escape successful!

Despite Manila’s best plans to keep me trapped, I managed to escape more through good luck than good management. Panicking after my travel agent yet again failed to book me a ticket, I called my loyal friend for advice and he told me to call PAL directly and they’d fix me up.

Disappointed, I hung up the phone as I’d previously called PAL months before trying to book an overseas ticket and had to slam the phone down in disgust at the gheyness of the process. However, my friend spoke wisely and after I was on hold for 20 minutes, the most brilliant, competent and intelligent girl in history answered from the PAL 24h booking line and I had a flight booked out that morning. Ding.

No rebels were waiting for me at the airport, much to my disappointment as I’m a big fan of their cause. The logic of hereditary royalty cannot be argued with. I’m also a big fan of lèse-majesté and basically any kind of censorship. I can’t wait until someone pisses me off here and, boom, lèse-majesté accusation against them - by law, the police have to investigate any report of offence against the King, no matter how trivial (The Economist).

On the advice of the same friend who assisted my escape from Manila, I booked into Dream Hotel in Bangkok, which is easily the cutest little awesome hotel I’ve ever stayed at. Thanks to the billions of dollars of damage to the tourism industry the rebels inflicted on the Thai economy by closing the two main Bangkok airports for a week, I was able to pick up a room dirt-cheap. Bangkok is definitely the place to be atm.

Anyway, I’m gonna relax here for a week and then brave the killing winter of Amsterdam next week. If I survive a week of European winter, then it’s back home to Australia for xmas and Aussie Millions tilt, which will almost certainly kill me if Amsterdam snow and red light districts fail.

Posted in Random | 2 Comments »

trapped in Manila insanity and tilt.

I should be in Bangkok now. I’m not in Bangkok. Rebels have not closed NAIA airports or anything like that. Sheer incompetence and laziness and stupidity, at levels I haven’t yet seen in 19 months of living in Manila, are keeping me trapped here.

I am not an optimist. I am a sheer realist who plans for expected retardation in advance. I am also no longer naive to the ‘complications’ of getting simple things done here - but I am sitting here writing this is shock at how much trouble I am having trying to get out of this country.

I moved out of my apartment on the 9th in a world of (expected) tilt. Wisely expecting endless retarded complications and missed appointments and broken promises, I booked 2 nights in a hotel which would allow me to deal with these “unique-to-Manila” complications.

I have previously stayed in Shangri-la Hotel in Makati, which is one of the greatest hotels in the world. I booked and paid for my room using AsiaRooms.com. A day later, I get an email from AsiaRooms saying Shangri-la Hotel is booked out. Confused, I call AsiaRooms and speak to one of the dumbest girls in the world named Winnie. She tells me rooms ARE available at Shangri-la and that she will cancel my failed booking and that I should book again, which I do. I receive an email later that day saying my new booking is cancelled as no rooms are available at Shangri-la. Furious, I call AsiaRooms to yell at Winnie. She apologises and says that no rooms are available at Shangri-la. She advises me to book at another hotel. I have not stayed at Peninsula Hotel before but have heard only the best things, so I book and pay for a room at Peninsula. Later that day, I receive an email telling me my booking is cancelled as no rooms are available at Peninsula. Meanwhile, all the charges for these room bookings have been charged to my CC’s and have not been returned. I have had just about enough of AsiaRooms incompetence and call up and get Winnie again. I order her to instantly hand the phone to someone else as I am too furious and too busy to deal with her special brand of stupidity at that present time. The new lady informs me that AsiaRooms charges your card when you make a booking, then if no rooms are available, the money is returned in 4 business days. I slam the phone down on those morons and book a room at InterContinental on Wotif.com.

Cliffnotes: AsiaRooms is the most retarded hotel booking site in the world.

After 2 full days of moving out tilt, I move into my InterContinental room. After sorting out some more apartment tilt the next morning, I try to book a ticket to Bangkok, but the booking sites won’t allow me to book tickets as the departure date is within 48-72 hours. I ring up one carrier to book tickets over the phone and she tells me I have to come down to their office and do everything manually. Too tilted and too tired for that kind of ‘adventure’, I handball the ticket job this morning to my travel agent, who is extremely competent some days and extremely lazy other days - it just depends what version of her decided to show up to work that day. But I’ve dealt with many Manila travel agents, and unfortunately, she’s the best I’ve found. No prizes for guessing which version of her showed up for work yesterday. She didn’t send a booking confirmation by email as promised. When I called her up to ask her what the hell was going on, I was told she had left work for the day (at 3pm). Standard.

