This month most of my favorite tvshows have started again so I've got a pretty busy schedule watching tvshows:

Monday:
- Breaking Bad (sick awesome season, can't believe how good this is atm)
- Amazing race (well, just another season, nothing special I think)
- Family guy (we'll see if I keep watching this cuz last season was not that great)
- Dexter (first episode already leaked)

Tuesday:
- How I met your Mother (started of pretty good after a very bad last season)
- 2 Broke girls (new comedy that is absolutely terrible and I will probably quit soon)
- Terra Nova (apparently $20M cost for the premiere, and it wasn't even that good.. but will keep watching)
- 2.5 Men (ashton kutchers character sucks pretty much ass.. not sure I will keep watching)
- Alphas (new version of Heroes, but looks that it is better then heroes)

Wednesday:
- New Girl (pretty meh new comedy but possibly has potential)

Thursday:
- Survivor (off to a weak start, still hate redemption part that they introduced)
- Happy Endings (first season was pretty solid, think this will also be good this year)
- Up All night (another new comedy, sofar pretty terrible imo but will give it another shot)
- Modern Family (first ep was weak, 2nd ok, and 3rd was pretty strong again like it used to be)
- Suborgatory (new comedy, first ep was decent, will keep watching for now)
- Naruto (currently in fillers so skipping until it gets back to the manga story)

Friday:
- Big Bang theory (looks to be decent again this year)
- Vampire diaries (still better then True blood but that's not saying much anymore)
- Parks and Recreation (pretty good, will def keep watching)
- How to be a gentlemen (another new comedy, wasn't very impressed but has Johnny Drama)
- Whitney (yet another new comedy, can't say that I like it but will prob keep watching until I hate it)
- It's always sunny in philadelphia (idk, I just don't laugh at it much anymore, will for sure keep watching this until they end the show but really hope they can step it up again. Feels like they're trying to hard now)
- The office (suprisingly decent without michael scott)
- Jersey Shore (terrible as always but will watch until they stop showing)
- Community (not the strongest opening eps but still very good)

Saturday:
- Fringe (didn't start this season yet but will prob catch up soon)


I've also downloaded Mad Men season 1-4 and plan to watch those soon.
That's all for the tvshows atm
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Since I'm still not allowed to play any sports for a little more then a month I've decided to try and put the most volume in pokerwise ever. I've never played more then 60K hands and usually I am happy when I play half that amount in a month but am going for a 100K hand-month in october (on which I have a couple of friendly sidebets on to help and motivate myself).

I have no idea how it will be to actually play that much poker but it is definately in the line of me taking the game more serious again.

My wallet has also been replaced by a secrid-cardholder + moneyclip:


Sofar I'm not really sure what I think about this but I do really like that I no longer have a giant wallet stuck in one of my pockets...

Robin out.

Blog-reading Music
I'm slowly trying to get back to playing some poker again. Things didn't really start of great this month but hopefully I can finish the month on the positive side of the $0 line!

I came across a really great 2+2 post about life and poker ( link ).
I recommend that even though it is somewhat long, both for pokerplayers but also non-pokerplayers. If you only want to read one chapter read the one called: 'Success"

Some great quotes from it that I've post-it'd on my computer:

- Phil Galfond

- Tommy Angelo

- crashwhips

It really helps me to look at this daily and make sure I don't forget it when I'm playing poker.


In the rest of my life not much is happening except that I have a stupid foot injury which resulted in me not being able to play squash/bike for 3 months. I'm trying to avoid getting fatter at the moment which is going good on some days and not so good on others.

Went to a wedding a couple weeks back wearing a suit for the first time in my life:

(This pic should be a reference to It's always sunny ;-))


Last week I went to visit the newborn twins of my nephew:



Even though they were really cute and it was great to see them, they made me realise that I'm definately not yet ready to start having some kids

Also started rewatching BSG and even though the series is great it annoys me to no end that at the beginning of the episode there is a quick-preview of what is going to happen that episode... I mean, I'm already watching this episode, no need to spoil what is going to happen!

