Lots of things have been happening since my last blogpost.
I've been back from mexico for about a month, in that time I've gotten my eyes lasered.

They gave me a teddy to hold onto while getting them done in case I felt scared.
The procedure itself was ok, didn't hurt much. Took only a couple of mins total.


I ended up going with intralasik combined with Wavefront.
The results sofar are pretty good.
After the first day my vision in my left eye was at 90% and right eye at 60%.
After the first week my vision in my left eye was at 100% and right eye at 90%.
On may 1st I will have my month update but besides some dry eyes from time to time all seems to be good. I see about as good as I did with my glasses so that makes it worth it.
My vision wasn't that bad before the operation though so that might be why I'm not like: "omg this is amazing."

The other big news is that I've finally sold my house (not that happy about the price it had to be sold for but the market is so freaking terrible at the moment there is nothing to do about it. Especially since it doesn't look like it will go up any time soon). So that means that I will be moving out and finally be able to go travel without having to pay a mortgage every month that I'm away.



I'm packing up everything I own and throwing away all the shit I've accumulated over the last 8 years. It's insane how much stuff just 'is' in your house that you never look at or use. I came across some fun things as well, like my old school reports, lots of old pictures and more stuff like that! Ah to reminisce on those things.. But it's alot of work, especially to decide if you want to keep some stuff or just throw it away.

This weekend I'm going to be moving in with my dad where I will stay about a month. Hopefully the weather will be decent next month and we can ride our bikes to Paris. Last year we went to Berlin but didn't have the best weather.. I also need to lose a bunch of weight (more on that later) and hopefully biking 150km (100miles) a day will help with that!

Then at the beginning of June I'm going to the Philippines for about two months. I will be staying in Cebu in a pokerhouse with people I've never met before. But there are apparently 3 pokerhouses in the area and I talked a bunch with the guys who I'm going to be living with and it seems a decent crew to hang with! :-)
Hopefully do some stuff like diving/hiking/island exploring when I'm there!


After that I'm thinking about going to Italy for two months with another pokerplayer and explore the italian lifestyle, and also just enjoy the italy summer!
The plan is to go to Mexico again after that, just because the mexican winter is so so nice and I really enjoy spending time in La Paz. I vow to actually learn some spanish this time around.


Last year I managed to get a foot injury and couldn't play sports for about 8 months. Since I couldn't control my bad eating habits I gained a serious amount of weight again. At the start of this year I weighed 100kg (220 pound). I'm currently trying to get it down to 75kg (165 pound). I've managed to lose about 10kg (22 pound) sofar. Here are the current results and I guess I should smile in the pics, at least in the second one, since that's what I always see in the tv-ads...


So already a big improvement and I'm playing sports about 5 times a week now and trying to eat pretty healthy. Hopefully I can keep it up even while I'm traveling because usually I have trouble to continue to eat healthy when I'm in a foreign country and there is lots of temptation.

I guess that's all for now, I will try to keep my blog a bit more updated once I start to travel. Thanks for reading.

Robin out.

Well I guess it is a bit overdue but here is the first mexico update.
Here is a song to listen to while reading this blog.

Have been here a little over 3 weeks now and am loving the weather, every day it's about 25 degrees (77 fahrenheit), which is far superior to the weather back home. Have also gone swimming this week and thought the water was really good. I will try to go swimming a bit more often before I have to head back home again.

Sofar I've had a pretty good schedule, been waking up around 8 in the morning and then playing poker from 9 till 1-2pm because that seems to be the best time to play poker. Unfortunately I've been running absolutely terrible and my goal is to be breakeven when I leave mexico. Which is not going to be that easy but hopefully I'll make it. I don't know what it is, but for some reason my swongs are insane (today I went to -15BI to breakeven again in about 4k hands).

I really like this because I get my poker out of the way in the morning and have the rest of the day to do what I want. Unfortunately this won't work back home because the hours would be different to play. However I'm considering to move to mexico for a longer period in the future and if I could keep this schedule I would be very happy.

