Super busy times

In the end I kept myself pretty busy during my scheduled restweek from fitness. I played frisbee in the park with Deldar and Terje, went out and had lunch/dinner with them a bunch of times and also played Tennis(Tommy was the 4th) and Squash. Tennis and Squash were loads of fun. I personally prefer Squash, but both are lots of fun. Friday I was finally able to go to the gym again and since then I've put in 5 workouts already. Breathing Squats phase. Awesome exercise, should be a fun 8 weeks.

I'm also going to Japan for sure now. I'll spend ~2 weeks there with my dad and then another 2-3 on my own. I'll be spending time in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka. Also on my Japan To Do List are go to a National Park(should be amazing in autumn) and visit an Onsen/Ryokan. An Onsen is basically a hot springs. Bathing houses and taking baths in general is extremely popular in Japan and a natural hot springs should be the best way to experience it. And obviously not to forgot eat shitloads of sushi!!!
I've also been looking for ways to get in touch with Japanese people during the 2nd half of my trip. I know 2-3 Japanese people on Skype through Mixxer(language exchange website) that I will meet up with while I'm there, but I've also found this website called couchsurfing.org. Basically it's a social networking website for people who love travelling to get in touch with eachother and potentially offer eachother a place to sleep. Seems like a useful resource so far.
I'm VERY MUCH looking forward to my trip and I CAN ABSOLUTELY NOT WAIT to go!!!

Poker's been going pretty well. Still getting more and more confident and recovering mental strength bit by bit. I believe I should be able to play a reasonable amount of hands again. Unfortunately enough I've just been far too busy to actually do so. All the Squash, Tennis, Dinners, Lunches, Japanese learning, Workouts etc etc have taken up a LOT of time. And next monday - wednesday I'm going to go to Paris with my mom and younger brother, so that's not gonna help me play more either(although it should be a lot of fun). I really want to buckle down and focus on poker and steadily progress again. Things just being so stagnant for 16 months now is really annoying. Especially since I'll be in Japan for ~a month too and once I get back I'll only have about half a year left before my lease ends and I'll have to decide what I wanna do with my living situation. I'm not sure at the moment what I want to do and I really want to make some progress again pokerwise before I have to make that decision. If I don't I'll most likely want to try and cut down on living expenses a little.
Hopefully I can start grinding a lot more sometime soon. I'll have to focus on spending my time efficiently(already do a good job at that) and probably also cut down on some activities a little bit. I've already decided I'm gonna mostly stop watching the GSL. While It's a ton of fun, I really really want to do my best and play a bit more poker.

Yesterday was pretty epic. FINALLY after a year and 3-4 months, I'll finally get my pretty big 5 figure sum back from Full Tilt Poker. Moreover a lot of friends will be getting their money back and in general it's just a great thing for the poker industry/economy to see this ugly matter resolved. Obviously we had some good sushi to celebrate this wonderful ocassion. We went back to Sakana Tei after having not been there for a few months. I even ordered something off of the special Japanese chalkboard menu! :) The delicious パリパリサラダ(Pari Pari Salad). And I got a super special piece of prawn sashimi that they happened to have available that day. After I finished the meat, they added the remaining head to a miso soup, which added a very nice extra flavor. Likely the best Miso Soup I've ever had. Oh and we had Fatty Salmon for the first time ever. Not as good as Fatty Tuna, but a bit better than regular Salmon.

 パリパリサラダ(Pari Pari Salad)

 Special shrimp sashimi

 My awesome nigiri order. Had almost forgotten how good Fatty Tuna tastes

 Dave's order. Pretty legit imo

 Vanessa's order. I guess it doesn't take much to please a vegetarian ;)

 Tom only got the best of the best. But was unlucky, cause it turned out the Chu-Toro beat the O-Toro yesterday.

Best miso soup ever?

