Wednesday 1 August 2012

Super busy times

In the end I kept myself pretty busy during my scheduled restweek from fitness. I played frisbee in the park with Deldar and Terje, went out and had lunch/dinner with them a bunch of times and also played Tennis(Tommy was the 4th) and Squash. Tennis and Squash were loads of fun. I personally prefer Squash, but both are lots of fun. Friday I was finally able to go to the gym again and since then I've put in 5 workouts already. Breathing Squats phase. Awesome exercise, should be a fun 8 weeks.

I'm also going to Japan for sure now. I'll spend ~2 weeks there with my dad and then another 2-3 on my own. I'll be spending time in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka. Also on my Japan To Do List are go to a National Park(should be amazing in autumn) and visit an Onsen/Ryokan. An Onsen is basically a hot springs. Bathing houses and taking baths in general is extremely popular in Japan and a natural hot springs should be the best way to experience it. And obviously not to forgot eat shitloads of sushi!!!
I've also been looking for ways to get in touch with Japanese people during the 2nd half of my trip. I know 2-3 Japanese people on Skype through Mixxer(language exchange website) that I will meet up with while I'm there, but I've also found this website called couchsurfing.org. Basically it's a social networking website for people who love travelling to get in touch with eachother and potentially offer eachother a place to sleep. Seems like a useful resource so far.
I'm VERY MUCH looking forward to my trip and I CAN ABSOLUTELY NOT WAIT to go!!!

Poker's been going pretty well. Still getting more and more confident and recovering mental strength bit by bit. I believe I should be able to play a reasonable amount of hands again. Unfortunately enough I've just been far too busy to actually do so. All the Squash, Tennis, Dinners, Lunches, Japanese learning, Workouts etc etc have taken up a LOT of time. And next monday - wednesday I'm going to go to Paris with my mom and younger brother, so that's not gonna help me play more either(although it should be a lot of fun). I really want to buckle down and focus on poker and steadily progress again. Things just being so stagnant for 16 months now is really annoying. Especially since I'll be in Japan for ~a month too and once I get back I'll only have about half a year left before my lease ends and I'll have to decide what I wanna do with my living situation. I'm not sure at the moment what I want to do and I really want to make some progress again pokerwise before I have to make that decision. If I don't I'll most likely want to try and cut down on living expenses a little.
Hopefully I can start grinding a lot more sometime soon. I'll have to focus on spending my time efficiently(already do a good job at that) and probably also cut down on some activities a little bit. I've already decided I'm gonna mostly stop watching the GSL. While It's a ton of fun, I really really want to do my best and play a bit more poker.

Yesterday was pretty epic. FINALLY after a year and 3-4 months, I'll finally get my pretty big 5 figure sum back from Full Tilt Poker. Moreover a lot of friends will be getting their money back and in general it's just a great thing for the poker industry/economy to see this ugly matter resolved. Obviously we had some good sushi to celebrate this wonderful ocassion. We went back to Sakana Tei after having not been there for a few months. I even ordered something off of the special Japanese chalkboard menu! :) The delicious パリパリサラダ(Pari Pari Salad). And I got a super special piece of prawn sashimi that they happened to have available that day. After I finished the meat, they added the remaining head to a miso soup, which added a very nice extra flavor. Likely the best Miso Soup I've ever had. Oh and we had Fatty Salmon for the first time ever. Not as good as Fatty Tuna, but a bit better than regular Salmon.


 パリパリサラダ(Pari Pari Salad)
 Special shrimp sashimi
 My awesome nigiri order. Had almost forgotten how good Fatty Tuna tastes
 Dave's order. Pretty legit imo
 Vanessa's order. I guess it doesn't take much to please a vegetarian ;)
 Tom only got the best of the best. But was unlucky, cause it turned out the Chu-Toro beat the O-Toro yesterday.
Best miso soup ever?

Last but not least, Martijn(dutch friend I've known since high school), has an internship in London from the 3rd of September - Christmas and I've decided to let him stay at my place during those 4 months. At first I was a bit hesitant, because 4 months is a long time and I quite like living alone. But after talking about it with my mom, I became convinced that the good should easily outweigh the bad. So I decided to let him stay and now I'm quite looking forward to it.

Almost forgot to list the new movies I've seen that I'd recommend others watch if they have a chance:
 -こくはく(Confessions)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1590089/
Awesome Japanese movie. Thanks to the Japanese friend on skype who recommended this to me. It's a bit of a crazy and weird movie, but very interesting and refresing and very much worth watching. Especially the 1st 15 min are pretty wild.

 -Ajeossi(The Man from Nowhere)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1527788/
Awesome Korean movie. Thank you Nils for the recommendation!
It's an action movie, that's extremely well done. Kinda like The Chaser and even somewhat similar to the english movie Taken. Very much worth watching, it's hard not to like it.

-Salò o le 120 gionate di sodoma
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073650/
This movie I actually HIGHLY recommend NOT watching. Nonetheless I have to tell you a little bit about it. On IMDB people say it's the most disturbing film you'll ever watch and the summary says:
"Four fascist libertines round up 9 teenages boys and girls and subject them to 120 days of physical, mental and sexual torture."
I mean yes, there's some pretty retarded stuff going on, but I didn't find it disturbing in the least, because it was just so unrealistic. Not to say this couldn't happen in real life, but I mean that the way it was shown in the movie was terribly done. Here's a few examples:
-The captured kids can freely roam around the house and go to a servant's bedroom to have sex with her, but noone ever bothers escaping? Right...
-The poop eating part... seems pretty impossible without puking. Not that I've tried, but I'm 99% I'd puke and pass out and be unable to eat it.
-Overall we just weren't shown much of how the captured kids dealt with everything. They were mostly pictured as very passive and taking everything as is. Didn't try to start a riot or fight their way out or anything.
Just badly done and I don't see how anyone can be too shocked by this due to the unrealistic way everything is shown. I'd recommend not wasting your time with this one, unless you like to see a lot of retarded horny actors have sex with eachother and eat chocolate icecream, while being told it's poop.

Frank.