It's been fun spending lots of time with the other pokerplayers here (Jeff (+sarai), Vince (+Karina), Matt and Reefy), we go out to dinner quite often and just hang out doing not much. Although not everyone seems to play that much poker here ;-)

One of the things I've tried out here are skywalkers, it is alot harder then it looks and I've only done it twice and need alot more practice, it is however alot of fun and am considering getting a pair myself.

All 4 of us learning how to walk again.


Trying to run.


Fell down, didn't hurt myself to badly though. But it seemed impossible to get up by myself so luckily Matt helped me up.


This week we also went biking on the Malecon with probably the worst bikes I've ever been on. It was still fun though! But it was impossible to go up any decent size hill because the gears weren't working and you had to paddle about 5 times as hard as you usually need to.



I've also spend way to much time on the interwebs, and mostly on 9gag.


However today I finally finished 9gag (as in that I've read all the posts.. (about 50.000 incl reposts). So that will save me about 3-4 hours a day I can now spend on something else. Must say that it is a fun way to waste time but there is starting to be to much crap and not enough funnies on it...

Another thing I've been doing alot is walking around because I've been listening to an audiobook (The wheel of time by Robert Jordan)


Sofar I'm really really loving this, it is definitely one of the better series I've ever 'read'. I'm also really enjoying listening to it instead of reading it but the two persons reading it are doing a very very good job with the voices and make it really come alive.

I've just finished the 3rd book and started the 4th book today, only 11 to go. I wonder if the quality will remain this good and if it does it might become one of my alltime favorite bookseries. (I used to really like A Song of Fire and Ice but the 4th (and also a bit the 5th) book were such a dissapointment that I don't even really care that much about the story anymore.)
It's just great to walk around in the sun next to the ocean listening to this and I probably do this at least an hour each day.


For valentines day this year I didn't really have anything to do because I'm currently single, but I did manage to find a flowerplant that looked like Sarai's dog (Fluffy) so had to get it.


The only downside from being in mexico at this time is that I missed out on going on my annual ski holiday but there is always next year.

For the next couple of weeks I will probably keep doing what I've been doing, hopefully win again with poker, maybe go swimming a couple more times, try out those skyrunners again to try and master them without falling again. When I get home things will be weird because my roommate has moved out while I was away and that means that I will be living by myself for the first time in 9 years without roommates. I have no clue if I will like it or will feel very lonely, time will tell.

Although if I don't like it I can always find another roommate, but until I do I will have some room in my house and if you would like to visit (the Netherlands) let me know.

It also looks like my foot is almost completely healed again and I can start playing fulltime squash when I get back home again. And when I get my eyes lasered next month I might actually be able to see the ball instead of playing on instinct ;-)

The only thing that isn't going that great is my weightloss, I think I've maintained about the same weight since I've been here (well I lost about 2 kg but gained that again). The food is just to good to stay away from, I just love hamburgers and hotdogs to much. If I could play squash 5-6 times a week it wouldn't be that much of a problem but if I leave mexico with the same weight as I had when I got here I'll be happy.

Robin out

Leaving for mexico tomorrow, can't wait to get away from the cold of the Netherlands.
Going for about 6 weeks and hopefully just have a great time but can't imagine that not happening!

Sofar the new year has started of pretty good for me, lost about 14 pounds in the first month and have about 40 more to go. Wanted to have that done by the end of the year but maybe I should adjust my target to july or something.

Everything else is still very much uncertain for me this year because it depends so much on whether or not the house I live in sells. This month we did have some viewers so hopefully that will work out.

And now as for every trip I'm thinking about what the hell I'm forgetting this time, hopefully nothing important but usually when you have your passport/creditcard/phone you will survive!

Guess I better start packing.
Robin out.

As most people I've made some resolutions for this year, which is probably a good thing since apparently people who make resolutions are 12 times more likely to achieve them then people that don't make resolutions (what? if you have no resolutions you always achieve it them??!).

