I hope I suck out.

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torres is hot. my day was not.

So Euro 2008 is off and running, which means I get to battle with the Betfair doomswitch. I’m almost certainly going to lose a fortune, but its ok, as I’m going to make a killing on Olympics betting in a couple months, and then retire in a world of Olympics fortune.

I’m going to back Spain heavily, for no other reason than Fernando Torres and I are probably meant to be together. Even if Spain lose and I lose thousands, I don’t really lose as I get to watch pure utter sex (Torres) gracefully slide and dance around and terrorise opposition defences. As Tim on PokerCrack loves to say:

“It’s not gay if the guy is really, really hot.”

My day today was pretty ghey, but you get to hear about it anyway. My Irish mate Jesse holla at me online to go for dinner and to watch the new Indiana Jones movie. Harrison Ford is 96 yrs old but he’s still a legend. The man once hammered a nail through his hat into his skull so the wind wouldn’t blow his hat away during a horseriding scene in one of the first Indiana Jones. What a sicko.

I wanted to go to the awesome cinemas in Rockwell (where I am moving next week), but I made the mistake of calling my crazy Canadian friend Mischa and asking for his opinion. LOL. Mischa is a crafty, brilliant tactician and I am a stupid, stupid noob. He convinced me that the cinemas near his place were excellent and uncrowded. I am a retarded social moron and I was not smart enough to question why it would be so uncrowded if its as good as he claimed. I fail at these little games of life.

Anyway, Jesse arrived to pick me up with Rich and Dave’s new driver, who had just been hired after an “extensive” filtering and interview process. Boy would I like to meet the other jokers who applied for the job, because this driver was retarded. He couldn’t find his way down the main arterial highway (EDSA) from one landmark to another landmark. A trip that should have taken 10 min took 40 min, and included him reversing down EDSA (one of the busiest highways in the world) because he missed a turnoff. I was on sick, sick tilt.

We finally arrived at Mischa’s after a few near-death experiences and went to these fantastic cinemas he was raving about. The reason Mischa’s cinemas were always uncrowded is because its a shitty Duplex showing kids movies (specifically Narnia and Kung Fu Panda). Dave Saab, Mr. APT, desperately wanted to watch Kung Fu Panda but he was outvoted. I turned on Mischa with murderous intentions. I detest violence as a general rule, but this crafty villain had tricked me into venturing far away from the safety and civilisation of Makati/Rockwell to go to an utterly crappy duplex cinema only showing kids movies, just so he wouldn’t have to travel far. I respected the play, but he needed to be physically punished nonetheless. People need to know that scamming travel time out of me brings with it a certain punishment. I figured a finger was the right price.

Mischa’s fingers, maybe even his life, was in mortal danger at this point, but luckily for him, I saw a restaurant which looked good so we decided to eat instead of fight to the death. As I was on sick tilt and furious by this stage, everyone was joining in on the fun, trying to tilt me further, and I was in no mood for games. I tried to remain calm and stay quiet in the face of their schoolyard taunts whilst my white wine was being brought over. It was warm, maybe even mulled. Some choice words were exchanged between the waiter and myself, and he didn’t get a word in. I tipped the waiter big later. Guilt money ftw.

The food was awesome but I didn’t care for the company or the conversation at all. Lots of talk about Dave and his $300k APT win and not enough laughing at my awesome jokes, charming anecdotes and witty lines. Philistines.

Desperately needing to draw the focus away from Dave and back onto me, I challenged Dave to a Monopoly game for rollz (or $1000). To his credit, he put up a courageous act, and even made some nervous comments which maybe would qualify as ‘trash-talking’ if we were 14, but I could see the fear was real in those rich eyes. He accepted (reluctantly) for 1k, clearly as he feared losing face in front of everyone. Smart play. What price can you put on dignity? Apparently 1k.

We bought a Monopoly board and set off for my place to settle the matter like real men. All the smart money was on me, but there wasn’t any smart money wagered. Dave’s driver got us home without any deaths, which was a nice coinflip win. However, we saw a tourist with a girl who must have been about 12 when we stopped for petrol. Richard (first time in Manila) was sick with fury and wanted to crack heads. I just hoped the girl was his daughter. The world is a sad, retarded place.

Despite passing the possible sex offender on the way home, I was excited about giving Dave a little lesson in Monopoly. He may be ok at donkament poker, but if there is a better man than me at Monopoly in the world, we are yet to cross paths.

