12 weeks to go

well, week 1 went not as bad as expected. working half days on friday was a good idea, as it meant I could leave early at least one day a week. somehow i had forgotten how terrible leaving work at 6pm is. why anyone thinks 40 hour weeks with an enforced 1 hour lunch is a good idea is beyond me. I assume they think it will make people more productive but i think it has the opposite effect.
cycling to work however, was great. only went in 4 days by bike since it rained the other day and i dont yet have wet weather cycling clothes.
anyone, that was all quite boring. like work. i spent lunches reading the curious incident of the dog in the night time. it's a really good book. i enjoyed it muchly.

I did have one funny conversation at work. 4 days after restarting work, i was sitting the reception on my lunch break because it was miserable outside and i can't face sitting at work my desk. the secretary walks in to the buildine, came up to me and said "you're back!"
i said "yes".
"why are you here?" she asked.
"It's too cold outside." I don't think that may have made much sense but it didn't seem to phase her.
"are you coming to the Halloween party?"
"no", i said. "i can't make it."
"why not?"
"I'm busy". at this point i hoped she wouldn't ask again as i'd run out of synonyms for i don't want to. luckily she didn't.

Anyway, I also realised this week that I have literally no idea how to meet new people. None whatsoever. i saw a stunning lady in starbucks but had no idea how to approach her.
Maybe i should do some volunteer work where I can meet nice people. But leaving work at 6 is bullshit and leaves me not much time for anything in the week.
speaking of which, tis almost bedtime.

13 weeks to go

having run out of money from not working i decided to work so i could have some money and not live on the street. winter is coming, but living on the streets in the summer isn't much better imo. apparently, there's a lovely street near me, probably the most expensive in london, which is half full of empty houses. and there are already some that have squatters in, so i could maybe go and live there.

anyway, 13 weeks of work. Somewhere i've worked before, but have little to no desire to go back to work there. my boss told me off for not taking a lunch break and leaving early. even though i'm a contractor, working the hours is less important than staying in the office till 6pm. honestly. 6pm. that's not really acceptable. then he told me the reason why he wants that from me. his previous job was till 4pm and he found the adjustment hard and wants to make everyone else suffer. all i think when i see him now is 'CUNT'.

so i'm going back for 13 weeks for money. in that time i hope to get investment so i when i leave i can work on my own things for 3-6 months with income. i'm not dreading it. the first time i worked there, the first 10 days had so little work for me to do that the boredom was physically painful. now at least i know i'll have things to do. so it shouldn't be too bad. i also plan to cycle to work. dutch style. This means no cycling shorts or jerseys. just normal clothes plus a helmet. i might switch back to cycling shorts after one day of wrecking my arse and balls. on the plus side, burning an extra 1000 calories per day will let me eat chocolate without putting on weight. it's the little things. (that's what she said).

love your body, my girlfriend says to me, entirely innocently. I already do, way too often.
she's not the one for me so i need to break up with her but i'm not good at doing that.

i think i've explained the escalator game on here before. you know, going up an escalator, you 'choose' a lady (or man) based solely on looks to be your other half. then you wait to see if you made the best choice, or if someone better comes along. What happens if you've picked no one by the top? Some say you get thrust upon the final person, others say you die alone.

This is a metaphor for choosing someone in real life. This is difficult to play in such a manner, because you should really assume you've never seen another person when you start playing the game, so there is no frame of reference.
The maths solved this conundrum by telling you how to play. Of the first third, you pick the best, then choose the next person to appear better than that.
What makes this good to compare to real life is you don't really know where the third lies, due to arrival rates.

Anyway, I digress. Though I have forgotten what any of my points were.

In other news, I'm going to quit my job. Tomorrow, I will try to get the program I have written to replace me working. I think it requires some IT guys to open up connections to SQL server, and then I can happily leave. Spending 12 hours a day working so you can take 20 days holiday a year is not the life for me.

i cant believe it's been so long

i can.

anyway, i started cycling last year. england is not good for cycling. mental drivers, no hills, terrible weather. The problem is that it can be quite expensive.
however, i have decided that i will be going to europe next year and cycling the alps. all of them. well, not all of them, but i will do as many as possible.
i will begin creating a list, and also i should start working. i can work till about june next year, and then go to the alps for a month or so. this sounds like the best plan i have ever had. I should spend a week or two working in a bike shop for free to learn how to fix all the things i need to, and then i'll be set to go.
i don't know much about cycling famous roads, but the list will include the stelvio, in east italy, perhpas cervinhio in central italy, verbier and some surroundings in swissland, sestriere in west italy, montervnier, alp d'huez, mont ventoux and col d'eze in france. i think i will start in east italy, near venice, and finish in monaco. possibly in the order listed above. this is a good motivation to work!

