Christmas at Vipassana

One of my prime reasons for choosing to serve at Vipassana over Christmas was to escape the external worlds obsession with gathering together at Christmas and the commercial imperative to purchase gifts.

Joan, the Vipassana Kitchen co-ordinator, wisely chose to swap the day 10 Lasagne recipe for the scheduled Christmas day menu of Cottage pie.  Lasagne being a great choice. Plus, with one of the old students sitting the course having offered to fund some extras for Christmas day, the menu was a little different to the standard no-frills but (usually) appealing vegetarian menu. With mangos, strawberries, cherries, whipped cream and chocolate being added to the menu.

Even better for me was the phone call I had with my brother on Christmas day evening and the email I received from son #1.

The Vipassana Experience

Day 11 has come. And with it another service period has come to an end.  Overall an enjoyable experience. Driven largely by the kitchen team being led by an experienced kitchen co-ordinator with the name of Joan who has a calm demeanor, a great set of organizational skills and a ready laugh and smile. A great combination which encourages the team to be relaxed and at ease in their work.

And as it is with many teams in the Vipassana kitchen, a multi-cultural affair with people from a variety of locations and cultures

• Joan. Kitchen co-ordinator mentioned above. From Singapore.  ?late 20's/early 30's.
• Song. Dr Song. Professor in hospitality from Thailand. In Australia for a few years pursuing further education in his chosen area of specialty.  Hard working and self-effacing. Mid 30's.
• Ken. Farmer from South Korea escaping the northern winter with his wife (who spent most of the course visiting friends in Canberra / Sydney).  Early 40's
• C-Y (?sp). From Malaysia. Recent grad in computer science from Wollongong Uni. Early 20's. Some time in the kitchen but quite a bit in the gardens
• Marissa. In transit from Northern Territory to somewhere near Dural. Planning on working in Steiner school for young fold with special needs
• Anna. From Cairns. Serving while her mother is sitting.
• Annalie. From Sydney via a number of stops. Had lived in Nelson for a couple of years and threw in a kiora or two as a curve ball
• Tajma. Had been mainly a maths and science teacher in Sydney. And now is mainly relief teaching anything from PE / Drama through to her specialty subjects. Originally from Sri Lanka (?)
• Renuka. Indian lady who served as Hindi translator for the teachers. Mainly worked in the gardens but also some time in the kitchen
• Ethan. 19 year old who has served 4 courses and sat 4 courses. And arrived mid-course with the intent of completing a 3 month probation period for long service. Muscles on his muscles with Maori heritage and some Maori inspired tattoos. Has had to leave some of his friends behind as he is heading down a spiritual path and they are keen on partying and drinking. Carried around a journal / diary and saw him making an entry in his journal in the male servers cottage. Mainly worked in the gardens, but some time in the kitchen

And of course, there was Andrew.  (aka Disco  from the long course I served in August). Disco Drew was appointed assistant Male Manager. First time I've seen an assistant male manager. But it was a big course. With a full complement of students - both male and female. The teacher made a comment towards the end of the course that there seemed to be a heavy weighting of Indian students. Renuka speculated that at this time of year it may be that the Vipassana course may be popular with employees of some of the Indian based software companies that shut down over the Christmas / New Year period for approximately two weeks.

In general I enjoyed my meditation hours and feel as though I made progress. Some pressure from Disco to sit a 10 day course.  We discussed the trajectory of my life with some focus on the visitations of the black dog post break up with the ex and his belief that a 10 day course will assist in the healing. Maybe so. But with my experience in 2012 and 2013 10 days sits being fairly dark experiences, and with the subsequent serving experiences being more beneficial, I'm a little gun shy on the 10 day courses. The 8 day Sati course in July wasn't too bad, but the 2015 10 day course was a little dark. So sometime in 2017 there will be a 10 day course but at this time I'll be preferring the serving experience as my first choice of Vipassana experience

Under promising, Over Delivering and under communicating

Stepped off the plane in Sydney, topped up my Opal card for the trip to Blackheath, took the train to Central and found the train destined for Blackheath and settled into my seat. Checked my email. Found one from the transportation company that I had engaged to ship my van from Queensland to Melbourne. Dated today at 10:39am.

Just confirming delivery of Toyota Hiace is scheduled for this afternoon...We will contact you approx. an hour prior to arrival, Thanks

WTF?