Around this time, I got a phone call from InterContinental housekeeping asking if I wanted my room cleaned as I had a “Do Not Disturb” sign on my door. I have spent a disturbing amount of time in a lot of hotels over the last few years, and if someone can explain why almost every housekeeping department in every hotel in the world disturbs you with a phone call asking if you want your room cleaned when you have a “Do Not Disturb” sign on your door, I will be very grateful.

Calmly, I explain to the lady that “Do Not Disturb” actually means “Do Not Disturb”. I politely ask her to make a note and advise her colleagues of this fact as I now have to extend my stay at InterContinental. She promises me she will not disturb me again. I thank her warmly.

I call up reception to book another night at InterContinental. The manager says he can’t give me the same rate as shown on Wotif.com and that I should book again through Wotif. Having previously done this at other hotels and been woken up by staff telling me I need to move rooms, I ask him if he can organise for me to stay in the same room once I extend my booking. He says it will be no problem at all. I tell him I will likely be asleep during my (previous) check-out time and I will be furious if I am woken up due to confusion over this issue. He promises me there will be no confusion and no hassle. I book another night and call him again to confirm that he received the booking and payment. He assures me he has and that everything has been organised for me to stay in my current room.

This morning I call my travel agent to ask her what the hell is going on with my Bangkok ticket. She apologises and said she had to leave work yesterday due to “personal problems”. There are lots of “personal problems” here. She promises me she will book my ticket this morning and email me confirmation but that she may need to call me if there are any complications. As there are almost always complications here, I give her my mobile number and my hotel room number as I notice my mobile battery is almost flat and I can’t find my charger anywhere.

I then pass out from exhaustion, only to be woken up SIX times in the day. First two calls were from Housekeeping asking me if I want my room cleaned. Too tired to be angry, both times I politely inform them of the hugely complex and counter-intuative concept of “Do Not Disturb” actually meaning “Do Not Disturb”. I would take the phone off the hook at this point, but my mobile battery is very low and I need the hotel phone connected for my retarded travel agent to get ahold of me.

I’m then woken up by a phone call telling me I need to check-out. Amazingly, I find my inner Zen and explain to the guy that he needs to speak to his manager and that it’s all been sorted and paid for on Wotif. He understands the situation and apologises. An hour later, I’m woken up by another phone call from front deak, a girl telling me I need to check out. I yell at her, tell her not to call me again, and slam the phone down.

An hour later, I’m woken again by vigourous knocking on the door - I stumble to the door and an ugly girl is there telling me I need to checkout. I tell her to speak to her manager, explain the situation to her yet again and slam the door in her face.

At 7pm, I’m woken AGAIN by a girl telling me I need to check-out. Even by Manila standards, this is ridiculous. I yell at her as I recognised her voice and it’s the same ugly girl who woke me up banging on my door. I check my email and see that my retarded travel agent hasn’t booked me a flight. I collaspe in bed exhausted as my sleep has been ruined all day by the endless retarded phone calls. Before I can even get back to sleep, the stupid girl calls me again and rudely tells me I need to check-out otherwise she will have security evict me from the hotel. I tell her if she calls me again, I will walk down to front desk and physically slap her face as she’s the most stupid, unprofessional, retarded, moronic, brain-dead receptionist I’ve ever interacted with. I tell her if anyone wakes me up again, it had better be the hotel manager calling to apologise and offering me 1 month free stay at overseas InterContinental hotels and that if I heard her voice again, I don’t quite know what I’ll do, but I will not be able to be held liable for my actions and violence may be involved.

I slam down the phone.

She calls me back immediately and yells, “I’m not stupid, Sir” - and hangs up on me.

Cliffnotes: InterContinental Hotel in Makati has the most retarded staff in the world.

I’m seriously losing my mind here.

Posted in Random | 6 Comments »

omg manny is such an animal - ridiculous pwnage…

I was pretty excited about this fight as most of the Philippines stopped to watch the underdog take on an aging Hoya - Slider and I headed down to Metro to watch it with a couple hundred poker players.

I only managed to get on 1k for Manny at around 3.00 as my Betfair account is busted (again). I’m no boxing expert and I haven’t seen a heap of fights, but I’ve never seen such a crushing performance from a big underdog.

