The old guy trolls the reg

There are a few players at Crown that, if I find I'm going to be seated at their table, or who end up taking a seat at my table, will trigger a desire to move tables. And often, should I find myself destined for a table with one of those players at the table I'll sit down but put in a transfer request with the aim of moving away from those players as soon as possible. There are several reasons for this:

• several of the players talk a lot. And their table talk can, after a time, be a little tedious. Especially if they have a desire to commentate on their own, or others, play. Rather than being irritated by the talk I choose to try to move away
• several of the players are unpleasant AND talk a lot. No more explanation needed
• several of the players are unpleasant, talk a lot AND commentate on the play AND berate players who, in their opinion, have played badly and given them a bad beat. 

A couple of days ago I was seated at a table with a player in the last category. Normally I would put in a transfer request as soon as I landed at the table. But this time I decided to see whether I could sit at the table and retain my equanimity. Being prepared to utulize the assistance of noise-cancelling headphones and one of Spotify's suggested daily mixes should I find that it would be better for  me to tune out the noise of the table chatter.   And I'm glad I did. 

There was an old guy who was at the table to have fun. And he was on the right of the chatterbox. The first scenario that amused me unfolded as follows:

• Old guy limps
• Chatterbox raises to $20
• Small blind and Old Guy call
• Flop JsTs7d
• Small Blind and Old Guy check. Chatterbox bets $20. Small blind and Old Guy call
• Turn Jd
• Small Blind and Old Guy check. Chatterbox bets $45. Old guy calls, Small blind calls
• River 5h
• Checks around.  Old guy takes it down with 6c7c

Chatterbox goes on tilt with a rant along the lines of "This has been happening to me all week. I'm losing to people who just shouldn't be in the hand!. What did you think calling the preflop raise? What did you think calling the flop bet. What about the Turn bet?. That is just such poor play."  And on he went.

The Old guy smiles and winks at me out of his right eye.

The second scenario unfolded a short time later. In an unremarkable hand the Chatterbox lost another pot. The Old Guy then asked him "Why do you play poker? You don't seem to be enjoying yourself. You seem to be pretty angry".  The Chatterbox looks at him and says "The best thing you could do is to shut up. But you are they type that has to have the last word don't you". (He repeats himself several time emphasizing that the Old Guy has to have the last word.  The old guy has a smile on his face and winks at me again. The irony of the Chatterbox accusing someone else of having to have the last word all the time was delicious.  If you were scripting the exchange for a comedy sitcom you couldn't have scripted it better.  

Slow Progress with Tiny Habits

A combination of BJ Fogg's TED talk on the subject of "Tiny Habits"  and one of Tim Ferriss's podcast interviews with Christopher Sommer led me to a change in my morning routine sometime early to mid 2016. In particular, after my morning meditation I give my body a stretch in janu sirsasana. Aiming to lengthen my hamstrings and improve my general flexibility. Following that, on a good day, I'll complete a set of push ups.

With both activities I started with a low hurdle for success. And over time I've seen the number of push ups I can complete grow from around 20 to start with up to 50 at the end of 2016.   I kept it at 50 for all of 2017 then gave 60 a whirl at the start of 2017 and found that hurdle was a relatively easy one and have kept my sets at 60 since then. With the janu sirsana stretches there has been very slow progress with respect to increasing the limits of my reach and how close my head can approach my knee. However I'm now at a point where I am more than mildly pleased with the slow millimeter by millimeter progress that has happened over the course of the last 21 months or so.

While I have been unable to lose and keep weight off over the past two years, I've improved a couple of aspects of my heath. The improvement with which I am more than mildly pleased with

FIN!

Every so often #1 son sends me an update on his life via email. The latest one is well good enough to share.

Hey there, 

Thought I would share the story of my surf on Sunday with Calvin at Anawhata. The walk down to the beach is about 15min, and is one of the less populous beaches between Piha and Bethells. When we got down, there was a couple walking on the far end of the beach, and a guy surfing close to shore while his girlfriend walked their dog. 

We paddled out a bit further than where the other guy was surfing, and spotted a good wave over at Paikea bay south around a rocky pillar. After several sets came through south of us, with nothing where we sat, we decided to make the ~200m paddle to try get some better waves. We were about 100m out to sea at this point. 

I was leading the way by about 30m and turned around to give Calvin a hurry up when I heard a hiss of water from the direction we were paddling. I swung back around to see a dark 1.5ft fin submerging in the water about 20m away coming straight towards me. 

It was not a dolphin fin.
'FIN' was helpfully yelled out by one of us.
'I'm fucking dead' went through my head. 

I waited facing the spot where the fin had disappeared. Board pointed slightly down where it came from to throw. No ripples appeared in the water. Where was it? Another hiss of water came from my right side. All I remember is seeing the white patch that Orcas have by their eyes submerging into the water, and that it would have been between 8-10ft long. The adrenaline completely wiped all other memory of that moment. It must have been 4m away from me. 

I turned back to paddle over to Calvin and then into shore so we had 'safety in numbers'. The surf was dead flat, and the other surfers girlfriend must have seen the fin and our odd behaviour and signaled her boyfriend in. The paddle back my heart rate was probably higher than at any other point. We saw the Orca breach again swimming away from us but still felt completely naked until our feet were well onto the sand. 

From the beach we saw that there were two Orcas, and the one that went past me was the juvenile. It must have mistaken me for a Seal, and then investigated when I didn't turn and run and it got a better view of me. The pair hung out in the middle of the beach about 300m from where we sat on shore and just floated for about 40min before heading off somewhere else. 