Estate Agents

Estate Agents are like a good pair of sunglasses. When you find one, hold on to it and never let it go. I had one and let them go. (They're still there, I just have the misfortune of not using them at the moment.)

Of course, sunglasses have a higher IQ than most estate agents, so the metaphor ends almost as soon as it has begun. I spent quite a while trying to fix my flat after some people smashed my front door in (not a euphemism), the latest in my series of bewildering agency calls went something like this:

The door fixing company came to survey the damage and make a quote. They spent a week making a quote. A WEEK! I chased them a few times, and each time I did they said they would mark it as urgent. I don't think they know what it means to mark something, or what urgent means. I imagine their online record of my case just has the word urgent written by lots of different people in many places, sometimes repeatedly in the same place, and no one really knows what that means. Or they all know that it means nothing. Like adding the sticker 'fragile' to luggage.
Finally, after more than a week, they were ready! Well, inasmuch as they then had to await authorisation to do the work. That comes from either the landlord or the building management people.
I called the estate agency asking them to get the authorisation from whoever it needs to come from, to the door fixing people, straight away so that it can get done.
A day later I called the estate agent to see what was happening, as a door that works would be nice.
She said, she's been chasing people. I asked who, she said the door fixing company! I said, I was calling them last week (when she was on holiday), and their part is done and they need authorisation to continue. She told me she had received an email this very morning from them saying they have submitted a quote and are awaiting authorisation. I didn't say anything as sometimes there are no words. She continued by saying she will chase up people to get authorisation. I asked who she would be chasing, she said the door fixing company! I got confused so stopped talking.

The next day I received a call saying she now knows that she needs to call the management agency who run the flats and will call them.

As for what happened after the 'fixed' the door, i shall leave my story of crime to another day...

empathy

one of my favourite things about poker is how it shows most people have no empathy whatsoever. I say favourite, but it's really quite a sad realisation.

case in point:
someone posted something about religion on facebook. cue, many posts, and there always seems to be one person saying something like, "religion teaches people what to think, not how to think"
My favourite comment was "religion deals in absolutes", i'm trying to not reply, "unlike people who talk negatively about religion".
and then there's atheists who think that by proclaiming they're atheists makes their arguments more logical. like football fans who support awful teams, believing that this makes their opinions about football more important than fans who support premier league sides.

How self centred do you have to be to believe you know about all religions, and more importantly, what people take from them? and then to generalise about all of them, complaining about how they are the ones dealing in absolutes?

Poker players, especially when they start playing, always think about what they would do in their opponents shoes instead of what their opponent would do in their opponent's shoes. Even as you improve, you assume other people know some of the new things that you've just learnt! It sadly seems like human nature is to assume that everyone else does or should think like you.
i don't know how most people think this way, how they can be so sure about what they 'know'.

rash

Not making terrible decisions, but an actual rash.

yesterday after returning home from a chum's house, the knuckles on my left hand were rather dry. so i washed them and put some vaseline on the skin. Not long later I noticed that the knuckles were going really red. And then the thumb knuckle (is it still a knuckle? it seems different to the others) also started to turn red.
I thought i'd check the symptoms on the interent, and that was no help whatsoever.
so once again i ventured onto uk's webMd. as before, when i mention the word rash, EVERY SINGLE QUESTION for about 40 minutes is another question asking about a symptom of meningitis. and after answering no to all of them, the recommendation is go get help. as it was past midnight, i thought i'd call 111, the non emergency version of 999.
i spoke to a guy who asked me all sorts of inappropriate questions like have you ever had AIDS.
eventually he told me he was going, and someone else would call me.
as it was now past 1am, my phone went in to do not disturb mode so while watching 30 rock to stay awake, i missed a couple of calls. 3rd time lucky and i answered to a women who was a trained medic (nurse) who then asked me a similar set of questions. after this she said bye, and a doctor will call me back.
i managed to answer the first time to someone who really didn't sound like a doctor. at this point, i was so tired and unimpressed by my knuckles that i figured just going to bed was the best option and if i died then at least i wouldn't have to deal with anything in the morning. the redness had gone down a bit, so i told the lady on the phone that and she just let me go.