Manny had to put on 12 pounds to fight Hoya and gave up a 4″ height and 6″ reach to the bigger man, but Hoya’s career is finished. He was just demolished round by round as Manny’s lightning jabs landed through Hoya’s sloppy slow defence over and over and over again. Hoya conceded after 8 rounds after Manny won 8 from 8 and demolished Hoya’s right eye with a combination of flurried landed blows right on target.

Hoya was pathetic. Old, slow, sloppy and pathetic. He’s finished - a sickeningly embarassing end to a great career. Manny was bouncing light, throwing lightning jabs as Hoya’s feet were fixed to the ground. Disgraceful stuff from Hoya. Manny will take on Hatton next apparently and that’s going to be another ripper match-up as Manny will need to drop back down to 140 for Hatton.

Posted in Random | 2 Comments »

the beginning of the end…

When motivated and not stressed, there are very few people that I know who can function at levels I am capable of. But as everyone that knows me will attest, when I’m stressed, I’m completely and utterly useless and incapacitated. In an emergency situation, I would be one of those people the ambulance personnel would have to sedate or simply knock the f out with a sledge hammer so they could get to work.

I’m currently moving out of my apartment, selling off all furniture as I’m moving out of the Philippines (with no idea what country I’m moving to yet), trying to organise hotels, flights and admin for once I move out as well as a trip to Bangkok and Amsterdam and back to Brisbane for Xmas. After that, I have to head to Melbourne, then Sydney, then make a decision on where to move to and I have no real clue on dates for any of these flights or bookings as there are too many unknown variables. Also, I really, really hate Xmas and all the tilt associated with it and I’ve been grinding my teeth whenever I hear yet another Christmas carol wafting through my paper-thin windows.

Nothing so far is going to plan or shows any signs of going to plan and it’s all starting to come apart at the seams. If I call one more person here about something important only to hear they’re on holidays or on a coffee break in the middle of the afternoon, I think I’m going to lose the plot and start head-diving into the closest wall.

Last night, I flipped a bit. I had a huge list of important things I needed to do today, and was half-asleep when a very close friend of mine who’s owed me a lot of money for a long time came over to pay his final installment and celebrate. I was exhausted but against my better judgement, agreed to have “a few drinks” with him at around 8pm. Sickeningly ironically, whilst celebrating, we decided to play online a bit and lost 20k over the next 12 hours - he had 30% of me and is right back smack in debt again.

I am never calm under pressure but I always pride myself on being logical at least. Calm and logic were nowhere to be found last night as we took beat upon beat getting molested online, as I was furious at myself and him and at how bad we were running. I passed out at 9am this morning and slept all day and obviously didn’t get all the important things done which I desperately needed to do. To add to my frustration and self-loathing, I now have a gnawing guilt I have to deal with from drunkenly blaming him for not letting me sleep and “making” me get smashed and play last night. Whilst I got some sleep at least, he had to head to his office without any sleep after a horror night of running bad, and is reasonably unimpressed with me.

I’m fairly certain this month is going to be disastrous on a number of levels. One of these pending disasters is a prop bet I made with a friend that he couldn’t play 400,000 hands in December. I gave him 20:1 with a max bet of $500 for a 10k loss if he pulls it off. For what it’s worth, I don’t think I’ve ever played 400,000 hands in a year, but he’s a sicko and I think my odds were too generous. He needs to play 400k hands by midnight NYE at 100nl or higher *and* have a positive winrate at the end. He’s up about 25 buyins I think and is 20k hands ahead of schedule 4 days into the month. I think I’m fucked.

He’s streaming the entire month of play live on http://www.ustream.tv/channel/400k-hands and you can watch him play and chat with him during the month. I don’t ask many favours of you dear Blog Friends, but I beg you to go to the above link and heckle, abuse, flirt, etc with him whilst he plays his 20 tables. Basically, anything you can do to distract him would be like really, really hot. Thanking you in advance. Now gogogogo…..

Live Streaming by Ustream.TV

Posted in Random | 1 Comment »

We’ll miss you Vic you sexy corrupt beast…

So the greatest show ever to hit TV has officially ended with an expected Shakespearian finale. Despite my man-love for Vic Mackey, I wasn’t as emotional watching the final episode of The Shield as I was watching the final episode of Gilmore Girls but I think that’s because I’ve just discovered Season 4 of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (arguably greatest comedy on TV) has ended so I get to seamlessly move into alternative awesomeness and transfer my man-love to Charlie.