I had spent some time yesterday checking out mechanics and places where I could have a roadworthy check performed.  And it seemed as though the mechanics with the better reviews on google were going to be shut down from about now through to mid-late Jan.  So I was very comfortable with the indicated delivery date of the week of Jan 16th.....

Now I was in Sydney, the van was in Melbourne and I certainly didn't want it languishing at the side of the road in an unregistered state until I could return to Melbourne and sort it out.

After a couple of phone calls I'll be paying $200 for storage at one of the AirBnB's that I have stayed at. The van will be delivered there and I'll have to deal with it when I return to Melbourne on 31st or December or 1st Jan.

Phew!.  Almost turned around at Central and headed back to Melbourne to see if I could get it registered. In which case I would have then driven it back up to Blackheath.

So I have had a Christmas present delivered unexpectedly today. Yet I am not there to see exactly what it is like.

At least a plan B came together fairly quickly.  My recommendation to the transportation company is that if they are going to under promise and over deliver in that fashion they should communicate a bit more....  At least we could laugh about it once I had a place to keep it for the next 10 or so days.

December 19th

Last evening in Box Hill before the trek north to Vipassana. Have been trying to move the last files from the old laptop across to the new laptop without success.  Plan B is in place. Which is to leave the laptop with Konrad and  retrieve it after I return.  There are only two items left to retrieve and I would rather have them than not. Need a more stable network if I am to get those files back.

Have played my last poker for the year. And will be glad to have a break. While I end the year as an improved player from the one that started the year, I still have a long way to go.  And the most important piece of the puzzle is actually putting in regular work away from the tables. I've enjoyed my last two AirBnB's with a longer stay than normal in both places. And with the return to Box Hill being to a place I felt very comfortable with.

This afternoon was dedicated to understanding what steps are ahead of me administrivia wise in order to have the van registered in the first place, then updating the details of registration after the van fitout. Google has helped me sift through plenty of information and the Vicroads web site is actually pretty clear with respect to the steps that have to be taken. A pretty straight forward process which I will be glad to see the end of.

When I do have the van kitted out I intend to spend some time along the Great Ocean road and into the Ayre peninsula.  Plus I'll be looking at whether I can land any house sits in rural Victoria and South Australia. 

Hoping that the Blackheath Vipassana experience will be a fun one.  I'm ready for some more intense meditation again. It will be interesting to see how many other people are using Vipassana to avoid the insanity that is Christmas.  For me, this time of year is associated with the memory of my marriage implosion. And while I have some great memories of the Christmases we had while the kids were younger, the memories are tinged with the bitter bite of the marriage bust up.  Though this year I seem to be more at peace with it all than any of the last 5 years.

 

The Callaway Cap

I've been listening to Alexander Fitzgerald over the course of the past year. And one of his pieces of advice is to wear clothing at the poker tables that hopefully gives an impression that you are a recreational player. He frequently mentions wearing a Titleist cap is one way to throw people off the scent. Well, off into a golf shop I eventually wandered and, while there was a Titleist cap, I didn't like it much and decided to go for a Callaway cap.  When the sales assistant at the golf shop was querying why I wanted that particular brand, I stated that I didn't play golf. I just wanted a cap that would make me look like a goober at the poker tables.  He laughed and gave me a discount.

Being of an age where I don't care what anybody thinks about what I wear, I chose to wear it at the cash tables today. And almost instant success. In a hand where I held QcQs, the flop came Qh7d5d. I bet the flop and was called by two players. The turn saw the Qd. Giving me quads, the small blind the nut flush and the UTG player the second nut flush.  They both thought they had the nuts and bet into me. I knew I had the stone cold nuts when the river showed me the Ac. (The pretty small chance one of them had a straight flush draw that might get there died on the river).   Nice triple up within 20 minutes of my first session with the Callaway cap on.  Might have to wear it again.

My poker for the year is drawing to a close. And I have started playing live cash again over the past week. The tournament schedule at Crown has consisted entirely of satellites for the Aussie Millions tournament series that kicks off mid Jan 2017.  After running poorly in satellites for the first two weeks of December it was time to give the satellites a rest and try cash again. The Live Poker 101 webinar series from Alexander Fitzgerald seems to have improved my cash game a little. However it is early days.