i woke up as usual today before my alarm at about 730, in a state of unbearable tiredness so i just stayed in bed for about 2 hours. after lunch i had a siesta, and then early evening i had another. i have been tired today. went out to do some exercise tonight, and then have to be awake tomorrow for a day full of actual work and leaving the house.

being open!

this has not gone well. I realised that i don't like being open with people i don't like. Perhaps I need to change this and just be open with everyone including those i dislike....

more things i've learned while cycling

Gastroenteritis is very painful.
I've had hangovers where i whispered into the phone that "i just want to die" to make it end.
High interval training is probably worse. Just 4 minutes is excruciating - 20 second cycling super fast, 10 seconds slow, repeat and repeat and ..... After 2 minutes of that everything in my body is already telling me to stop, and when 4 minutes is up I collapse onto the floor where i lie in the foetal position for about 15 minutes to recover. This may not be so painful however, it is definitely mentally very tough to keep going when you could so easily stop.
And yet all of those pale into insignificance compared to the heartache (and perhaps depression?) of the past few months. The easy way to keep cycling is to remind myself that the pain of the intervals is so short and weak compared to the torture that my brain has put me through recently. (Although maybe it's the torture that i've been putting my brain through?)

And then the training doesn't seem so bad after all.

In other news, I have discovered that LinkedIn can be better for tracking people down (read: stalking) than Facebook. Of course, you have to be careful not to be signed in, otherwise they see you watching them and then you might end up talking to them, and i've just had an idea.

things i've learned while cycling

most people cannot judge the speed of a bicycle. or they think because you're not a car it won't hurt if you hit them at 35km/h. or that they, as pedestrians, have right of way on the road.
following on from the above, some parents care not for the safety of their children, crossing the road with them in buggies, or allowing them to wander into the road because it's just a bike coming.
it may be the most efficient form of transport humans have ever invented but it's hard work.
% of terrible drivers is probably quite similar to % of terrible cyclists.
pushing yourself to the limit is probably tougher mentally than physically.
i am very unfit.

existential crisis number 132

Showers are great for thinking.

In today's shower I realised that about two years ago I mentioned on here I need to get some new friends. The criteria was whether they liked the TV show Derek.
In the intervening time, I have been doing what all poker players know is the number one sin - lying to themselves. You'll never get better if you can't be honest with yourself about what you do. And I realised that in life, while I know it's best to be open and honest (except at the tables), I convinced my self that I was. I wasn't. I also managed to convince myself that I don't care what other people think (well, I know I'm a good actor. I really haven't been good at this, while thinking I have been. I may be improving but very slowly due to my overestimation of my abilities. I just didn't realise I was so good at convincing myself.
And this is why two years later, I only made 1 real friend (as linked to above). They were the best friend I ever had, and I realised I've not done any better because i've been lying to myself all along.

The book (and definitely not the film) 'yes man' is great. The idea of saying yes to everything to be open to opportunities is great. I am going to be honest AND open about everything in a similar manner. Only for a week, mind. I dread people asking how I am, as my reply will be "terribly depressed." That is seriously frowned upon in England and probably punishable by hanging. Anything other than "fine, you?" is a criminal act.

I wonder where this will take me...

the worst theives

having been attacked by the worst muggers, i have now been burgled by the worst burglers.

they destroyed my front door, stole my car keys, ransacked the place and took nothing other than a few pounds in change. nothing else at all. things i have worth more than £500 in my flat are
1.

that is all.
the most expensive things are probably my bike and my laptop. after that, i don't think there's anything worth over £100. the most expensive thing i own is my car. they took the keys. not the car, just the keys. the police reckon they got disturbed, but having been through every cupboard in the place, including pots and pans, it seems like they had time to look through everything. i think they were just interested in cash monies. it's a bit like being mugged from a distance.

the annoying thing is having to replace a door (landlord pays for it) and car key set (hopefully contents insurance cos that is blady expensive). i think i'm very lucky. of course, my one time therapiss told me off for thinking i'm lucky. and that's why i fired her.

this week i have signed up to 10 weeks of self defence. i hope i can achieve something useful in 10 weeks.

therapiss

I went to a therapist this week and am astonished at how much it has helped. They had many certificates on the wall, and recommendations from people i trust. The only word I want to use to describe them is terrible.

they were more interested in talking to me, than listening to me. Worse still, the rare occasions they did listen, they didn't believe me!