“Why don’t I strap on my job helmet and squeeze down into a job cannon and fire off into Jobland where jobs grow on little jobbies?”

——

As you can probably tell, I’m struggling with finding new ways to entertain myself. As a pimp RakebackSTAT provider, every day I get requests for assistance with ideas for new online usernames.

Now, obviously my own gayboy69 handle is pretty hard to beat, but being a humanitarian of the best kind, I try to help players who are lost and want an awesome poker username.

For a number of months now, I’ve been trying to get players to signup as kiddiefiddler4 (it’s the 4 that makes it awesome) - but for months I had no luck. The other day, I got 3 players in a row to signup as kiddiefiddler4 on various sites. Obviously a red-letter day.

Once they’d signup as kiddiefiddler4, obviously I would crush them for being obvious pedophiles and they would then get all confused and shit. It’s probably the most fun you can have with your clothes off.

I tried to convince young Adelaide donkament superstar Andy McLeod to signup as kiddiefiddler4 and, for awhile, I thought I had him hooked, which would have made 4 in a row - but the cheeky fucker was too crafty to fall for my ghey tricks and signed up other, boring usernames. Sigh.

Posted in Random | 2 Comments »

Video Poker fightback, retardation in India, fat people win free airline seats, and more…

“HAHAHAhA YOU PROBABLY NEVER THOUGHT ID REMEMBER THAT STORY JUST CAUSE I CAN BARELY REMEMBER MY OWN NAME…BUT BLOWIN A JEW FOR A LONG ISLAND IS JUST TOO TITE TO FORGET IMHO”

- PokerCrack’s best poster PincheMK after relating a story about Kara giving a blowjob for a Long Island Ice Tea in a thread titled “Who will break who’s heart first?” after Kara and popular poster Twelver hooked up and announced they were moving to Vegas together.

———————-

Most people would quit after being molested by Video Poker like I was the other day, but as the old saying goes, “Losers always whine about their best, winners go home and fuck the prom queen.”

Plus, Eurolinx had my money and whilst that’s slighty better than Scandi’s having it, I was still unable to sleep at night knowing such injustice was the status quo. So I took what little money I had left in my Eurolinx account and set out to recitify the situation.

I dropped to about 8k balance I think before strange stuff started happening after Eurolinx logged me off and then back on for a “system upgrade” which took less than a minute. Had I been winning a lot, I would have been suspicious, but as things couldn’t really get worse, I shrugged and kept on playing. I starting hitting pat hands probably every 30 hands for the next 10 hours. It was insane. I also hit another Royal before I figured I’d done enough grinding for one day and stopped playing with a current balance of 52k. Half-way back to awesomeness.

As Eurolinx still owes me exactly 4 Royals based on missed results with 4 to a Royal and 3 to a Royal hole cards, I have to keep playing to make good on this debt. So it’s likely I will bust the account after all, as I’m sure they have now fixed whatever bug allowed me to hit more pat hands than there are red dots in India during my huge upswing.

Speaking of India (how do like that tie-in? there is a reason I am the King of written crack, well probably the Queen, Maddox is definitely the King), some crazy ass fundamentalist shit going on there at the moment if you’re like hugely intelligent and more likely to read my blog than watch the news.

I like fundamentalist retardation because it’s almost always retarded. However, these fundamentalists appear to a more serious sort (except for one team who released ALL their hostages lol but we’ll get to that in a bit). The retardation today came from the BBC report when I flicked on the TV for an update and was too lazy to change the channel to CNN for Anderson Cooper sexiness. I thought 4 things in the 30 second BBC update were retarded enough to write about.

———–

1. Anchor says “101 dead, including 6 foreigners. World leaders are condemning the attacks.”

Seriously? I’m sure they are, actually, condemning the attacks - but like, why are they doing it and why does the BBC feel it’s worth reporting? Redundancy ftw? Can someone please explain why? I am genuinely interested in a reason why a world leader would feel a need to condemn these attacks. Does he feel his position on them may be unclear? Does he feel his condemnation will likely result in fewer terrorist attacks in the future?

“Praise be to Allah, we will all be fucking virgins in the morning in Paradise.”

“Yes Islamic brother, but the Prime Minister of Australia will publicly condemn us if we do this.”

“Well….we’ll have to take that risk - but dude, think of the virgins!!!”