Also been watching some other series like breaking bad (so far pretty solid), curb (amazing season although yesterdays ep was not that great), entourage (waiting for this show to finally finish :x), Futurama (hmmm hit or mis sofar for me), Louie CK (same as Futurama).
Can't wait for next month to roll around and give me back some of my favorite tv-shows!

I guess this was just a little bit of a rambling blog.... they can't be all winners.
Robin out.

A month ago I decided to buy a bike to travel with. After talking with my dad who had done multiple long trips already we decided to bike together to Berlin. I had never been to Berlin and it was going to be over relatively flat terrain so it seemed like a pretty good first trip.

Our trip was part of the R1-route that goes from Calais to St. Petersburg. We did the white part:


In total it was 1150km (715miles) and we ended up taking the train back from Berlin after spending some time in Berlin to explore the city/musea/etc.


There were some setbacks, the roads weren't always that good (which gave my dad a total of 4 flats and luckily I didn't have any) and the directions were sometimes very hard to find and we probably did about 50-100km extra by riding in the wrong directions. We also didn't have the greatest weather which is pretty sucky when you're on your bike all day long. We had to spend some days just waiting for the rain to stop which just gets kindof boring. Luckily I had my new Kindle with me and ended up reading a decent amount:

- Hitchhikers guide 1,2,3,4,5 where the first 3 parts are realy good and the 4th is still decent but the 5th is pretty bad. If you've never read it and like sci-fi it's definately recommended even though it has been written in the 1970's. Which in itself is pretty amazing.
- Lies My Teacher Told Me ; A book about american history and what lies are currently taught in high-schools. Fun to read although I imagine even better if you're an american. The kindle edition had alot of errors which made it annoying to read but the content was great!
- The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements : Very interesting book about the discovery of most of the elements and lots of very interesting stories behind them. If you like to know a little bit more about what everything is made of and how we manipulate atoms/molecules this is definately a very good read.


Now to the trip itself. Because of bad weather predictions we postponed our trip by two days and started off on a fairly decent day, about 200 meters before we got to the campground it started pouring rain and we just avoided getting totally soaked.
This is our first day still in the Netherlands, my dad leading the way:


Because of the bad weather we ended up camping half the time and staying in hotels/pensions the other half because it is no fun to go camping in the rain.
Departing on the 3rd day expecting some rain during the day


And as expected the rain came, luckily we found a bus-stop to hide out at.


One of the many reasons of this trip was also to lose some weight (which didn't really happen that much but you can see that it's still needed ;-) Most of the days the sky looked like this. We did have one day of sunshine which was great.


Hitting the 1000km mark:


And then finally ariving in berlin:



I must say that the bad weather didn't really help this trip but overall it was pretty good. I'm not really sure what kindof trips I want to do in the future but think that on a trip like this it's great if you can stay in pensions instead of a tent because after a day of sitting on your bike it's good to have some comfort to relax and get ready for the next day.

When we got to berlin we met up with some of my dad's friends which was nice and we explored a decent amount of berlin, like going to a piece of the wall that's still standing:

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe


And also lots of other things like Checkpoint Charlie, The Berlin museum and a tour of a Stasi prison which was pretty interesting.

In our trip through germany we kept coming across icecream called 'spagettie-eis', before we left I decided I had to try it and it was actually pretty good:



And sofar my TR of biking to berlin. It looks like I'm going to start playing some more poker again so we'll see how that goes .

Robin out.

About 10 days ago my computer broke down and today I finally have a (new) working computer again. It's better, faster and am happy to be back online again. I also managed to find an old harddisk with data/pics/docs from 2004-2006 which is lots of fun to go through.

Last week I also bought a touring-bycicle (looks alot like this):


It's the first time I've bought a good bike and I'm very happy with it. It does take some getting use to and already managed to hurt myself a little because I forgot that my feet where stuck to the pedals when I was making a turn. Hopefully I'll get back in shape because I'm not really playing squash very often due to a foot-injury. I really need to lose like 20 pounds. Current plans are to leave in about 10 days and cycle through Europe, starting with going to Berlin. Depending on how that goes I'll make more plans.


Last week I also read 'Fall of Giants' which is pretty good and I can't wait for the next part.