On Tuesday 20th December I fly north to serve on a Vipassana course at Blackheath. Part of my cunning plan to avoid Christmas.  Looking forward to getting three hours of meditation in each day. And think I need to look at sitting a course sometime in the first quarter of 2017.  A convenient time would be after the van fitout in mid-Feb. So may look into courses for around that time.

The Van project proceeds

Jims Transport have picked the van up for its over Christmas pit stop in Sydney.  Have plenty of time to work out the next steps.

Which are

• finding somewhere to do the roadworthy test required prior to registering the van in Victoria
• Working out the logistics of getting the van to that place. Possibly without Insurance in place. RACV would not insure the van unless it was registerable. Without roadworthy it is not registerable. Catch-22. May see about getting the van delivered to where ever it is I am going to get the roadworthy inspection completed
• converting the 12 seater Hiace commuter bus to a 2 or 3 seater by ripping all the seats in the rear out
• Driving the van up to the Newcastle locale for its mid-Feb appointment with drifta for a fitout with the base for a bed, slide out kitchen, some drawers, and electrical
• Determine whether my car licence is good enough for driving this vehicle around

Pretty happy with the decision to pull the trigger and acquire the van. Although the total cost of the van plus fit out will be higher than I had hoped for, I'm pretty comfortable that should I choose to on sell it at any stage I will either get most or all of my money back.  I haven't seen that many vans for sale that have already been converted into a scenario where you can sleep comfortably in the back. 

Hiding from Christmas at Blackheath Vipassana Center

On 20th December I'll head north to serve a course at Blackheath Vipassana Center.  This year has seen a deepening in my meditation practice and ending the year with 10 days of more intense Vipassana meditation will do me nicely.

Plus I get the benefit of avoiding being seen as someone to take pity on and get invited to some good samaritans place when all I really want to do on Christmas day is to eat and play internet poker.

I have become comfortable in being alone and in my own skin on Christmas day. However, with the AirBnB lark meaning I would be sharing digs with someone, should I be able to book a place, I have chosen to avoid that dilemma by taking myself off to serve on a Vipassana course.

The Van should be in transit some time this week. Hopefully tomorrow, or, at the latest Wednesday. Unfortunately, due to the time of year, and the size of the company engaged, I will only get to see the van for the first time in the week beginning December 16th.  Then it will be full speed ahead to get the beast through the required roadworthy test, registered and then off on a road trip to Newcastle to get the folks at drifta.com.au to do a conversion on the van.   Looking forward to that. Then I'll be able to start shaving some costs off my spending on AirBnB.

Five years post split

In December 2011 my ex and I split as a couple. A tough time. With one of the hardest aspects being when we informed the kiddies we were splitting. I can still see the uplifted eyebrows on #2 sons face and the slumped body language of #1 son.

The black dog came to keep me company for a large chunk of the next 4 or so years. With 2012 being the bleakest period of my life. I was in Sydney away from the family, Vodafone laid off hundreds of people and I was amongst them. Three months unemployment with money being very tight. Then, luckily, a job at AMP that was the best job I've had in my life. But even that couldn't help me to avoid having the black dog as a near constant companion.

During 2012, a couple we knew that lived in Kurrajong were going a bleak period as Kristian had her life stolen by Motor Neuron Disease.  One of my regrets over 2012 was that I never went out there. The major reason was that I was so down I didn't want to bring them down as well. In 2011 the ex and I had spent a fair bit of time at Kurrajong helping support Stephen and Kristian. With the ex coming over from New Zealand for 5 to 7 days at a time.  So while I had a crap year, it wasn't the same year that Stephen and Kristian had.

When my dad died in 2013 and left me a modest inheritance I chose to stop working. My motivation to work in a corporate environment died with the death of my relationship, and with the inheritance from my father providing a financial cushion, I chose to try to learn poker. And not very well to this point.

Moving to Melbourne has been the best thing for my mental health. Maybe not for my financial health. But definitely for my mental health.  And co-incident with the move to Melbourne I started listening to Alexander Fitzgerald's one outer podcast.  Inspiration and motivation flow into my headphones on a weekly basis by way of a 27-28 year olds rants about the need to work hard to get better at poker.  And I've learned quite a bit from his webinars and podcasts.

At this stage I don't see myself ever living in New Zealand again. I'm enjoying Australia too much. And being back in Auckland might allow the black dog to sniff out my trail again.

