Getting life up and going

               It was a rough start to what turned out to be a fantastic day. Already Jackie and I have started to fall into the outline of routine. We get up between 6:00 and 6:30 am, shower, dress and eat a little. Then we hop on the moped. (A long side note about mopeds. According to the UK’s foreign and Commonwealth Office over 38 people die a day in Thailand in motorcycle accidents. When we were preparing for Thailand I skipped over the warnings about motorcycles and mopeds, because I couldn’t imagine EVER using one while we were here. It just didn’t make sense. Every travel thing we read listed them as the most dangerous thing in Thailand. Now that we are here it’s clear why some many tourists die a year on mopeds, because they ALL eventually have to get on one. It would be impossible live in Phuket without renting or owning a moped or motorcycle, unless of course you are rich enough to rent/buy a car. So if you can imagine every single tourists, including the bad drivers and the questionable drivers, all zooming out into oncoming traffic, well it’s not hard to see why someone people die. This is not to belittle those that have died in traffic accidents in anyway. The system of driving here is very give and take. There is a general flow that the majority of drivers follow and once you understand that flow you are much better off. Mopeds are usually in the left lane or on the shoulder of the road. At stop lights you can just wiggle through traffic until you are at the front and then you can join the pack of other mopeds that have laced their way to the front. Personally I think I’m getting a hang of it. Yesterday I didn’t try to pullout into oncoming traffic, not even once! The habits from driving in the US are strong at first: right hand to turn on red, or pulling out and taking a right, check left – no traffic? Okay . . . GO!!! What is wrong with that scenario? Well oncoming traffic is coming from my right. But I’m getting a hang of it, rain and wind, even with laundry onboard.) Around 7:00 Jackie starts the commute to her school. I drop her off and come back to the house. On the way home today I finally saw the Famous Big Buddha. With my eyes finally not having to worry about every single movement of traffic they had drifted up past the roadside buildings towards the top of the mountains on the island. And there it was.  Peacefully it gazed down on the entire island, perched in a sea of green. It’s funny because just the day before a tourist asked me if I knew where the Big Buddha was. I had told him that I had seen signs for it, but had no idea and the whole time it was probably within eyesight if we had only looked up for it. That was the highlight of my morning. I was thrilled to have finally found it.

                The rest of the morning was downhill, a complete crash and burn. As is my schedule, I stopped off for some breakfast to take back to the house and start work. Poker is not an easy living, despite what some people say. Those at the top, the middle, and even where I’m at understand it's hard work, mentally and emotionally. I got crushed today. Hit my stop-loss like a boulder off a two story building onto a puppy – fast and brutal. For those who are not familiar with a stop-loss it’s a predetermined amount of money that you are willing to loss within a certain period of time, usually a day. By setting a stop-loss a gambler or card player can prevent himself or herself from going on tilt (aka crazy) and flushing their entire bankroll or in my case my backer’s bankroll. Lots of very talented players emotionally can’t show enough restraint to set a stop-loss or stick to it when the going gets dirty. It’s hard to be one-third of the way through your day and have to call it. You want that money back. But usually it’s better to take the day off. Review your hand histories, study, and maybe relax. I took the moped for a one minute drive to the ocean. The tide was in. Gently it brushed against the white beaches. Across the stretch of water another island rose like a she-hulk tit, large and green. I am living in paradise. Not something close to paradise, but complete paradise.

                After stopping in at my favorite soup shop I headed back to the house to do some writing, before I picked up Jackie from school. I got a little editing done.

                Once back at the house Jackie and I decided to explore the mudflats before dinner. How wrong we were about them. From day one we had seen local people out at the far edge of the "mudflats," 300 meters from the beach, collection things. We were curious what was being collected, so Jackie drove us over to the beach and we started out. It’s not mud at all, but a bizarre and fascinating landscape of broken coral, large scattered rocks, waving sand, and tide pools. We came across a variety of crabs, fish, live corals, and shells as we walked out past the tide line. We saw a couple sea cucumbers and even two lionfish! We’ll bring the camera out next time and post some pictures. Standing in the middle of the flats with the water at our backs, a multitude of sea life at our feet, and the Big Buddha, immaculately white, looking down on us from his green mountain top it was hard to be anything but stunned with happiness. 