For example, they said how i should do things outside my comfort zone, so i said i had started doing that. they ignored me and carried on telling me that i need to do these things. They just repeated their point that i'm scared of trying new things. that was odd.

to try to help them, i gave examples of things i choose not to do, not because i was SCARED, but because I didn't like it. they told me i was actually scared of it, that i found it stressful, and being an introvert is a choice. i did well to hide my disdain. On my way home I was considering sending them an email asking if they think other issues, like perhaps autism, are also a choice.
at one point i explained that i was a slow thinker. which i am. they replied to tell me i wasn't. i had no idea how to respond. why would you not believe me when i say things?

next up, they asked if two wooden planks were laid out 6 inches apart on the floor, I would be comfortable walking along them. I said yes, obviously. They then said what if they were 30 feet in the air. I said no. they said, but it's the same. I said, no, the risk-reward ratio has now become unacceptable. There is now a risk of injury, with zero reward. They refused to respond to my point!

The funniest part was when they tried to teach me about control. Poker was an amazing teacher for this aspect of life. I explained i've learnt to focus on controlling what i can control. She tried to tell me that luck doesn't exist. I tried to respond that you can only control yourself and that's where my focus is, not on whether or not luck exists. It fell on deaf ears.

Next was the question of what limiting beliefs I have. This always makes me laugh. Anything I said I believed was a limiting belief, I got told was all in my head. I could say, i don't think I can fly, and they would tell me that's just a limiting belief and i'm wrong and ignorant.

I politely declined a return. maybe i should have just been open and blunt and said you haven't listened to me, you didn't believe what i did tell you, so why would you think i want to come back? instead, i just said i need to think about these things before i decide whether to come back, so i'm not taking your homework book which will force me to return to drop it off.
their reply was effectively "aha, I told you so, you are scared of new things! see. you're not trying this out!"
"i don't need to try out ebola to know that i don't want it" is what i wish i had replied.

in summary, playing poker, and reading the book "the 7 habits of highly effective people" was a above and beyond this therapy session, and sadly, probably better than most therapists and counsellors.

confusing kindness with weakness

much like associating folding with weakness, i think most people incorrectly associate kindness with weakness. quite spectacularly.
I think too many people also confuse not caring what other people think with being unkind to others, or lacking empathy.

It is a great shame for them to live their lives this way. in poker you only lose money for thinking this, in life you lose a lot more.

things to scare me

this week: talking to a therapist because i went a bit (read: completely) mental recently and I need to sort my brain out.

next week: starting a martial arts training. I hope that this will increase my discipline, make me less afraid of the outsides, and also improve my core strength.

as for things to work on: this week i'm back on diligence. I have so much to do and have had a very lazy couple of weeks. This week i will try to spend more time doing the things I should be doing on my ever increasing to do list. I have lots of great ideas on there, but they're all big projects so i need to prioritise them, focus on just one or two, and put the hours in.

inspiration

I fcuked up with the most amazing lady in the world. Now, I can totally understand how people die of broken hearts.

She is still my inspiration, and so I'm getting back on the 'doing one thing a week that scares me' horse. The horse needs a better name. Perhaps Gonzo. Not enough people are called Gonzo any more.

Two weeks ago I signed up to do a bike ride. The 100 miles around London one. oops. While waiting for it to get a bit warmer, I started doing a couple of runnings by myself. I hate running. It's boring and I'm rubbish at it.
Last week I took some photos for a website. I don't think I'm very good, but i'm going to let them be the judges and tell me I'm not very good.
This week I will be donating blood. I am scared of doing this.
I'm also quite scared of doing things by myself so I have done all these things alone.