Last but not least, Martijn(dutch friend I've known since high school), has an internship in London from the 3rd of September - Christmas and I've decided to let him stay at my place during those 4 months. At first I was a bit hesitant, because 4 months is a long time and I quite like living alone. But after talking about it with my mom, I became convinced that the good should easily outweigh the bad. So I decided to let him stay and now I'm quite looking forward to it.

Almost forgot to list the new movies I've seen that I'd recommend others watch if they have a chance:
 -こくはく(Confessions)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1590089/
Awesome Japanese movie. Thanks to the Japanese friend on skype who recommended this to me. It's a bit of a crazy and weird movie, but very interesting and refresing and very much worth watching. Especially the 1st 15 min are pretty wild.

 -Ajeossi(The Man from Nowhere)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1527788/
Awesome Korean movie. Thank you Nils for the recommendation!
It's an action movie, that's extremely well done. Kinda like The Chaser and even somewhat similar to the english movie Taken. Very much worth watching, it's hard not to like it.

-Salò o le 120 gionate di sodoma
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073650/
This movie I actually HIGHLY recommend NOT watching. Nonetheless I have to tell you a little bit about it. On IMDB people say it's the most disturbing film you'll ever watch and the summary says:
"Four fascist libertines round up 9 teenages boys and girls and subject them to 120 days of physical, mental and sexual torture."
I mean yes, there's some pretty retarded stuff going on, but I didn't find it disturbing in the least, because it was just so unrealistic. Not to say this couldn't happen in real life, but I mean that the way it was shown in the movie was terribly done. Here's a few examples:
-The captured kids can freely roam around the house and go to a servant's bedroom to have sex with her, but noone ever bothers escaping? Right...
-The poop eating part... seems pretty impossible without puking. Not that I've tried, but I'm 99% I'd puke and pass out and be unable to eat it.
-Overall we just weren't shown much of how the captured kids dealt with everything. They were mostly pictured as very passive and taking everything as is. Didn't try to start a riot or fight their way out or anything.
Just badly done and I don't see how anyone can be too shocked by this due to the unrealistic way everything is shown. I'd recommend not wasting your time with this one, unless you like to see a lot of retarded horny actors have sex with eachother and eat chocolate icecream, while being told it's poop.

Frank.

Can't work out for an entire week :(

I've got a kind of boring week up ahead. After working out for 2 hours/day and 6 days/week for the past 8 weeks, I have a scheduled restweek next week. Sadly enough your body needs one every now and then. There's some upsides such as being even more motivated to get back at it at the end of the week, but mostly I don't like these weeks. My life's less structured and I do miss going to the gym a lot.

So now the question is what do I do with all this extra time I have to spend next week. I used to just play a ton more poker. I'd love to do that this week aswell and poker's definitely been going a bit better. I've been winning a tiny bit and my overall outlook on poker has improved a decent bit, but I'm still not nearly back to being as mentally strong as I used to be. I used to be able to lose 10%+ of my net worth in a day and be pretty much unphased and still play really well. Sometimes even making a comeback happen. However, at the moment I am affected by losses far quicker and more often than I'd like I have to quit after playing a few hundred hands.
This doesn't particularly speed up the entire recovery process, but I don't see anything else I can do besides giving it a bit more time. I should keep on recovering mentally and getting back to where I was eventually. At which point I should be able to play 50k+ hands a month again.

日本語の勉きょうはいいでした。二月以来に着々勉きょうをしました、そして週に十五時間と二十五時間のあいだぐらい勉きょうをしました。かん字は百ぐらいをしります。日本に行きたいですりょこうにまてります。たぶん、十月か十一月に行きます。
TRANSLATION:
日本語(Japanese) has been going well. I've been studying consistently over the past 2 months and I've studied ~15-25 hours a week. I know about 100 Kanji. I can't wait for the trip to Japan I want to go on. I'll probably go in October or November.

As far as eating out goes. I haven't eaten out a whole lot as of late. Had a modest but solid Japanese dinner with Deldar where I didn't take any pictures a couple days ago and then the pictures from these 2 meals that I had 2-3 weeks ago. The first 2 are from a random place we walked into. Quite cheap and superquick, surprisingly good quality food.