Probably the most influental resolution is that I've started following the Paleo Diet. A couple of my friends recommended it and I decided to just give it a shot and see how it goes. The main thing is that I'm no longer allowed to eat carbs and sugar. I'm still reading up on the whole diet thing but will probably just follow it and look at the results.

This is the paleo food-chart:


I will post some before/after pictures after a month and see what it has done to me.
For more info on the Paleo diet

I might expand more about the diet in a future blog but first I'd need to know more about it.

Anyway, the rest of my time I've been spending on 9gag.com which is a truly amazing site. I've wasted o so many hours reading the pics/posts... be carefull, once you go you can't go back!

Some examples:




Anyway, so many great things are posted, also some bad posts but they can't be all good.

Robin out.

I won't be posting my goals for next year but it comes down to the same ones I have every year play more poker, lose lots of weight and a couple of minor things.

And try to not have this happen again:


Because this is so me, I always postpone everything I can and I'm trying to make 2012 a hardworking me so in 2013 future me can be happy w/ the 2012 work.

Have fun with the last few days of 2011!
Robin out.

Can't believe that 2011 is almost over already.
I'm trying to recall what I did this year (currently reading about about memory, will get to that later) and it looks like I had a fairly mellow year.

Didn't travel that much and only a couple of short trips (bahama's, ski-holiday, bike to berlin). So what have I been doing with the extra time I've had back home. Well it turns out not much, watched an awful lot of tvshows, played some games and have gotten into reading books. Halfway through the year I thought about quitting poker but looks like I'm not ready to give it up yet. It just gives so much freedom almost no other job can give.

I've always been fairly lazy about playing poker and putting in volume and am great at making plans to improve it but suck at following through with it.
For 2012 I'm already making lots of plans and am trying to find ways to force myself to keep them. It will most likely involve lots of (penalty-)bets. However I also hope to finally sell the house so I can travel more again.




I've started playing some StarCraft2 but I suck horribly at it sofar, probably because I've not played it that much yet and suck at using hotkeys. I like 2v2 the most sofar but can't play more then 2-3 games in a row without getting enough of it. It is weird because I enjoy watching matches of other players possibly more then playing myself. Then again I also enjoy watching Curtains video's about chess despite not having played more then 10 games in my entire life. If you want to play vs me sent me a PM with your SC2 info to add, but like I said I'm still absolutely terrible.



In other news, the weightloss is going terrible, mostly because I wasn't really that motivated to lose weight and combine that with me re-injuring my foot it just wasn't happening. I started to enjoy going on some walks listening to audiobooks (just started in Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series), however the weather has gone to shit so much I don't really wanna go out much at the moment. Will be alot better when I get to a warmer country. I also suck at eating healthy because I just like to snack alot and eat unhealthy dinners to much. I also have trouble coming up with healthy things to eat that I really like so maybe I'll have to force myself to eat things for a while to enjoy them.



One of the things I currently absolutely don't want to eat is fish, the smell of it makes me nauseous and the taste much more. But if you eat it daily for a couple of weeks you should start to like it (or least that's what I've been told), so I'm deciding if I want to learn to eat fish because I do feel that I'm missing out on alot of good food by not liking fish. If anybody has advice/tips for me on this let me know.



Like I said earlier I've been reading alot more then I used to (well in highschool I didn't read anything so not hard to start reading more than that). Because there are just so many books in the world nowadays if I don't like a book after 50 pages I will simply just quit it while before I made myself finish them and this system works really well for me. The last couple of books that I read and really enjoyed:
- The Name of the Wind & The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss (can't wait for the 3rd part), they are fantasy books but the writing style is so amazing that I just couldn't put them down (read the first book in 18 hours straight until I finished at 8 in the morning).
- The Lost City of Z , if you like reading about explorers you'll enjoy this book because it covers how the amazon was explored and contact was made with the tribes and what kind of hell living in the amazon is. It made me not wanna go to the amazon because I'm not a fan of bugs and well the amazon is a bug-infested place.