I've never liked talking to other people. Or taking responsibility for things that I do - the only reason I like working in teams/groups is the shared responsibility. well, that and working with people smarter than me is a good thing for me. Not so much for them.

I think I've acted so well all my life that I've never accepted what I'm like. At least now I can work on doing things better.

Perhaps this was my problem with poker. Not being totally open and honest with myself in what i really needed to work on. The 3 most important areas really should have been entitlement, entitlement and entitlement.

EdwardX talks

Who knew TED talks could last 30 minutes? They should be renamed Edward talks so people can differentiate between them. I, for one, don't think they should. But still I listened to it. And there was but one paragraph of the transcript which I would like to share. I have read scientific papers that being depressed helps make good decisions. And this part is something that is very eloquently put:

But the truth lies. I became obsessed with that sentence: "But the truth lies." And I discovered, as I talked to depressive people, that they have many delusional perceptions. People will say, "No one loves me."And you say, "I love you, your wife loves you, your mother loves you." You can answer that one pretty readily, at least for most people. But people who are depressed will also say, "No matter what we do,we're all just going to die in the end." Or they'll say, "There can be no true communion between two human beings. Each of us is trapped in his own body." To which you have to say, "That's true, but I think we should focus right now on what to have for breakfast." A lot of the time, what they are expressing is not illness, but insight, and one comes to think what's really extraordinary is that most of us know about those existential questions and they don't distract us very much. There was a study I particularly liked in which a group of depressed and a group of non-depressed people were asked to play a video game for an hour, and at the end of the hour, they were asked how many little monsters they thought they had killed. The depressive group was usually accurate to within about 10 percent, and the non-depressed people guessed between 15 and 20 times as many little monsters as they had actually killed.

Emphasis is mine. I have recently been distracted by a myriad of existential crises. I wonder how more people aren't. I spoke to an old wise man who told me that he went through something similar at a similar age and it all just resolves itself in time. I need to ask how long it takes because it's only getting worse.

poker memories

having been very depressed of late, i have tried to stop being so very depressed. i harked back to the less bad old days and reminisced on my former life poker highlights. in chronological order they are:

1. play money. played on the same table as a friend. Some racist starts spouting in the message box and my friend says: "you have the mental age of an abortion"
2. My 1st tourney win. It was the $10+1, $4k Gtd on crypto, when only 300 players would play. 1st was 1k+, finished 2am, and i was jumping around my house quietly so as not to wake my sleeping housemates. Took a while to go to sleep with the adrenalin pumping.
3. A charity tourney where first prize was a trip to vegas (I won it)
4. Winning my biggest pot. It was a 3 way pot for a total of about $3.5k and I outdrew everyone like a pro.
5. My worst ever weekend where I dropped around $10k. double oops

sad times.

i once had a girlfriend. the most amazing human being i have ever met. it is very sad i am too mental (or idiotic!) that i no longer have her in my life.
amongst the many words of wisdom she has imparted unto me were the following (abridged version):
me: you are the most amazing.
her: only you see me this way.

only today i realised why not everyone sees her the way i do.
she is the most kind and thoughtful human i have ever met. by a long way. a very long way. she only ever tries to do good. being a thoroughly intelligent being, she also has a great sense of right and wrong.

when i was younger someone once said to me, perhaps no one thinks they are evil? perhaps everyone things they're doing the right thing? i do not accept this second statement. most people often do things they know are wrong and spent a lot of effort justifying the act to themselves and/or others. a while ago i gave up these attempted justifications, and now when i do something i know i shouldn't be doing, my general response to myself is "fuck it, don't be a child, it is my choice, and i'm choosing it"

this pretty lady, never does that. it's truly awesome. she always tries to do what is best. and what is best in her mind revolves, not around her, but others. which is even more remarkable.

so for months i wondered how no one else could notice such a thing.

today my thoughts returned to the fact that she is so unique, no one else even comes close to her and i'll never meet another person like her. the cliché which popped into my head (sorry Boris) is that there is no one in her league. and then i realised, to take the cliché even further, it's because no one else is even playing the same game. and that's when i realised why she is probably right that that most other people don't notice how she truly is amazing.

and then i once again felt sad.

Shake spear

"It is better to have loved and lost then never to have loved at all."

Is it?

I present a case for the opposition: