long due update

Okay, due to the easter holidays, I haven't updated. Theh Easter hholiday 's been quite uneventfull.... I've been to Luxemburg for a few days. Brought back six bottles of liquor. I probably shhould have worked more for school.

Anyways Tuesday, classes started again. I've got fuve weeks before "blok" starts which is a time when there are no classes, but we study as hell to get ready for exams.

So, I'm working a lot, relatively to other weeks of course. which doesn't mean I hhavent got time. I've read the first two Hharrhy potter books and saw the first six films. There not thhe best of books or films but sometimes you hjust have to go with the crowd.

During the holidays I brewed once again aswell. This time, I've had thhe least possible trouble, and probably ended up with the best brew I've ever made. I'll keep you updated on that one.

poker succes

I've been playing great poker lately. Made it to a final table of a 1$ 4700 player tournament in the beginning of this week. On top of that I've been grinding 180 man 2.2$ tournaments untill yesterday, when I reached the 340$. At that point I started playing 45 man 3.25 sng's. And I've already worked my way up to 397$ bankroll (this morning I had 404, but I played 4 and only mincashed in 1)

birthday party and the fukushima situation

A little while ago it was my birthday, and it's been a tradition that I throw a birthday party where I serve champagne cocktails, combined with large chunks of chocolat. This year I chose to serve champagne juleps. Brandy, muddled with mint sprigs, topped of with champagne. This will be what we'll be drinking in my room, after which we'll be heading to town to drink some more in a bar.

In Japan, the comunication about the nuclear crisis in Fukushima is so bad, that by now I (and I believe with me a lot of people) have less or more given up following it constantly. Nearly every "succes" later appears to have little or no effect, and every severe problem is later being downplayed or even labeled a mistake. The government is thinking about nationalising tepco 2.5 weeks into this disaster, which acording to me would be a good thing, but wouldn't it be a good idea, if it were standard operating procedure that during very severe crises government (in Japan, but in other countries as well) automatically takes over comunication and actively deals with the problem rather then believing that the company will solve it.

To me it still seems as if the situation is simply getting worse. plutonium being found outside the plant means that the fuel rods in there are very hot, radioactive particles are being found throughout Japan. Also I'm wondering how many of these fukushima 50 (allthough they are with many more by now) are already sick and what levels of radiation they are being subjected to by now. According to me, the level of radioactivity on this site could only havie been rising permanently throughout this crisis (temporary spikes are possible, due to release of new radioactive material which gets spread by the wind within minutes or hours of it exiting the plant) but the level htat would be measured when neglecting these effects can only have risen higher.

 And to me, the worst problem is that they don't know what to do anymore. Spraying water on the reactors was a means of keeping them cool untill power was restored to the plant, after which this power could be used to cool the reactors in a more conventional way. Power has been restored, but the problem hasn't been solved. Thus restoring the power isn't helping enough to cool the reactors down to stabilise the situation, and safely put a concrete casing around the reactors. When spraying water wasn't doing enough, we knew that it was bad, but restoring power should make things better. Right now, it's bad, and they don't have a clue how to make things better anymore.

succesful martini night. and the concept of free will.

The martini night was a succes, and while we were drinking we were playing chinese poker at 0.25€ per point. At the end of the night I chose to take home a cocktail glass rather then the money.

Yesterday night it was the "Night of the exam". the concept is simple: about 1000 students are put into a movie theater, and solve 35 multile choice questions. (general knowledge, ranging from politics to ancient popes and geography) After thhat there's a sneak preview. This year the movie they howed was: Thhe adjustment bureau, starring Matt Damon. It was a pretty good movie, altough I didn't like the supernatural aspect about it, and would have preferred a giant conspiracy theory. It adressed a question I have been asking myself for quite some time now: Do we have free will. Or do we have the illusion of free will?

I'm not suggesting that as it is in the movie, some higher power decides when and were we do what. I however believe that it moight very well be that life is just one giant differential equation, and that it's all just an endless list of cause and effect. a inevitbaly leads to b inevitably leads to c...

It's somehow a slighty scary notion that my entire life could potentialy already be mapped out. What I'll eat tonight, were I'll work, how and when I'll day, and all the time I'll have the idea that I actually consciously chose to do that...

cocktails, more cocktails and poker

I didn't make the 60 hour record (which technically I wouldn't even have made yet.) I went to bed after about 20 hours. At the poker tournament I talked about, I finished 6 out of 17. KJo vs Q9s. (I was KJo).