I would have totally pwned him (of course), but the other retards were bored and wanted to play as well, so we ended up playing 4-way for play money like 9 yr old girls. In the interest of being a good host, I graced them with my participation in the game even though no money was involved, and played like a god. damn. champion. Dave quickly realised he was up against superior Monopoly talent and conceeded. I was gracious and benevolent in victory, because that’s just the kind of guy I am. Always behave with class and with grace like I do - a lesson for you young’uns out there.

The night petered out after we sent Dave’s fantastic new driver down to the corner store 50m away and he came back in 1 hour. Definitely a keeper, that one. A bright future ahead of him. He could go all the way to the top. All I can say is that Dave must be a true philantropist as I’m pretty sure this guy should be a ward of the state.

For realising that I am pretty awesome, I reward you with this picture of the lovely Melanie Iglesias:

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fun and games with my retarded landlord.

So today I had a scheduled visit from my braindead landlord which I was very much looking forward to. I deal with a lot of dumb people day in and day out here, but this guy is something special, and I was excited about having the opportunity to ‘negotiate’ with him and pay him back for some of the tilt he has caused me over the last 18 months with his stupidity.

To quickly setup the situation, its important to clarify that an ‘unfurnished’ apartment in Manila is nothing like an ‘unfurnished’ apartment in Australia. When you move into an unfurnished apartment here in Manila, there are no curtains or blinds, no hot water, no airconditioning, no shower door, no exhaust vents for dryer or stove, no water piping for a washing machine, few electrical sockets, no lightbulbs, half the lightbulb sockets were incorrectly wired, some of the electrical sockets were also incorrectly wired and not working and so on and so on.

I spent a full two months of pure, endless tilt getting Manila contractors to install all these basic amenities to make the apartment livable. Contractors had to smash holes in walls and the roof to fix the wiring and install plumbing and pipes and then fix it all up so that it looked aesthetically pleasing as opposed to the warzone of construction I lived in during my first two months.

All my renovations were 100% necessary. Only an animal could live in the unfurnished apartment I signed a contract for on the assumption that the fucking light sockets would work once I put bulbs in them, or that the electrical sockets would work once I plugged electrical appliances into them, or that I could take a shower without flooding the entire apartment (who looks at bathrooms when they’re inspecting a rental? Not me obv).

The value of his ‘luxury’ apartment increased exponentially with every single renovation I completed. And today the meeting was to decide which renovations my retarded landlord wanted to keep and which ones he didn’t want to pay for. I was giddy with excitement as the meeting approached.

Please keep in mind this is a man who is evicting a quiet, high-value tenant from a condo in a totally flooded Makati condo market because he’s going bankrupt one year after he had a buyer (me) for this very unit willing to hand over the entire sale price in cash, but the sale could not be completed for 2 months because he couldn’t find his ownership papers - at which time, I decided I no longer wanted to buy.

Unsurprisingly, he arrived with my broker, his wife and son 2 hours late. I showed him all the professional renovations and he said he didn’t like any of them, and didn’t think they were necessary and didn’t want to pay for them. Obviously, I knew he would say this. I explained to him calmly in front of his wife and son that I completely understood that due to his inability to handle his finances, that I understood completely that he would not be able to pay for the absolutely necessary renovations I completed to enable him to sell his apartment to anyone except an animal. I calmly explained to him I would, of course, hire contractors to rip out all of the plumbing and the wiring, remove the glass shower door, take down the trendy blinds, cement up all the drains and plumbing and basically fix it all up so that it was exactly how it was when I moved in.

He was aghast. “But that would cost you a fortune!”, he exclaimed, “Why wouldn’t you just leave it all?”

I sighed and explained to him that, although he was most definitely a moron, he wasn’t dealing with one and I was well aware of how much value all of the renovations I completed added to the the sale price he hoped to get for the unit. I explained that if he was going to be unreasonable about paying for some or all of the required renovations, I was going to be unreasonable and spend more money ripping them all out and that situation was not open to negotiation.

He was horrifed at such an unexpected turn of events. Clearly, he had come up with a ‘genius’ masterplan to not pay for anything, and hope I simply would leave him with a small fortune of improvements. He stammered out, “But…but…it will cost you a fortune to get contractors in to do all this.”

