Wednesday, 14 September 2011
Sunday, 11 September 2011
Kaposvar & Lake Balaton: Part 2
The car ride to the house we were staying in a little village called Safold was an ordeal, I really wasn't coping with my Palinka induced hangover very well. Thankfully after we arrived and assigned beds someone produced a 1.25litre bottle of homemade Palinka to get the day going, at 11am, no big deal. I knew that this was going to be a very interesting weekend, not because the entire group was doing shots before midday, nor because I heard one of the guys exclaim that it was his mission to make sure that everyone was drunk before 1, but the fact that the English spoken so far was almost zero, (apart from Biga translating some jokes for me) mostly for my benefit and quite stilted.
For lunch we went to a pub in some close by town where was proceeded to drink them out of Palinka and I was introduced to Fletch, which is just wine and soda but seemed to be a more common drink to order than even beer. After inhaling lunch and more shots than I care to remember I was pretty gone but the amount of English being spoken was increasing exponentially with every drink so I was determined to push the limits.
After getting back Biga informed me that I would need my walking shoes, "Ah what? we are all drunk." Apparently we were going for a bush walk to go check out the ruins of some old monastery. Thankfully the walk was another drinking exercise and we formed two teams of four. Every fire hydrant or semi-significant landmark was designated as a checkpoint at which everyone had to have a good drink out of the large bottles we were carrying that were filled with Fletch. This kept the buzz and banter going the whole way to the ruins. The ruins seemed nice though I was pretty fucked so I don't remember a whole bunch about it except the walk home without alcohol was way longer than the walk there.
When we got home more fletch was distributed and the cooking began. Over a few hours they cooked Goulash in a camping pot over a small fire. The goulash was the best I have ever tasted and along with the wine the day was a tremendous success and an amazing welcome to Hungary.
For lunch we went to a pub in some close by town where was proceeded to drink them out of Palinka and I was introduced to Fletch, which is just wine and soda but seemed to be a more common drink to order than even beer. After inhaling lunch and more shots than I care to remember I was pretty gone but the amount of English being spoken was increasing exponentially with every drink so I was determined to push the limits.
After getting back Biga informed me that I would need my walking shoes, "Ah what? we are all drunk." Apparently we were going for a bush walk to go check out the ruins of some old monastery. Thankfully the walk was another drinking exercise and we formed two teams of four. Every fire hydrant or semi-significant landmark was designated as a checkpoint at which everyone had to have a good drink out of the large bottles we were carrying that were filled with Fletch. This kept the buzz and banter going the whole way to the ruins. The ruins seemed nice though I was pretty fucked so I don't remember a whole bunch about it except the walk home without alcohol was way longer than the walk there.
When we got home more fletch was distributed and the cooking began. Over a few hours they cooked Goulash in a camping pot over a small fire. The goulash was the best I have ever tasted and along with the wine the day was a tremendous success and an amazing welcome to Hungary.
Thursday, 8 September 2011
Gay Paris & The Beards
I will say that Sydney is really starting to grow on me. Although it is super busy, quite large and rather impersonal the variety that it offers week to week is pretty amazing. Over the 6months that I've actually been in the city and not travelling I've been to only a handful of places more than once. Its kind of like being in a new city every weekend, which I guess fits in with my holiday lifestyle. Over the last few weekends I've been dragged along to a few fun things, which will appear in the next couple of blogs inbetween the regulars and my slowly getting the details of my last trip "down on paper"
Gay Paris & The Beards
We went for a quick visit to the newly re-opened Abercrombie before heading to the Annandale for a gig, which The Beards were headlining. I had never heard of the beards before but their supporting act Gay Paris I had seen inadvertently earlier this year and loved. Gay Paris are a band that I struggle to put into a genre, they would be something like punkabilly except for the low, gutteral vocals of the lead singer which are very hardcore crossed with death metal. Whatever they are they are definitely refreshing and put on a great show which I would recommend that anyone with a punk/hardcore background to go and see. As you can see from their bad pic there was a reason why they were supporting The Beards.
The Beards were really odd. They seem to be a parody band that somehow gained a solid following and became serious. Every song is about how you should have a beard, why beards are better than not having a beard or why you should consider sleeping with someone with a beard. Kinda cool and fun to start with but also seems super lame at the tail end of an hour and a half set. I dunno not my thing I guess.
Accompanied with seeing a girl that I seem to only run into once every couple of years, the night was great.
Gay Paris & The Beards
We went for a quick visit to the newly re-opened Abercrombie before heading to the Annandale for a gig, which The Beards were headlining. I had never heard of the beards before but their supporting act Gay Paris I had seen inadvertently earlier this year and loved. Gay Paris are a band that I struggle to put into a genre, they would be something like punkabilly except for the low, gutteral vocals of the lead singer which are very hardcore crossed with death metal. Whatever they are they are definitely refreshing and put on a great show which I would recommend that anyone with a punk/hardcore background to go and see. As you can see from their bad pic there was a reason why they were supporting The Beards.
