House Sitting in Lindfield

Tim Ferriss has had an influence on my life over the past 18 months. One of the changes has been a modification to my daily routine to fill in a 5 minute journal. Anyone interested can see the process described in Tim's book "Tools of Titans".  And over the past month, a recurring item on my gratitude list within my 5 minute journal has been the fact that an old friend invited me to house sit his mansion in Lindfield, Sydney. Along with the house is Fernie the labradoodle. This is a three month gig and I've enjoyed the experience so far. For the first three weeks or so I took the opportunity to binge on Netflix, do some poker study and generally chill out in a great house. Then, after 3 or 4 weeks, chose to make my way in to Sydney's Star Casino for some live $2/3 cash sessions.

A different experience to Melbourne's Crown Casino for sure. Melbourne, with the Royal Flush jackpot changing the mix of hands that people are prepared to call three bets with, plays quite differently. Surprisingly I found myself quite nervous on the first couple of sessions. As I became more familiar with the environment I've found myself to be more relaxed. One of the bigger changes to my game in Melbourne had been the recording of hands in an Evernote file on my mobile phone. This has not been possible in Star as, unlike Melbourne where you can use your phone in your seat if you have folded,  you have to stand if you want to use your phone. And I'm not going to stand up after each time I've folded to note details of previous hands. The result is that my ability to keep track of the information at the table is lessened at Star.   Like a beginning meditator I have to keep returning my attention to the action at the table. And often feel like I've missed important information in a hand.  On the plus side, when I have been able to maintain my focus during hands, and incorporating some of the information from  some poker tell videos, I feel like I've started to pick up some reads on some of the recreational players.

Another item on my radar that came in during the last month was the Psychedelic Science Forum 2017 that was held in April in Oakland, California.  Luckily for me the sessions from the conference have been uploaded to YouTube.   With a playlist of the sessions being available. Since the conference my twitter feed has provided links out to articles which discuss content that was presented at the conference. With the latest I stumbled across being a link to an article that discussed the use of Ibogaine to treat addiction.  Once again micro-dosing was discussed by James Fadiman and Sophia Korb.  Lots of interesting videos to view. It seems as though momentum is gathering with respect to the evidence that there are medical uses for psychedelic substances and my gut feel is that within five to ten years MDMA and Psilocybin (at the least) will be licensed for medical purposes.