Interview with Roland Griffiths

Found a link in my twitter feed to an article featuring an interview with Roland Griffiths discussing two recently published studies into Psilocybin treatment of anxiety and depression in cancer patients.

At https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/psilocybin-a-journey-beyond-the-fear-of-death/

An aspirational homeless person moves up in life

After trawling through Auction sites online, trudging out to Manheim and Pickles auctions, and seeing several opportunities get way too expensive, I pulled the trigger last night and won an auction for a 1999 Hiace commuter bus. A 12 seater. Soon to be a 3 seater. With 142,000 (or thereabouts) km on the clock, I am punting this will be the sort of vehicle that wealthy homeless people would be proud to sleep in.

Although I may not have to start sleeping in it until well into 2017. A friend has mentioned my name with respect to a possible house sit starting Dec 17 for four weeks. Looking after a cat.  Cats being easier to look after than dogs that is ok with me.  Major pluses being a) no barking b) don't go nuts if they don't get their daily walk

My contact details have been forwarded on and hopefully I'll have a place to stay in Ballarat for the next little while.

Box Hill it is for a while

Moved back to Box Hill South last Friday with a booking that ended on Dec 11th. And in conversation this morning it came out that the next booking had fallen through.

I like this place.  And it is cheap. The only drawback is how far out it is from the CBD. But I like Konrad, the price is cheap, the room is private, quiet and comfortable, and I feel like having a rest from bouncing around every 7 to 10 days.

Today was a day when I practiced short stack poker in some Aussie Millions feeder satellites. And was generally happy with my play.  Shove-fold ranges are important to know in these satellites as the structure means you get short fast. And I'm getting happier with my shoving ranges. People who have an image of me as a tight aggressive player are getting surprised with the hands I'm turning up with at times. But such is the nature of these tournaments. And they are good practice for Final Tables where you are short stacked and need to have a good understanding of Shove/Fold/Call ranges with different stack sizes.  While I have been able to get away with using SnapShove on my Ipad from time to time, there may come a time when that is outlawed. And I need to be ready for that time. Until then, more study time is required to better hone my feel for the Shoving/Calling ranges when short stacked.

Up at 4:30 am

A side effect of fasting for two days is that, while my intention was to go as long into day 3 as possible before breaking my fast, there was difficulty with sleeping due to the gnawing hunger pangs experienced over night.  At 4:30 am I chose to end my fast and have chowed down on one of the yummier breakfasts in a while.  Just the same content as a bunch of other breakfasts, but psychologically very yummy.

Still, I consider it a success to go for a tad over 50 hours without food. Other than a couple of cups of coffee per day, with a teaspoon or two of coconut oil, water was my main sustenance.

There were times during the past two days when my cognitive function was more affected than others. And yesterday midday was one of them. However I managed to be able to keep bringing myself back to an even keel whilst in a Telstra shop and ended up purchasing a cheap smartphone. For $79 this is a cheap and cheerful smart phone. But still, given that my old phone was a Galaxy Y inherited from my son, with a likely age of around 5 years, this is a major upgrade.  The major reason for purchase is to use Evernote at the poker tables. I've been using an ipad to write notes over the past month or so. And an ipad is not a discreet writing appliance.  Hopefully, switching to a smartphone for my notes will allow me to look like a disinterested old fogy who is consumed with texting on his smartphone rather than an old fogy who is a bit too full of himself and taking notes on people.


The major drawback to this two day fast has been difficulty in concentrating for large chunks of the day. Which means difficulty in studying. Hopefully, with some food on board I'll be able to better able to attend to my studies today.  Although I have been really enjoying Jonathan Little's podcast weekly poker hand podcast series and did manage to get something out of his podcasts over the past couple of days. Particularly the math around whether to call when facing a bet on a 4 flush board and being given the right pot odds.  For example, Little points out that the chances of your opponent, in a heads up pot, having one of the flush cards is around 60% (Your opponent holds two cards. The odds of each individual card being a flush card is approximately 1 in four. Reduced slightly because there are four cards of the flush suit on the board.). Which means, if they bet in such a way that you only need to win the pot 20 - 25% of the time, then often you have the right odds to call. Especially if your opponent is good enough to recognize the situation as a good bluffing scenario, in which case, the times where your opponent does not have a flush card (say 40%), will be enough to justify the call. Which, for many players who are good enough to recognize the scenario as a good bluffing scenario, it is.   And many recreational players will fold every time to a bet in the situation where they are out of position, the board shows four cards of the same suit, and their in position opponent bets.  The constant refrain is "you can't call with out a flush card".  Which, against some opponents, is simply not true.