The book follows 5 families from different countries (welsh, english, russian, german, US) from 1913 through 1919 and how they are affected by WW1. It also gives good insight in how WW1 exactly happened and why it lasted so long. Def recommended!

Also started playing Super Mario Galaxy 2, playing for about 2 days straight and looks like I'm getting near the end. I think it will be one of the last mario games I will play because mario just doesn't have the appeal it used to have. That is with videogames all together the case...

That's all for now..
Robin out.

The last few weeks I've spend my time watching movies, reading books, and thinking about what I want to do after the summer, I've not really figured that last part out but am enjoying the other things very much. Seen some bad and good movies, unfortunately nothing exceptional.

I finished the book from Congo a while back and thought it was pretty good (the book, not about what happened in Congo). It also makes me never ever want to go to Congo. And I doubt there are going to be many places in Africa where I do want to go.

What I want to talk about in this blog is another book though, Shantaram:



I would recommend this book to everyone, however I think that it's best suited for people who've traveled a little bit and have seen different cultures (not necessarily the indian culture). I find it hard to explain why I think this book is so good but it was one of the few books that actually 'grabbed me'. I never really understood when people said that a book grabbed them but now I see how that works. It is a very interesting story and even though parts of it are fictional it shows that lots of it is written from his own experiences in India.

Even though it's a 930 page novel there was not a single point in the book where I got bored/distracted. Almost always when I read a book I can't resist looking at the page number (which in itself might say something about me) but this was the first book where whenever I looked at what page I was at it suddenly was 50 pages further...

There are alot of discussions in the book about good/evil/religion/murder/etc which showed some views that I had not come across before and found very interesting but I need to reread the book (which I'm sure I will) before I want to make a 10-page blogpost about that.

Now to figure out what the next book is that I'm going to read... if anyone has thoughts on the following books let me know because the next book I'm going to read is one of these:

- The Corrections (Jonathan Franzen)
- American Gods (Neil Gaiman)
- The name of the Wind (Patrick Rothfuss)
- House of Leaves (Mark Z. Danielewski)

Robin out.

Some of you might already know this website but in case you don't there are some pretty interesting video's on there: http://www.khanacademy.org

I suggest definately watching the first 5 video's from the Cosmology & Astronomy ( First vid in that 'series' .) I think most of us already know how tiny we are in comparison to the universe but this will really blow your mind if you didn't know it yet.

I'm about 2/3's through reading this book:


I'm not sure there is an english translation for it yet but if there is I definately recommend it, some pretty crazy things going on there over a period of less then 150 years...

Robin out.

It has been on my mind for a while, quitting poker.
I've realised quite some time ago that I can't be playing this game for the rest of my life, mostly because I've started to dislike playing poker and it is not something that is going to make me rich unfortunately. The swings are simply brutal and I've never been a highvolume player to get through them easily. I really have to force myself to put in hands which is getting harder and harder. I have no longer any joy in playing or improving my game, which means that the end of poker for me is in sight.

The main reason that I haven't quit earlier is that I don't really know what else I want to do with my life, I still have no real clue about that, although I have some ideas for jobs I might find interesting but also have some different interests/ideas that include travel...

I am also undecided whether or not to go to vegas this year. There is not that much for me to do, I can't play online poker, I dislike live poker and think I can spend money better on other things. However I do love hanging out with everyone in Vegas so it's definately a tough decision on whether or not to go.

I definately need a very long break from poker, I do think I might get back to the game in a couple of years if I don't like any of my other options but right now I just don't see myself putting in any hands any time soon.

Thanks for reading,

Robin Out.

These last few months I've spend so much time doing absolutely nothing at all. It's crazy how easy I can waste a day doing nothing besides sitting behind my computer watching or rewatching things. Or just randomly listening to music while browsing 2+2 and other forums. I have not played much poker this year either, partly because I've been having a terrible run the last 3 months and have not put much time in on the tables because of it.

I think it's fine to go through a period like that for a while but there has to be a point where you have to snap out of it and start living life again. I have been thinking about what I want to do in my life, and have not really found what it is yet but it does start with me traveling and I will try to get back into the mindset of the last years where I play poker with the goal to travel instead of just coasting through the months.