Felt glad to be alive after that event. Not sure I ever want to be that close to Orcas again, although I would trade that in a million times to never see a shark in the line-up. Calvin was glad to have a trial run of what you should actually do if there is a shark because he absolutely shit himself when he saw the fin. He was lucky that I reacted so well and that I didn't catch the last wave that came through or it would have been him in the firing line. Both of us now know that Auckland west coast can indeed have Orcas. 

Note:
-This is a different version of the story that I told Mum. She only knows that I saw them.
-There are no recorded fatalities of Orca on Human attacks from wild Orcas.
-Fun fact: there are estimated around 150-200 Orcas in NZ.

Alcohol, AirBnB, Air Conditioning and Drama

It seems I slept through some drama last night.

I'm in an AirBnB in the suburb of Macleod, somewhere in Melbourne, Australia. I'm renting a room in a house with the host being in residence and another room being AirBnB'd. The host is a Chinese Australian lady, probably 30'ish (maybe  a little younger, maybe a little older), who I've had little to do with up until today. That is the nature of some AirBnB's where the schedules of the host and the guest means that you may see little of each other from day to day. Suzanna has a broad Australian accent and had come across as a no-nonsense lady who was busy with whatever she was doing outside of being an AirBnB host.

Three days ago Ben took up residence as another AirBnB guest. The next day was a Sunday. A day where I would get to know a little about Ben over a shared breakfast. Ben is in his early 40's, Anglo Australian, has a daughter who is almost 18, had been residing in Perth until fairly recently and has a 24 year old Korean girlfriend who is living in Korea, with parents he is not allowed to meet until he learns to speak Korean. He cut breakfast short to take himself off to Church.  To my eye Ben is morbidly obese and must be a candidate for any of the ailments associated with obesity such as diabetes, heart disease and sleep disorders.  I can testify that he almost certainly has issues with his sleep based solely on the decibel levels associated with his snoring. While the noise level from his snoring was mildly bothersome in my room, I'm pretty sure that it would have been unbearable if I had had to try to sleep in the same room.

Ben had a job estimating quotes with a plumbing firm near Melbourne airport. Seemed like a quiet polite bloke

On Ben's first night I arrived home around mid-night and the evaporative air-conditioning system was going. This air-con system is a noisy system, with an outlet in each bedroom. Not having been instructed on where the controls for the air-con were I went to bed and woke in the morning to a quiet room, with the air-con having been turned off overnight.

After Ben left for Church Suzanna arose and asked me about the air-con running.  It seems Ben, being a plumber, had worked out where the controls were and had turned it on. Suzanna didn't want it running overnight. Partly due to the noise, partly due to cost and had turned it off.  My assumption is that Suzanna then discussed the air-con with Ben.

Last evening when I returned to the house at around 7:15pm, the air-con was running. Ben came out of his room and let me know that "only the fan function is on. Felt a bit stuffy when I got here so turned that on to get some air-movement".  From the pre-emptive nature of the conversation I'm sure there had been a conversation between Ben and Suzanna about the air-con. Ben then let me know he was watching a movie on headphones and went back into his room. Suzanna came home later and we had a chat around 9:00pm. Suzanna was surprised to find the air con running and I relayed the earlier conversation with Ben re only having the fan function of the air-con running. Suzanna pointed out there were ceiling fans in each bedroom and if he had just wanted air movement he could have turned his ceiling fan on.  I retired sometime around 9:30 - 10:00 pm. Suzanna turned off the air-con - in part due to the noise in the bedroom.

Then, it appears, while I was stacking some Z's,  the drama began.

Ben turned the fan function on the air-con on again.

Suzanna messaged him on AirBnB

Ben had been drinking sake

Things escalated. First on the AirBnB messaging system. Then the old fashioned way. Face-to-face.

At some stage Ben called Suzanna, in Suzanna's terms "The C word".

Suzanna asked him to leave

Ben, having consumed too much sake, declined on the grounds he was not safe to drive.

Suzanna messaged me around 11:20pm on AirBnB 

 just letting you know that Ben is drunk and has been incredibly rude to me tonight. I don't think he is dangerous but he is not acting like a sober person. I wanted to ask Airbnb to relocate him tonight but he says he's too drunk to drive so I'm having them relocate him first thing tomorrow. Just wanted to let you in case you hear anything.

When I arose this morning I saw Ben heading down the hallway towards the front door dragging a suitcase behind him, with Suzanna casting looks at his back that, if they had been daggers, would have been life threatening.

Suzanna and I had a bit of a post-mortem over breakfast before she headed off to work. At one point she wondered whether Ben was a tad racist. My suspicion is that if there is any character flaw in Ben, it is that flaw known as "arsehole when drunk".  A flaw I've had to own up to in the past. And, after quitting the demon alcohol almost five years ago now, a flaw I'm glad that I haven't displayed for some time now....  I have sympathy for both players in the drama that unfolded last night. Suzanna for the rudeness she was subject to. And the fear she likely felt when having to deal with a large, drunk male.  (Although she did point out that while he was drunk he didn't appear to be threatening. If he had gone down that path, his size would have been an issue for her.  On the flip side, while large, due to his obesity he couldn't move very fast... And she could have knocked on my door, yelled out for help). 

And sympathy (maybe empathy) for Ben. This morning, all things being equal, he is likely to be feeling shame and embarrassment. And, unless he never drinks again, is likely to behave reprehensibly again when drunk again in the future. Which, again, will be followed by shame and embarrassment.

I did hear muffled voices at some point last night. But not the content of the discussions that they were having. Incorrectly my sleep addled mind's initial impressions were that Suzanna had a male friend over and why couldn't they be quieter in their conversation.  While, in retrospect, it would have been better for my male ego to have arisen from my slumber to offer aid, it seems that Suzanna is a more than competent lady who takes no prisoners when insulted.

I wonder how many stars they will give each other on AirBnB's rating system?