The Beards were really odd. They seem to be a parody band that somehow gained a solid following and became serious. Every song is about how you should have a beard, why beards are better than not having a beard or why you should consider sleeping with someone with a beard. Kinda cool and fun to start with but also seems super lame at the tail end of an hour and a half set. I dunno not my thing I guess.
Accompanied with seeing a girl that I seem to only run into once every couple of years, the night was great.
Tuesday, 6 September 2011
Poker Update
This week has been quite on the online front. I've only played a few sessions and I think am about break even over them. Party Poker rejected my rake back for some reason that I don't understand, so as soon as I attain the next cash bonus I will be withdrawing my roll and moving to either IPoker or Stars. I really miss colour coding so Stars is looking really good at the moment.
Over the week I played 2 live tournaments. The first was a $330 from which I busted quite early but luckily the third day one was a repêchage so I was able to buy in again and give it another go. The 2nd time around I managed to get a far easier table draw off the bat and proceeded to play really well throughout the day to have double the average chip stack going into day 2. Day 2 I built my stack up quite well only to bluff it off terribly, and then do exactly the same thing again. I managed to hang around and come 27th for just over a min cash after being knocked out with AJ<A8 by Michael Ryan who finished 4th at the Aussie Millions earlier this year when I played many hours on his tables. Michael ended up finishing 3rd for another impressive score this year.
The 2nd tournament I played was the $1.1k "special". I have no idea why it was called a special tournament, but I'm guessing its because the buy-in is the largest of the series besides the main event. The field was rather small due to it being fathers day and because of that it was pretty much 100% regs. My table, which was the last to break before the final table, had 2 fish on it all day, though luckily the regs weren't that great. I managed to build up a pretty large chip stack early after making a few really large bluffs but after that I was never in any good spots and everyone around me kept picking up monsters forcing me to play pretty tight and sometimes make huge lay downs. The thing that kept me from tilting off chips is that in almost every hand where I made a big fold, people would show me their cards. The day was a complete grind and I never really had and chips, it looked very likely that I was going to bubble, thankfully some old dude went on monkey tilt on the button and put his chips in super bad enough times to lose.
The final table, which was held at 4pm the next day, was very breif for me. I went into it with a 52k stack at 2k/4k 500, giving me an M of 5.2 and the shortest stack at the table. I shoved very first hand, got folded to. Folded a few hands then the other short stack who was now shorter then me shoved his small blind into my big blind, I snap called with KT and it held up against QJ. I opened 2 hands in the next orbit and was 3b twice, both times I folded and was shown QQ. Then for my final hand the big stack on the button who had been opening very liberally from all positions opened into my big blind, I woke up with AJ and shoved, he snap called and tabled QQ. Just over a min cash again, gg me. Hopefully I will be able to run deeper in the Main Event over the coming weekend
Over the week I played 2 live tournaments. The first was a $330 from which I busted quite early but luckily the third day one was a repêchage so I was able to buy in again and give it another go. The 2nd time around I managed to get a far easier table draw off the bat and proceeded to play really well throughout the day to have double the average chip stack going into day 2. Day 2 I built my stack up quite well only to bluff it off terribly, and then do exactly the same thing again. I managed to hang around and come 27th for just over a min cash after being knocked out with AJ<A8 by Michael Ryan who finished 4th at the Aussie Millions earlier this year when I played many hours on his tables. Michael ended up finishing 3rd for another impressive score this year.
The 2nd tournament I played was the $1.1k "special". I have no idea why it was called a special tournament, but I'm guessing its because the buy-in is the largest of the series besides the main event. The field was rather small due to it being fathers day and because of that it was pretty much 100% regs. My table, which was the last to break before the final table, had 2 fish on it all day, though luckily the regs weren't that great. I managed to build up a pretty large chip stack early after making a few really large bluffs but after that I was never in any good spots and everyone around me kept picking up monsters forcing me to play pretty tight and sometimes make huge lay downs. The thing that kept me from tilting off chips is that in almost every hand where I made a big fold, people would show me their cards. The day was a complete grind and I never really had and chips, it looked very likely that I was going to bubble, thankfully some old dude went on monkey tilt on the button and put his chips in super bad enough times to lose.
The final table, which was held at 4pm the next day, was very breif for me. I went into it with a 52k stack at 2k/4k 500, giving me an M of 5.2 and the shortest stack at the table. I shoved very first hand, got folded to. Folded a few hands then the other short stack who was now shorter then me shoved his small blind into my big blind, I snap called with KT and it held up against QJ. I opened 2 hands in the next orbit and was 3b twice, both times I folded and was shown QQ. Then for my final hand the big stack on the button who had been opening very liberally from all positions opened into my big blind, I woke up with AJ and shoved, he snap called and tabled QQ. Just over a min cash again, gg me. Hopefully I will be able to run deeper in the Main Event over the coming weekend
Monday, 5 September 2011
Saturday, 3 September 2011
Friday, 2 September 2011
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