It was a rough start to what turned out to be a fantastic day. Already Jackie and I have started to fall into the outline of routine. We get up between 6:00 and 6:30 am, shower, dress and eat a little. Then we hop on the moped. (A long side note about mopeds. According to the UK’s foreign and Commonwealth Office over 38 people die a day in Thailand in motorcycle accidents. When we were preparing for Thailand I skipped over the warnings about motorcycles and mopeds, because I couldn’t imagine EVER using one while we were here. It just didn’t make sense. Every travel thing we read listed them as the most dangerous thing in Thailand. Now that we are here it’s clear why some many tourists die a year on mopeds, because they ALL eventually have to get on one. It would be impossible live in Phuket without renting or owning a moped or motorcycle, unless of course you are rich enough to rent/buy a car. So if you can imagine every single tourists, including the bad drivers and the questionable drivers, all zooming out into oncoming traffic, well it’s not hard to see why someone people die. This is not to belittle those that have died in traffic accidents in anyway. The system of driving here is very give and take. There is a general flow that the majority of drivers follow and once you understand that flow you are much better off. Mopeds are usually in the left lane or on the shoulder of the road. At stop lights you can just wiggle through traffic until you are at the front and then you can join the pack of other mopeds that have laced their way to the front. Personally I think I’m getting a hang of it. Yesterday I didn’t try to pullout into oncoming traffic, not even once! The habits from driving in the US are strong at first: right hand to turn on red, or pulling out and taking a right, check left – no traffic? Okay . . . GO!!! What is wrong with that scenario? Well oncoming traffic is coming from my right. But I’m getting a hang of it, rain and wind, even with laundry onboard.) Around 7:00 Jackie start the commute to her school. I drop her off after dealing with traffic and come back to the house. On the way home today I finally saw the Famous Big Buddha. With my eyes finally not having to worry about every single movement of traffic they had drifted up past the roadside buildings towards the top of the mountains on the island. And there it was.  Peacefully it gazed down on the entire island, perched in a sea of green. It’s funny because just the day before a tourist asked me if I knew where the Big Buddha was. I had told him that I had seen signs for it, but had no idea and the whole time it was probably within eyesight if we had only looked up for it. That was the highlight of my morning. I was thrilled to have finally found it.

                The rest of the morning was downhill, a complete crash and burn. As is my schedule I stopped off for some breakfast to take back the house and start work. Poker is not an easy living, despite what some people say. Those at the top, the middle and even where I’m at understand its hard work, mentally and emotionally. I got crushed today. Hit my stop-loss like a boulder off a two story building onto a puppy – fast and brutal. For those who are not familiar with a stop-loss it’s a predetermined amount of money that you are willing to loss within a certain period of time, usually a day. By setting a stop-loss a gambler or card player can prevent himself or herself from going on tilt (aka crazy) and flushing their entire bankroll or in my case my backer’s bankroll. Lots of very talented players emotionally can’t show enough restraint to set a stop-loss or stick to it when the going gets dirty. It’s hard to be one-third of the way through your day and have to call it. You want that money back. But usually it’s better to take the day off. Review your hand histories, study, and maybe relax. I took the moped for a two minute drive to the ocean. The tide was in. Gently it brushed against the white beaches. Across the stretch of water another island rose like a she-hulk tit, large and green. I am living in paradise. Not something close to paradise, but complete paradise.

                After stopping in at my favorite soup shop I headed back to the house to do some writing before I picked up Jackie from school. I got a little editing done before it was time to pick up Jackie.

                Once back at the house Jackie and I decided to explore the mudflats before dinner. How wrong we were about the “mudflats.” From day one we had seen local people out at the edge of the “mudflats,” almost 300 meters out collecting things. We were curious what was being collected, so Jackie drove us over to the beach and we started out. It’s not mud at all, but a bizarre and fascinating landscape of broken coral, large scattered rocks, waving sand, and tide pools. We came across a variety of crabs, fish, live corals, and shells as we walked out past the tide line. We saw a couple sea cucumbers and even two lionfish! We’ll bring the camera out next time and post some pictures. Standing in the middle of the flats with the water at our backs, a multitude of sea life at our feet, and the Big Buddha, immaculately white, looking down on us in his from his green mountain top it was hard to be anything but stunned with happiness.