 Pretty good appetizer.

 Better steak than most steakhouses serve.

 My first ever Japanese O-Bento with Lië in Soho.

Random dead pigeon in front of my appartment as I got back from the gym the other day.

I also saw a couple of movies worth mentioning:

-Go(2001)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0299937/

Amazing Japanese movie about a Korean kid who grew up in Japan and is dealing with his ex-pro-boxer dad on 1 hand and the discrimination towards Koreans in Japan on the other hand. Especially the first ~20 min are CRAZY and the ending is really well done aswell. Definitely worth a watch.

-Intouchable(2011)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1675434/

A very good french movie, about an unusual young guy who doesn't have much of a life, but then gets hired by a superrich quadriplegic man to be his servant/helper. Especially the actor who plays the young black guy does a really good job and keeps you entertained throughout.

-Akmareul Boatda(I Saw the Devil)(2010)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1588170/

Awesome Korean movie about a crazy serial killer who ends up killing the wife of a man you don't wanna mess with. The man of the murdered wife wants revenge and tries to make the serial killer's life a living hell.

-Das Experiment(2001)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250258/

This is a german movie based on the real events during the Stanford Prison Experiment(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment). ~20 men volunteer for an experiment. ~12 as prisoners and the rest as guards. They'll be locked up for 2 weeks and if they stay there for 2 weeks they'll get paid. As days go on, everyone starts to take things more and more seriously and eventually things get completely out of control. Pretty wild movie and crazy to think a lot of it happened in reality.

-Oasis(2002)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0320193/

Very original Korean movie. It's about the relationship between a mentally challenged guy who just came out of prison and the daughter of the man he killed while drunk driving who suffers from cerebral palsy and can barely do anything physically. There's a few really beautiful scenes and overall the movie's just awesome to watch. Korean movies are the best!!!

Didn't see any good english movies this past month. But foreign movies are generally better anyway :)

That's about all I did. Hopefully I won't be too bored this coming week and hopefully I can soon start to put in more volume playing poker.

Frank.

SMOOTHIES, New Sushi King in London and tiny bit of poker ownage.

About a year after I promised to make a smoothie blog, here it finally is. Macdaddy and Adam, enjoy!

http://youtu.be/lhauiR_dW_M

Last week's tuesday I went to this new Sushi Bar that opened up in London called Sushi Tetsu. I'll just tell you straight away it's the best sushi in London. Here are the pictures:

 So much Tuna!

 Yellowtail?

 Don't remember

 Tuna

 Salmon. BIG piece

 Chu-Toro

 Don't remember

 Horse Mackerel

 Shrimp

 Eel Handroll

 Egg

 See Bream if I remember correctly

1 piece of a Horse Mackerel Roll

http://youtu.be/vqMlcDjdd_A

The Main-Event: O-Toro

 

The sushi chef seemed like a real perfectionist, which goes to show how much he cares about the sushi he makes. The chef and his wife were superfriendly too. We chatted quite a lot. I was especially jealous of the chef, because he's been to Jiro, a 3-Michelin Star sushi bar in Tokyo, considered the best sushi in the world. He told me to come back before I go to Japan. I'm pretty sure we'll be back at least twice before then. This place is EPIC!!!

Moreover last Sunday I went to the Taste of London with a couple others. Basically a festival in Regent's Park where about 40-50 restaurants set up shop preparing dishes all afternoon. Visitors buy 'crowns', trade them for food and eat. That's about it. The food overall wasn't amazing, it was also harder to enjoy standing outdoors instead of eating at a restaurant, but it was a lot of fun nonetheless.

Lastly, I've realized I've made a big mistake ever since I started playing poker. I never saved the chatlogs of conversations with idiots that I owned. So I've decided to start doing that from now on. Here's the first one:

bjl90: lol

bjl90: never played a bigger idiot

bjl90: who runs hotter then the sun

E-Cart6: then why quit

bjl90: like u bring being bad to a new level

bjl90: cause i cant b fkd to be coolered anymore

bjl90: by a fkn idiot nit like u

I didn't even cooler him once. The only hand where we got the money in that I won was this one:

***** Hand History for Game 82565055422 ***** (Poker Stars)
$200.00 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Thursday, June 28, 06:40:34 ET 2012
Table Tabit II (Real Money)
Seat 1 is the button
Seat 1: bjl90 ( $210.69 USD )
Seat 2: E-Cart6 ( $300.65 USD )
bjl90 posts small blind [$1.00 USD].
E-Cart6 posts big blind [$2.00 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to E-Cart6 [  Js 7s ]
bjl90 raises [$3.00 USD]
E-Cart6 raises [$14.00 USD]
bjl90 calls [$12.00 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ 8h, 3d, 7h ]
E-Cart6 bets [$18.00 USD]
bjl90 calls [$18.00 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ Kh ]
E-Cart6 checks
bjl90 bets [$38.00 USD]
E-Cart6 calls [$38.00 USD]
** Dealing River ** [ Ah ]
E-Cart6 checks
bjl90 bets [$138.69 USD]
E-Cart6 calls [$138.69 USD]
bjl90 shows [Jc, 9c ]
E-Cart6 shows [Js, 7s ]
E-Cart6 wins $420.88 USD from main pot

Needless to say he was pretty pissed about my call =)

That's it for now. Maybe next time I'll try to blog (partly) in Japanese or post something about my intense workout regimen.

An actual poker related blog!

I've managed to write up something on the subject of poker. It wasn't easy and took me a while. I've decided that it's best not to post it in my blog though. The main purpose of it was to try and structure some of my thoughts, which I somewhat succeeded at. I will however post a few cliffnotes.

-Basically my poker results haven't been very good.

-To be honest they've been really bad since March 2011, which has been a long time.

-Half a year ago I would've told you it was pretty much entirely being unlucky. Right now I'm not really sure of anything anymore. Losing for 15+ months doesn't particularly help your self confidence.

-I've always said: “Things can always be worse”, especially at the end of 2010 when I was 350k under EV in half a year, but realistically I didn't think it could be worse. Well, this time it's definitely worse and I really hope these are the darkest days of my poker career, because if I ever experience anything worse than this I don't think I'll be able to recover.

–To recover from this is going to be hard enough of a task as it is and I'm really hoping I can do it, but it's gonna be hard and if I get unlucky a lot on top of everything in the coming months.... it may just be impossible to achieve.

Thank god for me being able to work out 6x2 hours/week, I'm not sure what I'd do without my workouts.

Specifically for Adam and Macdaddy I recently shot a smoothy video blog! So you 2 can look forward to that when I decide to plug my phone into my computer. Probably in a couple of days.

Best Movie Ever? Has Oldboy been dethroned?

愛の剥き出し

(Ai no Mukidashi aka Love Exposure)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1128075/

I will not spoil anything.

You can watch the entire thing on youtube here:
1)
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8D31A2B2149DEE3C&feature=plcp
Highest quality I could find, but is missing the 1st part.
2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_JdJ98RrOQ&feature=related
Watch the first 10-15 min here.

If you've ever heard me talk about movies, I'm sure you'll know that Oldboy is far and away my favorite movie ever. Untill a few months ago, when I saw Nae Meorisokui Jiwoogae(A Moment to Remember) nothing even came close. I HIGHLY recommend checking out both of those movies. Those'll be 2x2 hours you won't regret.