“Yeah, you be right - fuck you Rudd, I want my 40 virgins - death to the infidels!”

———-

I can just see Rudd’s secretary telling him he has to condemn the terrorist attacks this morning, Rudd going, “Don’t we have like a template terrorist act public condemnation speech that Howard used? I don’t want to have to write a new one every time someone decides to kill a stranger in the name of Allah.”

“The official position of the Commonwealth of Australia is that it…does NOT…support the killing of British and American tourists by Islamic extremists in Mumbai.”

Noted.

———-

2. The ground reporter said the terrorists let ALL the hostages go from one hotel. What the fuck happened here? They didn’t even address it in the news report. Hostages are being held in every major hotel in the city, and all the hostages are released from one hotel, and everyone’s acting like it’s not an issue.

For a fucking start, it’s unfair to the other hostages and incredibly insensitive if they’re being allowed to watch BCC by the terrorists. If I were one of the held hostages, I would be livid and be demanding either the extremists go get those hostages back or let our batch go - where the hell is the consistency? What kind of operation are those jokers running over there?

Secondly, I want to know if the terrorists at that hotel fucked up - releasing ALL hostages from a hostage situation cannot ever be a smart play. Ever. Game theory wise.

———–

3. BBC interviews one of the released hostages, a fat British woman. She says “the experience was the worst of my life” and then feels compelled to add, after a pause: “I hope I never have to experience it again.”

WTF? Like, seriously? BBC is interviewing you after Islamic terrorists who have already killed over 100 people (including foreigners) spare your life for unknown reasons by releasing you from a hostage situation where your chances of survival are probably in the range of 5% and you tell BBC it was the worst experience of your life? Why not take the opportunity to join world leaders in condemning the attacks? And then you feel the need to add that you hope you don’t ever have to experience it again? Was that second line really necessary? Was the first? How about a fucking “thank you” to the terrorists who fucked up and let you go instead of killing you as you emerge from a hostage situation to find the same guys have already killed 100 people including foreigners so they’re not the bluffing type like that Dog Day Afternoon joker.

I really hope that woman is taken hostage again in her lifetime in a terrorist attack after her 2nd comment. “Oh no, I had hoped I wouldn’t have to go through this again.”

————

4. BCC is interviewing a local politician who says that, due to the timing and coordination of the of the 7 (seven) simultaneously launched and executed attacks, he definitely believes they are linked as part of a “conspiracy”.

Mother of god. I almost fainted at the manner in which he says this, with a completely straight and serious face, as if he’s compiled all the evidence, and come to a conclusion which is by no means definite mind you, just an educated guess, which he is now delivering to us solemnly. How the BCC journalist actually asks him this retarded question is stupifying - where do they find these idiots?

————

Retardation everywhere. Hostage-takers letting hostages go. No virgins for those guys obv. World leaders making it a point to clarify where they stand on the issue. Reporters asking politicians if they believe the 7 simultaneous attacks are linked, and he considers the question and then offers his opinion that, due to the timing of the 7 terrorist attacks, yes, it’s his opinion the attacks are part of a “conspiracy”. People are seriously hilarious, imo.

————————————-

Don’t stop laughing yet because more hilarity is coming your way. Probably after reading my blog, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled this week that obese people have the right to two seats for the price of one for domestic flights, applicable to all domestic carriers.

I’m seriously not making this shit up. This shit is legit.

Canada Supreme Count - Obese have right to 2nd Seat Free (Reuters)

This is hilarious on so many levels. Apart from making me consider moving to Canada and just flying around in bliss until the airlines go busto from being forced to give fat people free seats (30% of Canadian adults are obese, according to the interwebs, gg Canada domestic carriers), how funny would it be to board your flight and see Kirsty Alley sprawled out across 2 seats as she digs into her KFC….if I boarded a domestic plane in Canada and saw a fat person taking advantage of their Free Seat, I’m not sure what I’d do, but I’m sure it would be hilarious.

———————————-

I had a lot of other stuff I thought was worth writing about, but this blog entry is getting too long, so I’ll save it for another day. lol free seats for fat people - I love it. What next? Fast food companies are ordered to give free double servings to all obese customers? I’m particularly interested in this one as I believe it will create an unpredictable and possibly catastropic but awesome feeding frenzy that will grow at an exponential rate so fast, Stephen Hawking himself couldn’t write mathematical formulas to predict the end results.

Posted in Random | 4 Comments »