There is conjecture on life fish about what it actually is. I think it is a horse as demonstrated by this mspaint. ZOOM OUT to see it clearly.

I know how much you all enjoyed my last video of myself jumping into a pool. I now go from the career of film star to film director…bringing you 2 episodes of my initial series “Candid Naomi”.

Episode 1 -

After adjusting the camera contrast settings to match the colour scheme of the room, I film Naomi sitting down for about 20 seconds before she lunges at the phone.

Naomi screams “ITS A VIDEO!!” at the end.

Episode 2 -

This episode was taken about 5 minutes after episode one. I am using my phone (naomi confiscated hers back) which is why its better quality. In this episode naomi does a bit of headbanging, followed by a short clip of Colleen and Mog sitting on the lounge.

At the end I am about to say “naomi you got 20 seconds to do something funny”. Then she hit me and turned the phone off.

On wednesday night just before we left for Macau, I played as a guest in Andys indoor cricket  team “Agent Orange”. I was a little nervous before the game as I havnt played any form of cricket for a while, but a net session the day before had given me at least a little bit of preparation.

We fielded first and kept the other team to 56, which is apparently a pretty low score. Agent Orange got off to a horrible start when the other team’s opening bowler took a hat-trick straight up and we were -20 after 3 balls. after 8 overs we had 30 on the board, leaving Andy and myself to score 27 off the last 4 overs. The pressure was on (for me at least), but thankfully we managed to bat out the last 4 overs without losing a single wicket and putting on a partnership of 54 (Andy 37, Rohan 17) to get Agent Orange home by 28 runs.

A fortnight or so ago, Jake, my friend from work invited me to join his band “Something like this”. I came along to a practice and got a grasp on most of their songs. I am really excited to be part of it, as joining a band is something I have wanted to do for ages, but just had never got around to. Up until now I have been purely a bedroom guitarist, so its great to play with some other people and put those years of lessons to good use.

The style of music played is rock (both soft and heavy) and I have really been enjoying it. Its been a challenge to learn all the setlists but im getting there. The Guys have played gig’s at ojo’s cafe and bar in Tuggeranong, and i think we will be looking to play there again as well as some other venues around Canberra which will be advertised on this blog and the band website below.

The lineup is..

Jake - Guitar/Bass
Rohan - Guitar/Bass
Don - Keyboard/Vocals
Simon - Guitar/Vocals
Rob - Drums

Jake and Don are both my friends from work, Simon and Rob I have just recently met at practices.
band website - www.somethinglikethis.com.au
facebook group - http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Something-Like-This/52965698834?ref=ts

yep.

Sorry for the lack of updates. I lost my username/password and it took me a fortnight to figure out how to get it back.

On boxing day I headed down to Melbourne to stay at Andy’s and go to the cricket. The first 2 days of the cricket were great, but the 3rd day was possibly the worst day ever, we arrived with South Africa at around 8/250 and we had hoped to pick up a few wickets and then get to watch Australia bat. We even made a couple of bets  on how many the openers would make. Unforunately it didnt work out as we planned, and we watched south africa get to 450 (or so) before losing their last 2 wickets. At the end of the day we were pretty sick of cricket and didnt attend the last 2 days.

Apart from the cricket we spent most of the time playing poker and  fifa 09, and going to the gym. Also Andy hosted a poker tournament for his 23rd birthday on the 30th which was great, and then we attended his mate Gordon’s new years eve pool party the next night which was fantastic. It was great to sit in the pool/spa drinking for most of the night. If anyone has seen my sunglasses and beach towel I left there let me know.

Last couple of days I have pretty much finished building all my furniture. Only had 1 drama, where I was struggling to put a really weird bit of the bed together. They sent out a guy and it was fixed in 20 minutes. Turned out I just wasnt banging the cams in hard enough, oops. All in all im very pleased with the work I have done, and im 90% finished buying furniture etc for the house in the short term at least. Im feeling very happy and settled in my new place now.

Telstra and TPG have been difficult and uncooperative in my attempting to get ADSL2+ hooked up. Telstra took 5 days to activate the phone line, and now TPG are saying it will be another 5 days before the internet is hooked up. Urgh. Im currently writing this on beagle dial up. Go beagle! As a result of my lack of broadband internet Andy has delayed his trip to canberra until Jan.

I didnt have the bright idea of using my dial up account until yesterday, So I had gone a grand total of 7 days without playing 1 hand of poker! I played my first session for a week yesterday, just playing 6 tables instead of the usual 14-16 because dial up cant handle that much. I felt really good and my mind was alert. I think it was a combination of the break, doing some recent hand analysis, and playing less tables - resulting in me actually thinking through my hands rather than just mindlessly grinding. I liked it, and I hardly made a mistake.

I played 2 sessions yesterday and 2 today, and I have hardly lost a hand (well, any big hands). I have played well and have avoided coolers. Today I decided to use up my 55k player points which I have accumulated over the last few months. I had enough for 16 $33 tournament entry tickets and 1 $22 tournament entry ticket. I decided to take the route of least variance and play nothing but the double or nothing single table tourneys (10 people enter, 5 losers get nothing, 5 winners double their money). I ran insanely good - I won 14 and only lost 3, shipping $820 in about 2 hours. All this just from player points! As much as people (and myself at times) trash-talk ongame/tower, they do have a pretty great bonus system.

I have decided for the new year I will stick with ongame for the nighttime games, and play full tilt in the afternoons when there are no ongame tables running. I am pretty confident this will work out and I should be able to get in at least 50k hands per month doing this, while still having time for fitness stuff and uni.

Reflecting on the year, I have by far exceeded all my poker related goals for the 12 months. Ive made over double what I had hoped to, mainly due to improving at a reasonable rate thanks to living and breathing poker every day for almost a month earlier this year in vegas. I have made far more from poker this year than I have from my real job, despite only playing it for roughly a quarter of the hours. When looking at the numbers it makes me feel like im wasting my time at work, as im effectively losing money by turning up. Its somewhat frustrating, but I guess its beneficial for my social life. I hope in 09 I can be as dedicated as I am now to poker and I am semi-confident I will be able to crack 6 figures next year.

The next couple of days I have to buy christmas presents, and do some more little things around the house, and then head to melbourne for lots of poker with andy + boxing day test cricket. Cant wait!

My home loan finally got approved and I was able to exchange on my house last week. The last 4 days of my life have consisted of nothing except moving furniture and organising stuff for the new place. Its been a long week. Im about 90% done with the major things, I only have little things left to buy that arnt absolutely necessary right now.

Putting together my fantastic furniture packages was brutal, im pretty useless at everything practical, and its been a huge learning experience. Have managed to put together all my stuff without too many disasters though which im happy with.

Havnt played much poker at all this month, as I have just been busy moving and havnt had the internet at my new place. Am looking forward to the end of this week, I will have most of the furniture set up and internet connected, and Andy is coming up for 3 days. We are planning to play poker most of the day, and do some poker hand/position analysis, and then hit the gym a few times. Should be good.

I went to Big splash the other day with Morgan and his girlfriend Naomi, and it was awesome. Big Splash is an outdoor water centre with 2 big slides and some short, “speed” slides. We had awesome weather, and it was great fun. It was the first time I had been on a water slide in 5+ years, and I had forgotten how fun it was. Thanks for the invite Morgs.

I have been pretty lazy with setting goals lately, so determined to finish off the year well. I will be moving into my new house around the middle of the month, so im juggling doing the admin for that, keeping up with uni work, and getting in some hands. It looks like Andy will be coming up later in the month so looking forward to having a gym partner and to analyse hands with.

Poker
Play 70,000+ hands
Play 10,000+ hands at 400nl
clear at least $4000 in bonuses
Actively review sessions and hands
Open an Ipoker account
Life
Move into new house/get roommates sorted
Write letter to financial services and banking ombudsman
Finish Eric Clapton autobiography
Finish my tax return
Fix up blog links/categories, get more sites on my blogroll.
Correct my sleeping pattern (dont stay up later than 4am, get up earlier than 1pm)
Fitness
Run 3x week
gym 4x week
eat regularly and properly
stop sleeping through breakfast
get 8 reps of 40kg dumbells on flat bench. (been struggling with this for months!)

Pokers - October was a horrible month for me, where my hourly rate had basically been halved from what it had been the previous 4 months. Ive spoken to a few of the other regulars and they all agree that the 200nl FR games have gotten harder. The bad regulars have suddenly become decent, and every second hand gets 3bet from the blinds. Its very frustrating and im sure it has contributed to my running worse, and winning less, than usual.

November has been better, but still nowhere near as good as a few months ago. Ive also had to withdraw large amounts for my imminent house purchase. So ive been playing ok, but not strictly sticking to the standard bankroll requirements, and not winning at a great rate. This I can definetly put down to the general better standard of play recently, but possibly also to the fact that recently I have gone through some very stressful periods lately, due to some significant lifestyle changes and battling with trying to do the conveyancing on my house. I cant complain about everything though, the falling AUD has been very very helpful to me. Its great withdrawing a certain amount of money, and then finding a bonus 40% when i visit the ATM.

Further info on my house - Although my offer was accepted over 4 weeks ago, its basically gone nowhere thanks to the National Australia Bank (NAB). They take the cake for the most incompetent organisation I have ever dealt with. After stuffing me around for over a month and making me redo an application because of their mistake, they declined my loan because apparently I couldnt service it. This is absolutely rediculous, as I submitted statements to them from my roomates detailing that I will recieving $420 a week in rent, and that the repayments are only around $550 per week. Apparently I cant afford $130 per week? So I have had to put the loan through my mortgage broker under a different structure, so it should be all good now. Anyway enough about that, all I can say is to anyone considering getting a loan, an account, a credit card, a mortgage, or anything from a bank, avoid NAB like theplague. Actually dont avoid them, throw a brick through the nearest branches window, and then go to another bank.

The good thing to come out of this is I have negotiated another deal with the Vendor, which is basically if settlement is delayed until after the holiday period, I will move in on the 16th of decemeber and simply pay him rent until the settlement day. This works for both of us as I will get to get all my crap moved in, and he will have his interest covered over christmas. Am really looking forward to it, have had many offers from friends and relatives wanting to give me furniture. I will probably get a package deal from fantastic furniture (they have 13 peice packages for around $2000, pretty good) and pretty much try and accumulate the rest.

End of year plans - Ive got a few more rounds at work, then I should be pretty busy with house crap, then I will be heading to Melbourne which will be awesome, will be going to the boxing day test for the 3rd year running and will also be up for some intense poker analysis with Andy. From there I will be going to the south coast for new years celebrations and then back to work on the 7th of january.

Roh