Then yesterday the day I thought would never come, came a 2nd time. I saw a movie I liked just as much as Oldboy. This time it was 愛の剥き出し(Ai no Mukidashi aka Love Exposure). For the record it's impossible to say for both A Moment to Remember and Love Exposure, exactly how I rank them compared to Oldboy. This is because I've seen Oldboy 5 times and both of those other movies only once so far. While I liked both of them better than Oldboy if you compare all their first viewings, Oldboy started to be truly epic on repeated viewings, so we'll have to see how I like the other two when I watch them a couple more times. Both of them are very promising though, especially Love Exposure.


The most impressive thing about Love Exposure that I can talk about without spoiling anything is the range of emotions it made me go through. Most movies don't even truly pull a single emotion out of me, whereas good ones manage to pull one out. There's very few that make me really experience more than one emotion. It reminded me of La Vita e Bella(It's a Beautiful Life) in that way, which starts of very happy and funny whereas the second part is kinda dark and sad, although not as strong as the first part in my opinion. The movie that does these multiple emotions best is The Lion King. There's a lot of intensely happy songs, but also some extremely sad moments and The Lion King switches between them faster than any other movie I've ever seen.
Love Exposure also does this. Especially in the first 2 hours there's a lot of hilarious stuff and it's super funny, but especially the last hour, hour and a half gets extremely intense. There's one scene in particular that is SO wild, the only thing I can compare it to is Oldboy's final penthouse scene. Absolutely CRAZY!


You may have noticed I just said first 2 hours and last hour, hour and a half. That's right, this movie is 4 hours long. Hopefully this doesn't turn any of you of, because let me tell you, it's not 1 minute too long. I loved every minute of it and there's more than enough story to keep you interested all the way.


Let's see... what else can I say to make you watch this? Did I mention that the awesome 2nd movement of Beethoven's 7th Symphony is used a lot? Did I mention the acting's really good? Did I mention you can watch it for free on YouTube any time you like? Oh yeah, that's right. I did. Well... I can't mention much more without spoiling anything, so I suggest you just go watch this movie.


P.S. Make sure you watch Oldboy and A Moment to Remember aswell.


P.P.S. If you watch all 3 of these movies and dislike all of them... well... nvm... it ain't gonna happen anyway.


P.P.P.S. Still no poker blog. Been wanting to write about poker, but it's a hard subject right now. Probably make a smoothie blog first, because that's been long overdue. I promised some people I would nearly a year ago. It's coming!!!

This past weekend I turned 23. To celebrate this once in a lifetime event, I had dinner at a couple 'neat' restaurants. First off was さかなてい (Sakana-Tei) with a couple of other London based poker players. I've been to this restaurant quite often since Deldar discovered it. They serve the best nigiri sushi I've ever had and it's a cozy little family run restaurant.

It's not uncommon for us to put in big orders when we go here, but we've never ordered as much as we did this time. I put together my own plate, but Deldar put in an order only to have 5 people say "+1", effectively multiplying his order by 6. On top of that Deldar had mentioned he was 'very hungry' so we knew it'd be a quality meal.

The only downside was that we had to do with starters for about 90 minutes, because Sakana-Tei only has 1 sushi chef. I guess we had ourselves to blame. The order of 150+ pieces of Nigiri and ~100 pieces of various rolls took the chef quite a while to prepare. It was definitely worth the wait though. This is what 1000£ of sushi looks like.

 This was my order. Top left to bottom right:

O-toro(fatty tuna) + Unagi(grilled eel)

Sake(salmon) + Horse Mackerel + Chu-Toro(middle fatty tuna) + Tuna

Yellowtail + Salmon Roe(eggs) + Salmon Avocado Roll

Tamago(omelette) + O-toro Roll

Omelettes. Part of Deldar's massive order.

 Part of Deldar's massive order. Salmon, Tuna, Yellowtail, O-toro.

 Bunch of rolls with salmon nigiri in the middle.

 Unagi. Grilled Eel.

Red Beans, Chestnut and Green Tea Ice Cream. VERY good.

AWESOME dinner. We all had a blast.

