g'day mates



after a 13.5 hour flight, we made a perfect touch down to sydney australia. . if it weren't for the long plane flight, I would think I was in San Francisco. pretty much no difference in how things look, feel and smell, other than people driving on the wrong side of the street.



i haven't had the opportunity to see beyond the walking distance outside of our hotel, but luckily we are right where the action is. so i've already been to darling harbor twice, and china town twice. we'll be meeting up with ray's friend here who has a car to see things further outside our walking distance. i'll also have more time to myself since ray will have to go work, and i'll just have time to kill durnig that time. i think i will take the public transportation system (which is supposed to be awesome) to do some sightseeing and pop off some nice pics i can post on jusspress.



the seafood is supposed to be exceptional here. i've only got the chance to sample some of it, but hopefully i'll be able to get some good seafood for dinner tonight. i've made a choice to try something new and different that i can't get anywhere else instead of ordering what I always order every time I go out to eat in SD.



sydney is 17 hours ahead of PST, so even though we took off on friday 1pm, we arrived here in sydney time, saturday 8:30 pm. what is interesting is that our flight back to san diego will be on sunday aruond 10:00am (sydney time), and we'll be arrivnig in sunday 7:30am (san diego time). so in a sense, we are traveling back in time.



ray did bring his laptop, but forgot his gsm sim card, so the earilest we'll be able to get our internet at the hotel room is in about a day from now. when he does i'll post up pictures on jusspress and put up enteries when i have the luxury of not being in a internet cafe.

Australia here I come!



ray told me he was flying to australia tomorrow for business, and looking at my options, it sounded really appealing, especially for the price.  so all I needed to buy were the plane tickets.  and found an incredible deal that I couldn't pass up for $759 total round trip.  I've checked with my parents, my boss, got my tickets, and visa.  now I'm good to go!  I'll be leaving SD tonight to go to my parent's place.  My dad will be driving me to LAX tomorrow morning.



Leaving LAX tomorrow (July 30) at 1PM, and coming back on Aug 8 7:10AM back to LAX. 



I'll be staying at Avillion. 

My flight to Sydney is on Qantas Airlines Flight #8 at Terminal 4.

My arrival back to LAX is on Qantas Airlines Flight #107 at Terminal 4.



Unfortunately neither my cell phone nor blackberry will be in service down under.  if i do have access to the internet, i'll try to make daily posts here and jusspress.

whoops...



so on friday night, i decided to pick up my car and head to casey's place.  eric right behind me with his modified eclipse turbo, i figured i'd show him what my unmodified honda accord can or can't do.  so getting on the 5 north, I'm at about maybe 85-90 mph.  i've taken it at about 80-85 before with some good tread on my tires with just a little bit of squeal.  this time, my front tires didn't have much tread left, and also having someone right behind me kinda made me nervous, and that lead me braking to the apex of the curve where it eventually lost traction.  i slid mostly sideways...probably turned almost 180 degrees.  while i was spinning, i noticed that it was spinning in a good direction and i was just hoping not to end upside down or some bad position where i would need a tow.  i also thought if i lost traction this correctly, i probably didn't have much grip to correct anyways.   it was a semi narrow onramp to where if i would have corrected, there was a good chance that my car would have shot forward right to the guard rail causing more than just scuffs on the bumper which was what i ended up with.  i was lucky that no one else was in the area to take that busy onramp for those few moments when i was skidding and when i had to turn my car around on the onramp (i hit my rear bumper flush on the guard rail in the process).



while arriving to casey's house, i noticed there was some hissing noise every time front left tire rotated 360 degrees.  upon a brief inspection, i thought it was just some dry leaves that got embedded between my tire and the rim.  upon close inspection, it appeared to be a few rocks embedded pretty nicely between the tires and the rim and that's what was causing the air to leak out of my tires.  the next morning, i got the tire remounted on my tire, but later that night, i noticed that the hissing noise was still there, just much more faint.  next morning, my tire pressure had dropped about 15 psi, so i finally decided its time to get new tires.  i got the yokohama es 100's this time to replace my front two tires that were bridgestone potenza  re730's.  the bridgestores were really awesome tires.  made my car about 10 times more fun to drive with some amazing grip and added nimbleness.  my initial impression of the es 100's were they felt noticably less nimble (which was to be expected), but it might have been because the tire place had underinflated my tires.  i'll have to adjust my tire pressure, take some corners agressively (but gradually) and see how it holds up.  hopefully its just a figment of my imagination.  as long as its more like the potenza and less like the michelin energy stock tires i'll be happy.

what is it about the olympics?

 

is it about being a patriot to our country, supporting our athletes, whether we win or lose?  to join in announcing to the world, that our country does it the best and our nurturing democratic enviornment makes these accomplishments possible?

is it about identifying and relating ourselves to the athletes in our own drive for perfection and being the world's best?

or is it idolization of these athletes because they are closest thing to superman/woman that we got?

 

maybe its all of those things combined.  whenever i think about the olympics, i get a rush of adrenaline.  we'll be witnessing the creme of the crop, who defy what we've known to be possible.  athlethes who have sacrificed their whole lives to compete for this one event to accomplish their life's goal and to make our country proud.  this is a desire we all have inside of us.  at least for the people who watch the olympics, this is true.

 

watching the olympics this year will be quite a different experience because of people with tivos.  i'll never have to miss a minute of an event because i'm at work, a delayed start of an event, or hours of annoying commericials.

how the pros play poker tournaments



i have been playing close attention to the professional poker players play on these freeroll tournaments. what you don't get to see watching them on TV is how they play from the beginning to the final table. their style of play is completely different from what you get to see on TV and how they play to make it to the final table.



the given is that the pros are good at are reading people and calculating odds. with that in mind their game is the weakest in the early stages of the competition. when you play against loose callers that call with A6, or people that call big raises with 36 off suit because they didn't want to give up their blind, you don't know what cards to expect from these players when you don't make a pair with your AK. its hard to fold AK when the board is 7 2 3, and someone is raises all in representing 2 pair when you've invested 35% of your chips before the flop.



a good percentage of people that get eliminated are people who place too much value in hands like AK when there are too many loose callers early on in the tournament.



the pros know that the majority of loose callers are are weeded out when the blinds are still low. so what the pros do is limp in with hands like AK, and fold to even small raises when they don't make anything on the flop. there's no need to risk elimination so early on in the tourney with Ace high because you're pot comitted when you know you can out play and out read players when the blinds are much higher and people are folding before the flop appropriately. if they choose to play hands like KK or QQ, they'll make very strong bet that even the loose players wont call and steal the blinds without confrontation. if anyone calls, they know what they are up against. they also limp in with hands like small pocket pairs and Ax suited hoping to make a set or a nut flush on the flop. even if you have 75% chance of winning, there's no need to play every one of those hands all in because you will lose one out of 4. you should only face the decision of elimination as least amount of times as possible.



so with style of tight play, you can pretty much fold your way up to the top 20 percent. hopefully you caught some cards and even though you are not one of the top 10 chip leaders, you should have enough to be able to start playing your A game (much different than the playing style early on) with your reading abilities when people are folding junk and your opponents cards are more readable. even if you don't play a single hand, the pros don't seem to worry at all. they are far better off than the people who got eliminated, and they know how to play with a short stack.

make 7 up yours



remember orlando jones had this great campaign "make 7 up yours"? not sure why it worked but it sure boosted sales of 7 up (kinda like jack for jack in the box). and then orlando jones wanted more money after his contract was up. 7 up execs figured, they might as well get another black guy because what's the difference? so one commerical later with the new guy, sales dip, and we never hear from them again.