First few days in Cebu

The island easily has many qualities that set Cebu apart from other places. Competetion through currency exchangers and taxi drivers are fierce. You walk outside the airport and have a member of the cab company right in your face. Then you take a stroll down the street in the back of the cab. It's basically a free-for-all on the roads. You switch lanes constantly, are always on the rear of the car infront of you, and just beep when switching lanes/turning. There's no stop signs, lights, or speed limits. But I've been told accidents are rare. Well, it's that simple: in Cebu people are so focused on driving that it's extremly tough to get in an accident. Distractions are the cause of most accidents in the USA and if, on average, your giving 90-99% of your focus to driving... how can you possibly fail?

So anyways, my plans fell through about a week before (after having the place ticket) of going out to Cebu. Luckily, while in Hong Kong Airport, I found an empty room in a poker mansion in Cebu. I had difficulty finding it but eventually found it. I saw a familiar large yellow house and got out of the cab and started shouting for my contact's name. At first nothing, but then I we were pulling away, someone was outside on the upper porch.

Life is great; I'm staying in a 7BR house that is fairly cheap + maids that cook and clean. The view is great, you can oversee a large portion of the city and there's tons of small mountains in the other direction. Sleep is hard to come by but last night I got a solid 7 hours straight. I'm sleeping an odd schedule that relates to how I've slept my whole life so no one is awake right now (it's 5:48 local time). The sun has begun to rise and the chikens are still cawing away. Most of my time has been spent figureing out how to deposit on online websites but today I'm finally going to the bank. If I can get an account opened, I should be able to have no problems anywhere. My goal for today is to start rescouting out the players at 45's. I'm still getting settled here and the stories can only get better.

The trip to the Phillipines

My step dad drove me to O'hare on Monday. Finally, the trusty passport that I got last June comes into use. Upon arrival, the lines were short and I zipped straight through towards the gate. It turns out that 2:20 PM is the perfect time to travel. Not only were there no lines, there were few people on the Cathay flight to Hong Kong. All three seats in my row belonged to me for 14 hours. I thought we needed to travel across the Pacific to get there, but of course, we went straight past Santa's house in the North Pole. Even with enough room to lay down, I couldn't manage to sleep! I even tried to teach myself to sleep while reading Tony Robbin's book: Unlimited Power. It's an old one but contains a great amount of knowlege on how to succeed... and it even makes sense! After succeeding on teaching my brain to get tired (not how to sleep) I arrived in Hong Kong. After my first step into the airport, the scent became thickened by that similar to the Asian chicken noodle soup on the plane. The actual soup was decent and the plane food was above expectations. And the food just kept coming!

I took a few more steps into the airport while waiting 12 hours for my flight to Cebu. My laptop battery only lasted for so long and sleep was still difficult. I was sitting in one of the main airport lounges with the other few people that also stayed overnight at the airport. A 30 minute nap made me refreshed so I moved around and eventually started to watch CNN. As it turns out, two older Australian men were much more entertaining than CNN. The two were back and forth argueing and being unreasonable to each other. It was hillarious (or maybe I only thought so at the time because I was bored out of my mind. This went on for up to an hour and then it got dramatic. One guy was in tears and it would appear that his business partner was leaving him (and this guy seemed like the guy who couldnt possibly live on his own.) It was awful but I refreshed my bordom around 6AM by talking to a well-dressed African man who appeared bored as well. He was in Hong Kong with the intentions of heading onward to Bejing in order to conduct some positive speaking seminars that he does. The man in the fancy suit hailed from Zimbabwae and encouraged me to come visit some time. Inspiration poured out of him since he's been a writer his entire life (that's what I want to do.) Wether it's for the motivational African man, interested readers, or me; I vow to grasp more drive to write more frequently.

What would I do if I won $5000 grand prize for WBCOOP

Let's start out by saying that I am committeed to moving to Cebu City to continue playing online poker. This time around, my goal is much bigger and I'm making a vow to get more into blogging and tweeting.

$5000 would be a huge boost to my bankroll right now. I'm super-excited about SCOOP coming up in April/May because it's an affordable tournament series. Tournament series are the most exciting aspect of poker. With a $5000 boost I would make sure to thank Pokerstars for giving me the opportunity to win such a large sum of money. With the money I can play several more SCOOP events than planned. I currently plan on playing almost all of the low events that are affordable. Playing in the $1000 medium main event with the amazing structure that has taken place for the past several years would be a dream.

Non-poker related I would have much more money to enjoy the Phillipines. I'm afraid that with the drive to grind I may miss out on many of the enjoyments of the country. I want to be able to travel the world and discover new cultures. Winning the TLB leaderboard would be even better since then I could explore more cities around the world that are on the Pokerstars Live Tour. Playing in a big-buy in live event would be a blast too since I'd never be able to do that on my own.

It's hard to hope to win big in this tournament series because there's so many other good people out there that deserve to win. Although, you can have my word, nothing will go to waste if I do happen to win. I'll enjoy every inch of it.

Super Bowl is over...

Now that football is over, there's really nothing to do on Sunday. After the game, I decided to fire up stars and rail some people. I came to a conclusion that I miss this game way too much. Considering dropping out of college to move somewhere to become a pro again.