If I ever learn the guitar it's to play this song

This is going to be a rambleblog.


Lots of things happened this year, and as every year, some were good some were bad. Overall I'm pretty happy with what happened in 2012. Managed to sell my house so I could travel more. Lived with lots of new people all who turned out great. Hopefully next year I can manage to not run so stupidly bad with poker and all will be okay. The goal was to play alot but one of the bigger downswings I've had hit and just didn't have the motivation to grind as much as I had planned.

I've been fantasysing about the future/universe for years now and enjoy reading about it, looks like there were some
pretty big innovations in 2012.

Been reading a bunch on Future Timeline , I think many speculations are not going to be accurate but it's just fun to read about possible things that can happen in our future. And I can't wait to see what will actually happen with us humans.

Also really enjoy this representation of our solar system:



What else, I've listened to all the 13 books released in the wheel of time series and can't wait for January 8th when the final installment will finally be released and I see how the story ends. It's strange how sometimes long books can be 'a part of your life'.


Being away from home does make me miss my friends/parents but you can't have it all at the same time. I'm sure I will see them again somewhere in 2013. It was really nice to see some old friends in real life again this year as well. It's about time for them to invent the instant-translocator so you can travel anywhere within a minute ;-)

For 2013, I honestly have no idea what is going to happen and where I'm going to end up but I'm sure it will be another good year!

See you all in 2013!
Robin out.

After leaving Cebu I managed to book one of the longest trips to get somewhere.
It took me 36 hours and 4 flights to get to my destination. And in a single day I managed to be in the Philippines, South Korea, Japan, Hawaii and San Francisco.

It actually wasn't so bad because I just spend my time watching movies, reading books and actually enjoyed the majority of the trip because most planes had alot of extra space.

Matt (and Jordan) picked me up at the airport and took me to In&Out to get some burgers before some well-deserved sleep. They live on Alameda Island which is in between Oakland and San Francisco and is a pretty relaxed place to stay/live.

After a day of relaxing and basically doing nothing we went up to Lake Tahoe where we relaxed some more with snow around us and a fireplace in the Cabin.





The next weeks basically we usually went some place and did some things and ate some foods, did some bowling. It was mostly a very relaxing two weeks, we did go to Alcatraz and went to the Gun Range.


At mount diablo


On Alcatraz


My hosts here Sofar been very nice and relaxing.


Like a true American.


Wasn't the greatest.. hit 6 out of 25 and then 7 out of 25... lots of room for improvement.

This is my last night here in Alameda/CA, flying to La Paz tomorrow where I'll be staying with Jeff again. I'm sure it will be great as it always is great in La Paz!

All in all the time here in California was really good, made some nice plans for the future, and just overall had a great time relaxing.

Robin out.

My short trip in Cebu is almost over, flying to San Fransisco tonight to visit Matt (Probability).
I don't know how I managed it but it will be a 36h trip with 2 layovers, in Seoul and Hawaii. Definately not looking forward to that, hopefully I can catch some sleep somewhere along the trip.
Despite being sick for about half the time I did have fun being here again and visiting my girlfriend. She was taking care of me the entire time I was sick so that made it alot better.



Visiting a PI hospital because I kept having a fever for a bit too long, got some anti-biotics but stopped taking them after 1 day because they gave me side-effects and was pretty sure that I didn't need them anyway. Good thing I'm not stubborn.

This weekend we went to a smaller Island (Bohol) with 3 couples, had lots of fun, some pics from there:





Ate a sea-urchin, It was disgusting, but then again, I don't like fish so that was kindof to be expected.



We rented bikes to visit a waterfall, always fun to ride on them.


Overall we had a great time and despite the not always great weather we got lucky that the day on the bikes we had barely any rain. We also visited some zoo's, butterfly garden and the chocolate hills.




Gonna visit the US and Mexico for 6-7 weeks and then come back to Cebu for a couple of months. Don't really like Cebu that much but do really like my gf so gotta make choices :-)
Time to pack some bags!
Robin out.

I'm back in Cebu again! Good to be with my gf again. Although living in hotels isn't really the greatest.. especially when it's hard to find decent internet. Although after moving hotels and then moving rooms it looks like we've finally found a semi-solid connection... and started off the grind by running my standard terribleness and hitting my stoploss (which is way too high).

Anyway, on to more fun things, we went to Casa Verde, which might be one of my favorite restaurants here in Cebu sofar. Everything I've eaten there is great, and they have a chocolate lava cake desert that I've wanted to try but have never been able to get too because the portions are so large I'm too full after the main course. Today we went there because Zac wanted to try the Big Burger.

When we got there they had a $6 shake.. which is insanely expensive here so I had to order it ofcourse




After having one of the best nacho's I've had here sofar also had the ribs which were pretty good.
However the main attraction was the big burger challenge:




As you can see he's already having serious doubts after seeing the burger...
He failed pretty hard and only finished half of it, but there is going to be another attempt and will post more/better pics of that.

At least the streetkids where happy that he didn't finish it all:


Sofar it's pretty good to be back to cebu but strange to live in a hotel. At least it looks like I've found a decent apartment for January. Hopefully poker will turn around soon and I can enjoy things a bit more then when losing money!

Robin out.

As some of you guys know on skype I've been complaining pretty hard about running bad... well pretty much always I honestly can't remember when I actually ran good.

This year is no exception and I rarely post graphs nowadays but figured I would post my last dissapointing year. As I look back through the graphs I've had through the years (About ever 6 months I manage to lose my database for one reason or another (new computer, crashed HD or played on laptop, so unfortunately I can't graph the last few years) it seems like I just always run bad.

Here are the graphs from this year (in cash and in BB) at the end I figured I was owed EV and tried to get it back at higher stakes.. that did not work




So what to do now, I guess there is nothing other then just keep on grinding but if you feel like you never win a single flip, your draws rarely get there while fish always hit it just is super super hard to stay motivated. And no matter how hard you try it will slowly seep into your mood when you're away from the tables. I feel like I've been able to keep poker and normal life relatively seperate emotionwise but it's hard to not feel like every day you are being treated unjust.


This was the year where I finally started to try to put in more volume and try to take poker a bit more serious (instead of just doing 20k hands a month or 4 months of no poker) and so I could actually save some money instead of just living off of the game. But I guess I will just try to make 2013 my year.

In other news, in about a week I'm leaving to visit my GF in Cebu (philippines) and a month later I'm going to head over to San Fransisco to meet up with Matt who I haven't seen in like forever again. Whenever he gets tired of me I will fly down to Mexico once again to spend one of the winter months in the good company of Jeff+wife and who else is going to be there. Now let's hope I can pick up some run good there so I won't have to be too cheapo when there!

Robin out.

Been in Italy for a while now. The place we're staying at is really nice, but it is a bit lonesome here when the other room is occupied by a couple and my own GF is all the way in the Philippines. However, I highly recommend the place we found to stay at and will most likely come back here in the future (and bring the GF along for the ride).

In the meantime Breaking Bad season 5a has finished. The pace was a lot faster then in the first few seasons but I didn't mind that at all. I was very excited the whole way through and love how they ended the (mid)season finale. It sucks that we will have to wait a year to see the conclusion to this amazing tvshow.
All I can say is:



The summerbreak is almost over and lots of tvshows are coming back soon which is good for me (since I'm pretty much an addict of tv shows).
I wasn't that impressed with the last two seasons of Dexter, however after watching the trailer for season 7 they pulled me back in... Trailer


A new show from JJ abrams (guy from lost) is also going to air this month:
trailer
I like the premiss but am afraid it will be too much like Terra Nova where they focus on (terrible) characters.

And ofcourse a new survivor will start at the end of this month also. Which is Survivor Philippines.


And ofcourse alot of other shows as well... but if I list them all this blogpost would become a bit long.


The last year, whenever I went somewhere, or went to the toilet, or did anything that involved me walking/riding anywhere I put on my audiobook. I've been listening to The Wheel of Time for about 11 months now. Sofar there are 13 books totally over 11.000 pages which results in about 420 hours of listening pleasure. However, a couple of days ago I finally finished book number 13 and have joined the rest of the fans to wait for the final part to be released in 2013.



It is strange how much of a void this created for me. Because whenever I was either bored or did something mindless I would listen to the book and now it feels like something is missing. So I'm not sure what to do about this. For those who like fantasy and have not read/listend to this series, I highly recommend it but it will consume massive amounts of your time to complete it.

I remember reading some stuff on how they are planning to turn this also into a tv-series or perhaps into movies. I hope that if they do they will manage such a success as Game of Thrones has gotten with their book-adaptation.

Now that I've finished this I will probably be looking to start reading some sci-fi because I've read/listened to enough Fantasy books for a while (WoT, GoT, KKC). Matt has give me some recommendations and I've downloaded 14 sci-fi books from Iain Banks.

Everything else is well and although I can't seem to get rid of the runbad-bug I've caught this year poker should turn around any time now because it is starting to get mathematically impossible to run the amount below ev that I am. (yes yes I know, nothing is impossible with this)

So I have faith that there will be a turn-around soon and the pokergods will start to like me again. :-)

Robin out.

We've been experiencing a serious heatwave for the first 3 weeks in Italy. Every day it has been between 35 and 40 degrees. So mostly we've been hanging around the pool and jumping in whenever we are too hot.
Ofcourse I couldn't resist pulling some maneuvers at the pool:


(yes, landing like this hurts alot)

Other then that we ran into some issues with the Italian bureaucracy trying to get things going here.. and it's not really sure we'll be able to solve it. But whatever happens, at least we're enjoying the weather and surroundings. (But why doesn't anybody speak a single word of english in this country?!?!)

The place we're staying at is really relaxed and quiet and a great place to wind down from running terrible at poker for the last year, I'm starting to wish slansky bucks where real. Reading some books and watching some movies/shows.

I just finished:


and even though it's a fairly old sci-fi book I really enjoyed it alot. So I downloaded the next book in the series and hopefully that will be also very good

I'm also still busy listening to the Wheel of Time and am getting to the end of book 12 in the series.
After a pretty slow part of book 9-10-11 it really picked up again in book 12 and am very excited about it again.

Robin out.

I left Cebu a couple days ago and the flight home was actually really fast with what turned out to be only an hour layover in HongKong. I do miss Cebu because I have grown to like it despite the flaws it has in my eyes.

When I booked the room in the house I had no idea who the people I was going to live with were but was yet again very lucky to get great roommates and I hope to see them again in the future. I've convinced them of how great La Paz is so hopefully we will meet there again. And with the power of the internet it is fairly easy to stay in touch.

I did enjoy my time in Cebu because I found a girl I really like and it looks like I will go back for an extended period to spend more time with her. However I first had some other plans made up so it will be a while before I'm back in Cebu. If only poker went a bit better I think I would've enjoyed it more because it's just no fun to lose money while spending money. Anyway, current plans have me back there in January 2013.

After a day and a half back home me and Morten drove down to Italy... this is in Germany in the middle of the night:


It took us about 18 hours to get there, another long drive through the night. Had to get used to driving a bit again because it was a while since the last time I drove. However all went well and we arrived at our location at 10 in the morning. Here a pic of Morten (who I'm living with the next two months) after just arriving at our house:


The house itself is actually really nice and better then what I expected, there is alot of space inside and outside of the house and the only minor points are that internet is not very fast (but seems to be very stable sofar) and that you really need a car here to get to places. But since we have a car it's not really an issues, here are some pics of the house:

outside area (one of two)


Grinding/living area


My bedroom (also has a small bathroom attached to it)


Bathroom (with bidet)


Me walking towards our pool(area)


General area around the house


The views in the area are really nice and riding around here is just pure enjoyment. Here are some of the views, taken from our living area:




We also tried to get some stuff sorted here today (getting a fiscal code) but friday is not a good day for that.. so we just walked around Perugia for a bit, which is on top of a hill and has a really nice view all around. Also got some gelato!


Me wearing probably the best shirt leggo has ever had.
And with that this blogpost has come to an end.

Robin out.

I know it's been on the market for a while now (first eaten by me in La Paz) but I've rediscovered it here in Cebu...




This stuff is truly addictive, because the inside tastes so freaking good that the second you finish it and no longer have the flavor sensation on your tongue you CRAVE another one... and it's never-ending.

I seriously think they've added something superaddictive to these things because I cannot stop eating them... I could eat them for breakfast,lunch and dinner. They will be my downfall eventually...

In other news, my last week in Cebu has come and am looking forward to a slight change of scenery, get to some cooler place.. because I'm still having trouble with the constant daily heat and anytime I walk into an airconned room it feels soooo good. Some of the travelplans within the Philippines have been postponed because most likely I will be back here in January of 2013 for approx 6 months.

Robin out.

Since everyone in the house switched to early-bird schedules I'm the only one living the night-schedule at the moment. I don't really mind it that much because I do enjoy some time to myself as well.

There was a pretty big thunderstorm tonight and when it was winding down and the lightning-flashes were a bit farther away I went for a nice swim looking at the storm from a distance and started contemplating about life, traveling and what makes me happy.

I've been trying to find a passion for something in life the last few years but have not been very successful with it yet. There just aren't that many things that I really love to do, there are plenty of things I enjoy doing but nothing I really love. It is also one of the reasons why I'm trying to see more of the world, to discover new things and see what else is out there. Although every time I leave I am reminded at how much I like it in Leiden (my hometown).

Sofar I've been a bit more then a month in Cebu and even though the house is nice, the weather is decent and I do like it here I don't think it's a place I want to go back for an extended period of time, there are just too many things I dislike to consider living here for year+. However I do really recommend to go here for just a vacation because it is perfect for that.

I haven't been to Palawan yet though, which is suppose to be really good and I think we will probably try to go there next week orso. Most likely I will try to bring my girl with me because she also has not been there yet :-) Not really sure what's going to happen with that when I leave Cebu to go to Italy yet but time will tell...

I'm not in the greatest of moods today, possibly because poker has not been going very well lately. (have been running really bad for a long time now and just getting kindof fed up with it) But also just because I am tired of not knowing what I want. I also seem to spend alot of time not really doing anything... just rewatching tvshows, or reading useless threads on forums and just randomly browsing. But not sure how to stop that because I can't think of anything better to do, so I just keep going through the same motions.

Perhaps I will try to read some books the upcoming weeks because I usually enjoy that. I haven't really read a book in quite some time because I'm still busy listening to the Wheel of Time (currently on Book 11) and usually don't like to start something before finishing the last book (despite it being an audiobook).

Didn't expect the blog to have such a negative undertone but when blogging they can't be all winners...

Robin out.