Starting from tomorrow the maximum amount of time I'm allowed to waste doing absolutely nothing behind my pc is reduced to 2 hours (which will probably seem insane to most people). If I like it then I will scale it back to 1 hour after that. (Currenly I think I average about 5-8 hours of nothingness).

I have not really thought about what I want to do with all my new free time but I want to spend more time outside, especially now that the weather is getting nicer again. Perhaps I'll start spending some time in the kitchen instead of ordering/ eating instant food. It's not like I don't have enough time for it.

It is important that I do find something to do with all this new free time because it is so easy to go back to grinding the interwebz.

Also about taking the cruise to the US, it looks like I could not have picked a worse time to want to take a cruise because they do not go from Europe to the US in the timeframe I want to go.

I will try to post some of the usefull things I'm doing with my time in future blogs.
Thanks for reading.

Robin out.

I've barely played any poker this year, have no interest/motivation for it at the moment, this month I've not even played 500 hands yet. I'm not sure if I'm just to bored with the game or that because I'm downswinging I just have no motivation to play. I do have some plans to get my interest back into the game because I just got addicted to the life-style it provides. I do know that some day I will quit the game but hopefully that won't be anytime soon.

So what have I been doing? I've been playing on the piano a little every day and am able to play basic songs and am starting to get a little better at it but not close to what I would call good. It just takes lots of time and practice to be really good at it but I'm happy that I can play songs I enjoy listening to when I play them. It is good to have something to do when I get bored from looking at my computer screen.

I've been playing lots of Squash lately also and am getting a little better at it again I did sprain my ankle a little yesterday but nothing some rest can't fix. I've also been reading a decent amount, the last book I finished was:


Basically it was the sequel of: The power of One which I read last year and really enjoyed.
This book was also a good read (although not as good as The Power of One) and plays mostly in South Africa, which also made me read a little bit more into south africa and I think this world map explains it best:



Whenever I start looking at maps of the world I always get travel-fever and start thinking of where I want to go, however I'm very very undecisive about all of this (maybe because I've realised that life is changing around me and I'm not staying 25 forever (Turning 26 was the first clue)). So I think that before vegas I will just stay at home and get some things sorted here.

This year I was thinking about not flying to vegas but doing something different, and that is taking a cruise to the US, I've never been on a cruise and always wanted to see what it is like and it seems like a good opportunity to do it.

My favorite route to take would be the 'Viking route'


However I'm not sure that route is available so early in the year. It seems like an interesting way to get to the states and maybe give me some time without internet around to just enjoy life and think what I want to do.

I do have to find someone crazy enough to go with me (or maybe multiple people) because it doesn't look like they have 1 person rooms and I don't plan to pay double for this trip just to do it on my own.
So please contact me if you would like to hop along for the ride.

Last thing I wanted to talk about was

I just finished watching it and found it pretty interesting but mostly like the way the movie was made, just one room, 2 great actors and 90 minutes of conversation.


Robin out.

If you've never heard of Epic Meal Time you should check it out HERE .

This sunday for the SM 5 year anniversary we decided to make our own EMT, it ended up being just lots and lots of bacon (1kg) and lots of meat (2kg).
Here are some before and after pics,

From top to bottom it is:
- Bacon Layer
- Meat Layer
- Cheese Layer
- Bacon Layer
- Veggie Layer (onions/peppers/etc)
- Meat Layer
- Cheese Layer
- Bacon Layer
- Meat Layer
- Bacon Layer










After pics:




We also made Oreoshakes which were also very very good...
All in all the meal was pretty good but a bit to salty so for next time we've learned what we kindof already knew that with this much bacon you don't really need any extra salt on the meat...

The SM went okish, I ended up mincashing but wasn't playing my A-game because I was pretty tired from the night before....


I've also decided that I need to lose some weight again and I started today with eating a little bit more healthy (I'm afraid not any EMT for me soon) and playing squash 5-6 times a week.

Last Wednesday I got my wisdom tooth removed in the hospital which really sucked and still hasn't fully healed yet but doesn't hurt much any more now.

I also need to start playing poker again because for March I've played a grand total of 200 hand where I managed to lose about 1,5K so it's time to make this a winning month again after februari ended pretty terrible...


Robin out.