Yesterday night I met up with a high school friend who I usually see about 2-3 times a year. We went for some asian food, and then went to the bar with the best cocktails in town. I drank an old-fashioned, a manhattan, a rum gimlet and finally a daiquiri. The other guy drank martini and liked it so good that he decided to organise a martini night tonight. He's been spending the day driving around town rounding up olives, cocktail glasses and other necessities.

One thing I have in common with this guy is poker, so tonight we'll be playing chinese poker, 50c a point.

When talking about poker, Two days ago, I made 110$ playing about 30 2.20$ 180 man SNG's.

record attempt poker tournament and the libyan problem

As the title of this blog suggests, I occasionaly suffer from bouts of insomnia. Over the years I have found that the best cure against these bouts is staying awake for a LONG time. This wears me out, after which I can resume sleeping like a normal person, rather than dragging it out for a long time. So, for the past 2 weeks I've been at it again, and I've decded to soleve it here and now. My record so far is staying awake for 60 ours straight. Today I got up at 7.30AM. If all goes well, I'll go to bed on wednesday somewthing like 9.30 PM or something like that. So in that case I'll break my record by 2 hours. Fingers crossed.


Tonight I'll be participating in a poker tournament of my dorm. Sadly info about this tournament is lacking. I don't know how many people will be there, what the blind levels or starting stack will be, not even which game will be played (altough it'll be Texas hold'em, since these days people barely know that there are other kinds of poker)

And then there's Libya.
I can't wrap my head around how Kadhafi should be driven out of Libya without using groundforces. You can destroy the enemy's infrastructure, but the rebels will still have to take libya manu militari. Which might not go as smooth or clean as everybody hopes.

succesfull beer night, abominal movies, and an impending nuclear disaster

The beer night I spoke of a few days ago was great. Together with some friends, I drank 16 different beers, together we ranked them from best to worst. As the best beer we chose the Hoegaarden Verboden vrucht, as worst one: "probably the best beer in the world":  Carlsberg.

For the hell of it I watched the what are probably the two worst movies ever made: Hole in one, a golf player loses a bet with two plastic surgeons and wakes up with tits... And Sharktopus. Yes, a story about  a Navy experiment gone wrong resulting in a killer shark octopus hybrid roaming the water. (Piranha anyone) The movies in themselves are extremely bad. But I watched it with some friends and we had a good laugh.

Then: Fukushima. 7 days after the earthquake this situation is still not resolved, and according to me, it's still getting worse. I don't really understand how it is possible thhat so many things can keep on going wrong. An 8.9 Earthquake is very extreme, and it can be uderstood that things can go wrong when such a thing happens. But 7 days later, problems should at least be stable rather then still increasing. According to me this points to a deeper problem with nuclear safety in Japan, rather then a freak accident.

Sadly, "green" movements all around the world seem to be using this event as a means to press for the end of nuclear power which is simply not an option. We need nuclear energy to cover our energy needs, and alternative energy sources (like wind, sun,...) are great supplements. But just that: supplements. Untill nuclear fusion is ready to work with commercially. We will not be able to stop using fision plants. But that should mean two things... We should start working on replacing old nuclear power plants with new nuclear power plants (who will be way more modern, and are more efficient than the current ones we have). And we should put large quantities of money into research into nuclear fusion to speed up this process significantly.

Succesfull home brew and Japanese nulear failure

One of my hobby's is brewing my own beer. A couple of weeks ago I brewed a batch, yesterday I tasted the first bottle of it, and it is good. Without a doubt the best beer I've brewn so far. I've already tought of some changes I'll make to the recipe next time, but I'm very pleased with this result.

Then the thing everyone is talking about: the Japanese earthquake. The Earthquake in itself at this point seems pretty much irrelevant compared to the problems they are facing in there nuclear power plant. Personally, I don't believe that they've said everything. Both containment vessels are said to be intact, altough the buildings around them have exploded. The explosions of monday and saturday seemed quite large, but perhaps they are right, and the containment vessels are intact.

Then there is the story about the "partial" meltdown. At this point they acknowledge that probably in all three reactors there fuel rods are melting or have already melted (even on saturday there were rumors about melting fuel rods in two reactors. But the actual reactors would be intact. When the fuel rods are melting, that's a sign that it is very hot inside the reactor, and a mere 15 cm of steel isn't going to hold very long unless some very serious cooling is happening, which is aparently failing. Also, the increasing number of reports about radiation measured outside of the reactor complex to me seems like a very bad omen.

Last but not least, multiplt times already we've heard about radiation levels dropping after a few hours. This can only happen in to ways, Either the radioactive isotopes had short half-lives and had already decayed by the time of new measurments, or the isotopes had somehow flown away. But once radiation was measured, that simply meant that radioactive material had escaped and WILL decay outside of the reactor, regardless of whether or not radiation levels were lower a couple of hours later.