The book I'm currently reading is:


Sofar I'm really liking it (am about halfway through), my memory for this is terrible and this gives some interesting ideas on how to improve it. It also gives a decent amount of backstory on memory-competitions and the usage of memory before books could be used as an aid.


The last couple of night I've had kindof a crazy sleep schedule, the last 3 days I've had 6 blocks of sleep consisting of 2-6 hours per block. Not really a big fan of this yet, I feel a little bit more tired then usual (but all hours combined I've slept about 6 hours less then I normally would in those 3 days). So I will try to go back to just 'normal' hours.



I think I've covered most of the things I wanted to blog about but since my memory is not yet trained some things might have slipped, only time will tell.
Robin out

I accidentally deleted everything on my iphone including all numbers. That was not smart.
Time to start with a clean slate I guess...

Also had my computer crash which took me a while to get up and running again and it looks like for some reason my external HD also crashed and is unrecoverable which means I lose about 500 gigs of data incl vids/photos/docs. Sofar it only wants to format but hopefully I can get a way to recover that data.

I guess I've had better nights ;-) But then again sometimes it's nice to start fresh, now all I have to do is sell the house and start fresh again.

I can always fall back on this diagram:



Time to go sleep.
Robin out.

I've decided to get my eyes lasered, there seem to be a number of options but I got an offer on IntraLasik which seems to be the safest and have the best results.

For information on the difference between LASIK and IntraLASIK Click here

(in picture form)


I was pretty hesistant to get this done because my vision is not that terrible (I can fairly easily live without glasses but need them when sitting behind my computer (which I do like almost the entire day ). But with this method it seems that the risk is really minimal, hopefully run good at life :-).

Robin out.

Not really got any big news but figured that it was a while since my last post and just giving an update on things in life. I'm back to playing squash which is great, still have to take it somewhat easy to make sure I don't get the same injury again. It is also a lot harder when you've gained 30+ pounds to run smoothly across the court.

The weightloss is going okish, sofar lost about 3 pounds, but hopefully that will get better once I get to play more often and longer, still have trouble not eating to much unhealthy food but think I'm doing pretty decent and eating lots of fruit and not a lot of cookies/chips/chocolate.

In poker I'm having one of the worst months I've ever had so it's time for a break again, luckily I had a pretty decent month last month so I can take the hit but it sucks to see so much of your money go to other players. Well not much I can do about it anymore, just hope things will change and I can start winning again, pretty sure 5/10 is rigged though ;-)

Finally decided to drop some of the terrible shows I was still watching every week.. some of the new comedies where just becoming unwatchable... and I still watch alot of terrible shows (walking dead, terrable nova, HIMYM).

Must say that I haven't seen any movies in the last few months and it doesn't seem like there are many good new ones out, so if you have any new movie recommendations let me know!

Robin out.

Since I have been unable to play any sports in the last few months due to injury I've gained a substantial amount of weight. So now I will be trying to lose this weight again.

Starting tomorrow back to eating healthy and playing sports again! So hopefully I'll be able to lose about 50 pounds in 6 months, we'll see how it goes since I'm a sucker for unhealthy easy food.

In poker related news, I managed to actually win the bet from last month and play 100K hands, it was definately tougher then I expected and because I only play 6-8 tables it took me a total of 180 hours. What motivated me the most was that I didn't want to lose the bets I made (Even though they were not for alot of mone). I started of running terrible but luckily it did turn around a little at the end!

It also motivated me to keep on playing higher volume then before (but definately not this much), so it turned out pretty great.

In house-related news things are still terrible, there has been absolutely no interest despite the low price and it doesn't look like it will change soon so I'm postponing all my travelplans till I sell the house which will unfortunately take longer then I hoped but I'm fairly flexibel so it's not a big problem.

Now it's time to relax a bit and watch some tv-shows, read some books and possibly play some poker...
Robin out.