I responded, “The money is immaterial to me. Although you are obviously too broke to pay for a $100 glass shower door, and happy for your wife to flood the bathroom everytime she uses the shower, I am most certainly not broke and will HAPPILY pay $20 for someone to remove it. Not only will I remove every single improvement I made, it will give me a great deal of joy to watch the contractors systematically turn your apartment into a carbon copy of the ‘unfurnished’ unit I moved into 18 months ago.”

He was speechless. My broker was smiling. His wife shifted uncomfortably. His son was looking at his moron father with the early realisation that his father was, perhaps, a moronic joke of a human being and a failure at ‘life’.

He tried a new tack: “But the contract clearly stated that you were not to make any renovations or improvements without written authorisation.”

Of course, I had spoken to him when I moved in and told him all the things I had to do to make the apartment livable. I reminded him of this, and the fact that he had emphatically given me permission to make these improvements.

He said, “Well the contract clearly states that you needed written authorisation, not verbal. Technically, I can withhold your security deposit for this.” The security deposit is about $1200. He turned to my broker for confirmation, she looked doubtful but didn’t say anything.

I smiled and conceeded the point to the unethical retard, but countered with, “That’s fine. Once all the contractors are finished removing each and every single improvement, we can fight this out in court and I’m gonna guess that you cannot really afford a lawyer to argue such a ridiculous position, especially as by then, the apartment will be in the exact same position as when I moved in. I, of course, will quite enjoy handing over my credit card to a lawyer and will wait gleefully for updates on the case.”

He looked glum, and defeated. He looked at the extensive receipts I’d kept for all the contractors’ work. His wife asked if she could take the boy and leave. He agreed and pored over the receipts for a bit longer in despair. He eventually sighed and said he had to go, but that he’d see what money he could get ahold of and see what improvements he could afford to keep. I shook his hand and saw him out the door.

It was a good day.

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wtf is going on.

So, facing eviction in a week, and not wanting to go through the endless pain of Manila moving tilt, I called the stupid owner of my apartment and offered him 50% more than I am currently paying to let me stay another 6 months. He’s like, “Nah I have to sell, creditors are closing in.” ffs - why can’t poor people just leave me alone.

Out of options, I locked up a pretty awesome unit in Rockell, which is this new, awesome area just outside Makati (and where I should have moved when I first got here, and I’d probably be 300k richer and a lot saner and not addicted to Valium/Xanax). The entire contract and payment process was smooth, and everyone I dealt with was highly competent. A far, far cry from 18 months ago.

HSBC killed my bank accounts for “money-laundering” last year, so I’ve been operating on cash and credit cards, which creates a world of tilt at times. Apparently, accepting a 10k wire transfer was money-laundering in 2007. For some illogical reason this morning, I thought I would try and open a new HSBC account. I walked out of the bank the proud owner of new USD, AUD and Peso bank accounts. wtf? How can you close someone’s accounts for “money-laundering”, then let them open new accounts a year later? I didn’t ask questions. Ding.

Visibly shaking with fear and physically nauseous at the impending doom of tilt awaiting me, I walked into PLDT (national DSL provider) to start the process of getting my net switched on in my new unit. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Last year, the PLDT national office was a crumbling mess with wooden benches where you waited for up to half an hour to speak to a moron who gave you a ticket which placed you in a line with 50 other people for 2-3 hours before you could then speak to another braindead moron. But today, I walked into a plush fantasy of awesomeness.

An agent greeted me at the door of the completely redeveloped first world lobby, and directed me to the central processing agent, who quickly handed me a ticket and directed me to empty, plush, new lounges surrounded by flatscreens and awesomeness. Before I even sat down, my number flashed up on the flatscreen and a computerised annoucement directed me to Booth 9 where a wonderfully competent lady set everything up painlessly and said my internet would be connected in 3 working days. Ding.

I walked home through Greenbelt 5, which is a brand new luxury shopping centre in Makati. The changes in this city in the last 18 months are just unbelievable. Money must be just pouring into this city. Rental prices are going through the roof, there are 10x the luxury cars on the streets now, foreigners are everywhere. The level of transformation in such a short period of time is really quite amazing.

I never, ever thought I would say this, but I can’t help but think investing in the Philippines would be a pretty smart move right now…I’m sure a coup will come along soon and pitch the country back 10 years, but if they can stay stable, and fix the corruption/traffic issues, this country could do amazing things in the next couple decades.

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