Let's just hope that they ae able to finally get a grip on this problem before it get's even worse.

good movies and inexperienced teens

Yesterday I went to the movies and saw Rabbit Hole in avant première. In the beginning, it had kind of a "lost in translation" feel. But it developed into a powerful story about a couple who had lost there child and are uncertain in how to deal with this. Sometimes these types of movies turn into very heavy stories which leave you with a tired feeling afterward, but although the theme of the movie is very serious, there were many humurous moments in the film. I'd really recommend this one.

This week, the highschool students are having the week off. And that usually means that they come down to the college towns to taste college life (some colleges allow them to actually follow some classes). As I was walking home from the movie theater yesterday night, I passed a bar which is popular with students, and as such, the highschool students were there as well. In the vicinity of the bar, I walked passed no less than 8 people whho were so drunk that they had to be held by there friends. 2 still fell to the ground, dragging there friends with them. And I have never seen more puddles of puke on a single sidewalk than yesterday night. I honestly believe that I new how to handle my liquor way better at that age.

Right now, I'm enjoying a bottle of Chilean cabernet sauvignon. I pretty much like Chilean wines. Don't know why, but they seem to have a good price for their quality.

I'll be throwing a beer tasting party next week next week tuesday, Just hope that some people turn up.

If you believe it, they believe it

Yesterday, a friend of mine, who was in his senior year in college and had been getting very good grades told me that actually, he had been lying for the past 2.5 years to everyone, his friends, parents, girlfriend,... and currently wasn't even enrolled in college. He had just been pretending to be. In reality, if he would decide to pick up his education again, he would be a sophomore, rather than a senior. I always expected that perhaps his grades were a bit exagerrated, but I never fathomed that he would simply have made up his education itself.

I went to the movies yesterday night, the intention was to watch the movie: "the Kings Speech" but I accidentally strolled into the wrong theater, and watched "Rundskop" (roughly translates as Bullshead". Good movie, it talked about Hormone maffia, and somewhat parafrased the killing of famed hormone hunter Andre Cools, altough the movie was set in the present rather than 20 years ago.

I found out today that I was supposed to write a paper in a group collaboration, but I didn't show up at the time when the groups were being formed, luckily my 2 partners are bright, hardworking people who won't hold me back.

hanging out with the beautiful people of tomorrow.

Yesterday I went to a speaking event organized by a local management school. They had invited some people, including the chairman of one of our political parties and the manager of our university to talk about entrepreneurship.

Most of the speakers were fairly interesting, althiough they all kinda said the same. Work hard, having an idea is only a small part of starting a succesfull business,...

What I thought of as most terrible was the knowledge of the english language by the actual stucents of this school who were announcing the speakers. It was just appaling, there accents were as thick mud, and on top of that, there public speaking skills were terrible. If that's the way you graduate from these schools, I'm quite sure that the rest of the knowledge gathered there won't be all that great, and you'll never be able to come off as confident and succesfull talking that way. Also wearing suits whichh obviously don't fit and talking into a blackberry just to show off that you have a blackberry  don't make you look anything more sofisticated.

The reception afterward where champagne was handed out quite liberally was fun however (although downning 3 glasses of champagne and a beer during the first hour did kinda take the edge of)

On a different note, two days ago, I watched planet terror and Machete. Two great films which I can really recommend. Plots are barely existent, and plot holes are ubiquitous, violence and sex is everywhere, but somehow Rodriguez succeeded in delivering two strong films if you manage to look behind the superficial.

And with that it's weekend again. I'll be rehearsing with my band, tomorrow. In about two months we've got a gig, and there's still some work to be done.

Inside job, 7 card stud and no longer wasting my time following lectures

watched inside job today, it was pretty good, but didn't really contain any new info. Although this is ofcourse a good way to get this information a bit more mainstream.

I aslo tried my hand at a bit of 7 card stud rather then the good old texas holdem, and it paid of with a 10bb win in just over 30 hands. I'll be playing a bit more of this game in the next days, but ofcourse, it's way harder to multitable this game than holdem. It just seems as if it's an easier game (read, opponents aren't as good there)

Haven't really been going to classes lately, it's just a waste of time. Spending 2 hours at a lecture should mean that later on in the year I should have to spend at least 2 hours less at studying a certain course, and it doesn't. Therefore I've chosen to ignore classes for the most part and just crack the courses the way I've been doing for the past fes years: by figuring out the styles of the professors and the courses rather than the matter itself.

I'm going out now, have a few drinks with a friend. then perhaps get some sleep, otherwise, just spend the night behind my computer watching some movie.