Fasting and thinking

I've been on a binge with respect to fasting over the past 3 weeks or so. The article  I read last month discussing fasting gave me inspiration to throw some fasting into the mix and I've been doing a mix of alternate day fasting, combined with an attempt to throw in some two day (aka periodic fasts (PE)).  And today, Sunday evening, I'm late into the first day of what I hope will be a two day fast, with no food making its way down my gullet until the morning of Tuesday December 6th.

And while I can pat myself on the back for withstanding the urge to eat, I am finding it hard to concentrate enough to be able to focus on my poker study.  And poker study I must if I am to improve.  Luckily I have found Jonathan Little's podcast series and am finding those podcast episodes to be both educational, and, while I am in this hunger impaired state, at a level that I can listen to and get something out of.

Weight wise I started 2016 at around 95Kg. And heading into December my weight was around 88Kg. Which is good, but not great. Great would be if I'd hit 82Kg. Which was about where I was when I was 22 years old. And was a weight I managed to hover around for most of my twenties.

Though if you look at BMI values, to be what BMI considers to be normal weight, I would have to drop to around 78 Kg. And that is just not going to happen I think.  So a comfortable, maintainable target weight for me would be around 82 Kg.

Diet wise, in between the alternate day fasting and PE fasting, I'm aiming to stay as much as possible on a ketogenic / Modified Atkins Diet. Which means I'm avoiding rice (Carbs), Bread (Carbs), Pasta, and, as much as possible, treats from the supermarket.

Interestingly the patches of psoriasis I've had for quite some time appear to becoming much less angry. With most patches having lost their redness and raised, angry look. Of course I'm wondering whether this could be related to the effects of the fasting. Certainly there are effects on the likes of IGF-1 (Insulin like Growth Factor 1) levels which may lead to a physiological environment which is less suited to the rapid growth and turnover of skin cells. At this stage it is a case of fingers crossed that the effect will be maintained once I end this fasting binge.

Loving the new laptop

Just a loving the new laptop. Every so often I check in to task manager to see what the performance information looks like. And memory wise I'm currently running with 9.5GB memory used out of 16GB.  And it is just a dream.   On the old laptop, which had 4GB memory, the performance would have been abysmal.

While the cost was a little high, I'm thinking, given how much I use the internet for one thing and another, I'll get the value back from the improved performance.

Impressed with the keyboard as well, which seems to be much friendlier for typing.  All in all a good decision,

Some new Psilocybin research lands

My Twitter feed notified me today that some new Psilocybin research has landed. The tweet pointed off to the Journal of Psychopharmacology. With an editorial and a couple of papers covering research into Psilocybin. One of the papers being "Psilocybin produces substantial andsustained decreases in depression andanxiety in patients with life-threateningcancer: A randomized double-blind trial" and the other "Rapid and sustained symptom reductionfollowing psilocybin treatment for anxiety anddepression in patients with life-threateningcancer: a randomized controlled trial" .  

Pretty interesting articles. With the Guardian website covering the research in a format more digestible by lay people.

A single dose of psilocybin, the active ingredient of magic mushrooms, can lift the anxiety and depression experienced by people with advanced cancer for six months or even longer, two new studies show.
Researchers involved in the two trials in the United States say the results are remarkable. The volunteers had “profoundly meaningful and spiritual experiences” which made most of them rethink life and death, ended their despair and brought about lasting improvement in the quality of their lives.
The results of the research are published in the Journal of sychopharmacology together with no less than ten commentaries from leading scientists in the fields of psychiatry and palliative care, who all back further research. While the effects of magic mushrooms have been of interest to psychiatry since the 1950s, the classification of all psychedelics in the US as schedule 1 drugs in the 1970s, in the wake of the Vietnam war and the rise of recreational drug use in the hippy counter-culture, has erected daunting legal and financial obstacles to running trials.

In addition, I wandered into one of the research papers quoted in one of the above papers. "Johnson M, Richards W, Griffiths R (2008) Human hallucinogen research: guidelines for safety. J Psychopharmacology 22: 603-620 (PDF)"

Which is a useful article for anyone who is wondering how to encourage a harm reduction approach to anyone who may be considering taking a Magic Mushroom trip,