Then during the weekend I made a trip to The Netherlands and on my birthday my mom treated me to another great dinner. My sister came along too. It was a French-Chinese Fusion restaurant in The Hague called HanTing. The restaurant looked fantastic and the service was top 5 I've ever had. One waiter in particular is probably SEVERELY underpaid there, because the restaurant wasn't as expensive as you'd think. Actually I find that in general that there's a lot of great value restaurants in Holland.

Me and mom went for the tasting menu, while my sister, Daphne, wasn't feeling as adventerous. The food varied. The first 2 courses were allright, but nothing more and the 3rd and 4th were quite good, but they definitely saved the best for last. The dessert was AMAZINGLY good. Best dessert I've had since eating at Joel Robuchon at the MGM in Las Vegas, which has 3 Michelin stars. Last but not least every single course was an artistic masterpiece. The food looked great.

 My sister's food. I believe it was Wagyu Beef.

 First course. Don't remember what it was I'm afraid, but it looks great!

Second course, was seabass with some coconut cream and a whole bunch of other stuff.

 Third was another type of fish.

Another one of my sister's courses. This might actually have been the wagyu beef.

 Best lamb I've ever had. Tasted great!

Except for the fried pineapple I don't remember what was in it. Just that it tasted FANTASTIC!

Thanks again for a great meal, mom!!

Just as the last restaurant saved the best course for last, it so happened that I also saved the best dinner for last. Me and my dad went to the city I used to study all the way on the other side of the country, near the german border. Reason being that Restaurant TAO in Enschede has the best sushi rolls I've ever had and I believe there's a good chance they're the best sushi rolls in the world. Let me back that bold statement up with some pictures.

Restaurant TAO is a well decorated, not particularly expensive restaurant(for japanese food anyway). If you take a look at the menu you won't be particularly impressed, but after your meal you'll realize it's actually a very good overal restaurant, albeit no top notch japanese restaurant. You might ask, then what's so special about this place? Well... you need to ask for the stuff that's not on the menu.

The Special Rolls

Up top is an Ebi Tempura Roll(fried prawn), but no ordinary one. This one has Unagi(grilled eel) on top. My dad's favorite sushi ever.

On the bottom is an awesomely decorated Dragon Roll with crab and lots of other awesomeness. An especially nice touch is the spicy sauce that comes with it.

 Top left is a very well done Salmon Avocado Roll.

Top right is a slightly warm Asperagus Roll. Very original as I've never seen one before, but I have to admit I wasn't as blown away by this, nonetheless above average sushi roll.

Bottom Left, I'm not 100% sure, but I believe it was a Crab Tempura roll. The inside was 100% tempura, on top there's a green something I can't recall and it's been sprinkled with my crunchy bits.

Here on the bottom right is the best sushi I've ever tasted. It is a Rainbow Roll with Mango inside. I'm not sure how the chef ever came up with the idea to put mango in there, but the result is SOOOO GOOD!!!

 A 'relatively' simple Ebi Tempura Roll, but it's the best one I've ever had.

 Up top is another roll that my dad couldn't get enough of. It's basically a teppan yaki dish(beef) turned into a sushi roll with spring onions on top.

On the bottom is my second favorite sushi ever. It's a Tuna Tartar Roll, tastes absolutely FANTASTIC and possible looks even better.

 These were just extra orders of rolls I couldn't get enough of. My dad was already full by this time, but I didn't mind. I meant to get another Tuna Tartar Roll, but misordered and foolishly said another one of the green one and got another Crab Tempura Roll. Oh well... could've been worse.

Thanks dad for this meal of EPIC proportions. I'll definitely be going back here probably sometime later this year or early next year. Their sushi is just THAT good. Easily worth the 4 hour roundtrip when I happen to be visiting my parents in The Netherlands.

I highly recommend any fan of sushi that ever visits Holland to go to Restaurant TAO in Enschede, it's basically a MUST GO when you're there.

Overall I had a great weekend and birthday and some amazing food, but I'm also glad to be back home again doing my usual things. Here's to an awesome year of being 23!